MPP LCIIIX

We’ve been planning this one for months! Anne and Nick were going to be around for a business trip and Dick was going to be visiting Wimbledon and we’d managed to find a weekend in the middle of all that,that worked for Dick and Nick – so we settled on the date and told the universe about it… Dave decided it would be fun to come over for a few days and join us and then George and Esther got in touch and said they were considering stopping in on the way to Bridges... and pretty soon we had a major US contingent coming along to MPP.

All of the carefully laid logistical plans then got tossed out of the window when some of the guys got hit by train delays on their way to Barnt Green – I grabbed George, Esther and Dave from the station and dropped them at their hotel until Nick’s train got in and then we collected everyone and brought them to the house. Frank and Jo arrived from up north soon after. It was wonderfully hot afternoon so we made sure the drinks were cold and the puzzles plentiful.

I headed off to the airport to collect the Dutch contingent ensuring we had achieved a critical mass of puzzlers by the Friday evening… this was a great start to a puzzling weekend. I braaied far too much meat and we feasted outdoors as the heat began to recede just a little.

Wil presented me with my copy of his new puzzle and swore me to much secrecy, so I won’t mention it(!).  We chatted and puzzled for a few hours before I ran the Dutch contingent down to their Airbnb and dropped most of the Americans at their hotel… before I crashed.

Next morning we changed up the schedule so I could collect Dick from the station before all of the planned logistics sprang into gear: I collected the Dutch puzzlers and we headed to the hall to open things up… Chris was already there so he and Louis and Rob ended up doing most of the hard labour while I sorted out the drinks and refreshments. Somewhere around ten o’clock half the London gang arrived at more or less the same time as Gill and Frank dropped off the Americans. The ranks swelled steadily and the puzzling proper kicked in.

I had some minor success at trying to get rid of some surplus puzzles but in the end most of them would end up coming home with me again… I’m going to need to find a sneaky way to get rid of them… perhaps I’ll run a competition or something.

Dick had made up a large bunch of souvenir gifts and made a point of talking to every puzzler present and giving them a souvenir of the event… when my turn came he also shoved a thumb drive in my hand with his complete compendium of over 21,000 wire puzzles – no doubt significantly adding to the number of disentanglements I can’t solve. :-) Thanks Dick!

Nick had also come prepared with a neatly packaged souvenir gift – and even gone to the trouble of branding it with his own take on bad Roman numerals – so not only did you need to make a symmetric shape, you also had to work out how his numerals could give you the right MPP number – nice touch, Nick!

While I’m on the subject of giveaways, George had printed and brought along a huge pile of Stewart Coffin Meteoroids (STC 100-A) – and he ended up with a steady queue of folks chatting about that and his other new creations over the course of the day.

I’d taken along my copy of Peter’s No Way Box and several groups of puzzlers took turns having a go at it… they seemed to make some progress, but I’m not sure anyone actually solved it.

Steve and Ali did some light trade over the course of the day supplying various puzzlers with bits of brass they needed.

We badly mis-timed lunch and missed out on pig rolls that had already sold out just after noon – had I mentioned the weather was brilliant and the village was buzzing? I settled for a samosa and a sack of crisps which did me well alongside all of the cakes and biscuits I scoffed all day long… Peter’s Pan provided a number of kebabs for the more health-conscious puzzlers among us.

A few of us had taken along our copies of ‘The Mother of All Weekends Box’ for folks to play with and they all performed flawlessly, except for one of them… one of my mates definitely seems to have problems making puzzle boxes! (Names have been withheld to protect Steve’s reputation.)

Wil had brought along a case-full of puzzles either for sale or to give away and between him and Louis their carry-on was around 11kg lighter on the trip home. Wil helped himself to a couple of my give aways and managed to find a more elegant solution to Theo and Symen’s Sand Box than I’d found – he’s a pretty damn good solver as well as an ace designer.

Chris had thoughtfully brought along a set of Andrew Crowell’s ball-bearing-i-fied puzzles and a 3D printed set of Greg’s NOS Burrs… for some reason people thought it would be funny to dismantle them all and leave them in a pile on the table… I was somewhat relieved they didn’t appear to have enough time to repeat that on my set of recently assembled Benno burrs!

One of the big hits of this MPP was Doog’s Double Trouble box that Steve Canfield – he of Boxes and Booze fame – had sent over with Nick – Steve had decided that Double Trouble deserved to go on a bit of a world tour, and since Nick was heading to MPP, this would make a good jumping off point for an international leg. Several knots of puzzlers spent a while huddled around Double Trouble at a time and then duly added their names to the list of solvers safely locked inside. I had a great time when my turn came – the mechanisms are intriguing, and all totally fair and honest – there’s a lovely journey to the solution, with each step politely clued to avoid having to guess at any stage. Doog’s put a lot of thought, and just enough clueing into the puzzles – while he freely admits to borrowing one little element, the rest are all pure Doog – some elements may look a little rustic, but the precision in the mechanisms is jaw-dropping… and the main “A-Ha!” when you realise what the main mechanism is, is just brilliant. Kudos to Doog, and thanks to Steve for sending a 1/1 puzzle on a world tour so a whole bunch of other puzzlers can enjoy it!

