Bag o’Tangles

A few weeks ago Gill got me an awesome anniversary gift – apparently 21 years is brass or nickel, so Gill reached out to the Nicholl that does brass and colluded to get me a personalised copy of the Bag o’Tangles that was almost ready for public consumption.

My copy arrived all in bits in a big old bag, with every(?) little brass rod engraved with “To infirmity and beyond” – which is kind of our thing. Steve had somehow forgotten to assemble any of the tangles or even separate them into separate bags so the first task turned out to be actually working out what I could assemble the bits into… (You won’t have that problem because the lads have helpfully put some nice pics up on their website showing you exactly what you’re targeting along with some helpful descriptions.)

Luckily, I managed to deduce the likely shapes from counting up the bits I had – and didn’t get too side-tracked by the few spares bits the boys had thrown in.

I started with the triangular tangle and found it to be a rather fiddly little fiend. (Other nouns are available!) It took me a couple of attempts before I got enough bits in there that it began to hold together well enough in order to complete the structure.

My arithmetic suggested I try tangling squares for the second structure, and not having been told that they hadn’t been intended to nest, I set about building the squartangle around the outside of the tri-tangle – ignorance makes for a great taskmaster! Once or twice I needed to backtrack a bit and reposition things, but the squartangle went together a bit easier than the tri-tangle, IMHO… and the first two were nested.

I started experimenting with assembling the pentagonal tangle on its own and found it to be pretty fiddly – and I quickly decided that putting the penta-tangle around my current nest was going to require way more hands (and co-ordination!) than I have available to me – so I reached out to Steve to enquire if there might be a jig available… a short while later one was finishing up on the 3D  printer and I was back in business.

Truth be told, assembling the penta-tangle around the other two was pretty straight-forward with the aid of the jig and my fully nested set was ready to show off… which rather amused Steve as he hadn’t expected the nesting to be possible… and actually in theory, it isn’t possible, however in practice, it works… figure that one out!

I’ve enjoyed playing with a couple of variations on these tangles over the years, including some excellent tongue depressor models! This set is definitely the best of the bunch – they go together nicely and the Monkeys have done a great job of balancing the grip and give between the various bit and pieces to make assembly an absolute pleasure. Wrapping the various pieces over and under one another is great exercise in visualising the various symmetries in the shapes. Heck! You could probably even call these things mathematical sculptures if you needed to diversify your puzzle-habit!

You don’t have to assemble them in a single nested configuration, but you know you’re going to want to try at least once! Get yours over here...

Thanks Gilly for colluding with the Nicholl and brass chaps for a super anniversary gift!

To infirmity and beyond…