It was nice to meet Robin who prefers his puzzles math-y – he seemed to be getting on like a house-on-fire with George and hopefully he managed to spend some time with Dick as well. Robin had brought along a few of his own designs and took a fair amount of joy from seeing some us struggling with them – and yeah, I struggled more than most!

There were a few of Juno’s Tortoises around and by the end of the day most folks who didn’t have their own copy had been able to have a bash at one – unlike that time when we had a whole bunch of koalas together, we didn’t run a photoshoot with tortoises doing naughty things to one another – ‘cos that would be wrong!  

We must have had around 20-odd folks there and it felt like a great MPP.

Somewhere around 5:30 we tidied up, piled everyone into cars and headed back up to chez Walker for the traditional after-MPP-party. The heat meant the outdoor spaces were very popular and everyone ended up either chatting or puzzling until the fish suppers / leftovers were served for dinner. (I told you I’d braaied way too much meat the night before so about half of us ended up choosing to have braai leftovers rather than fish and chips – only I didn’t tell them what the leftovers were as I knew there wouldn’t be enough if everyone wanted leftovers!)

Somewhere around 10pm most folks headed back home and we dropped folks back at their Airbnb and hotels… tidied up a bit and then crashed – awesome day!

Next morning we ate breakfast and then collected the puzzlers who were still around – George and Esther were heading off to Eindhoven a bit earlier than the rest of the Dutch contingent so they headed off to the airport.

I got to spend some quality time puzzling – off on my own in a darkened corner with just Wil watching me surreptitiously while he solved puzzle after puzzle. I made enough progress that I didn’t think I’d wasted my time, but I did hit a pretty big brick wall and decided I should put it aside for now.

Lunch was a fabulous DIY affair with plenty of happy puzzlers.

After lunch Nick and I rounded up the Dutch contingent and dropped them at the airport and then collected Anne from the train station next door fresh from her business trip to Cornwall. Once Anne had solved the ticket barrier puzzle (new variant – not the Oliver Soos Disentanglement) we headed home for a relaxed afternoon’s chatting, with a side of puzzles.

That evening Nick and Dave took us all out to dinner at our local pub for a hearty meal before a few more hours chatting at home… I dropped Dave back at the hotel and he headed off to London the next morning while the four of us had breakfast at Toast – my current favourite breakfast joint.

From there we headed off to Broadway Tower for a bit of a wander around, timing our visit to the nuclear bunker impeccably to miss the passing thundershower… we drove down the hill to the village intending to wander around the village in search of afternoon tea, only to be trapped in the carpark by the mother of all showers… and after sitting there for a while we decided we’d just head off home where the hounds were happy to see us!

We grabbed a pizza at a new joint in the village before Nick and I ended up playing through the new Mystery Agency adventure in a box: The Man from Sector Six – it had only arrived a couple of days earlier and it was great fun getting to play through it with Nick – overall we did reasonably well, although we didn’t actually start a timer on it, preferring to just enjoy the puzzling. That said, I didn’t go to bed too late!

Next morning after I headed off to work, Nick and Anne headed London-ward for a final day’s exploring before they headed back to the west coast…

Most MPP weekends are pretty brilliant, but this one’s probably going to stand out even more because of all the friends who joined us and spent a while visiting – thank you all!

Something new from Two Brass Monkeys

This won’t be a long blog post, but hopefully it will be useful, if only to the small group of thoroughly masochistic puzzlers out there…

Ali and Steve have a new hexagonal stick puzzle out – as you’d expect it’s made with plenty of brass and weighs a fair bit… it resulted from their somewhat exhaustive analysis for their Joy of Hex project when they noticed that 12 copies of one particular piece would build neatly into a standard Hectix cluster.

The downside was that it would spontaneously fall apart if not supported well in a number of different planes… which doesn’t bode well for a puzzle design…

However, the Monkeys aren’t easily cowed by mere gravity and analysed further to discover that if the pieces are combined into sets of handed pairs (two this-way and four that-), the resultant assembly is not only stable under standard Earth gravity, but is an absolute pig to assemble using the usual number of hands a solo puzzler can provide.

Thus was born the Tricky Hand Job – if you like your puzzles to be infuriating, this one’s for you! Get them while they’re still warm.

…and as a final bonus, it will fly apart with a gentle spin of the assembly on a table – a fantastic way to wipe the smile off any smug puzzler who’s just solved their copy – NOT that I’d ever encourage such dastardly behaviour! 

 

Box 2 – Ice Bucket

Phil Wigfield loves using his old school metal-working skills to amuse and perplex. His second “box” is a riff on Rocky Chiaro’s Ice Bucket which Phil’s described as a nod to the original with a bit of a modern twist… we’re told there’s a stash area(!) and some ice cubes to retrieve. (I’m sure they weren’t just put in there to confuse puzzlers listening for the slightest of clues as to what’s going on inside this little fortress!)

There are some basic visual similarities to Rocky’s original, but this one stands taller and has Phil’s stamp across the top of the lid… in spite of Phil’s warning on his information cards that the puzzles are made by hand and you should expect some machining marks, mine looks incredibly tidy.

At the start of the solve the lid spins fairly freely and you can definitely hear little bits of metal clanking around inside there, although they don’t seem to be serving much mechanical purpose.

Playing around a bit and I find the lid starts behaving a little less predictably – every now and them it’ll stop turning freely and a little back-tracking allows it to free up once again, but that’s about it.

There is something else you can do, and I thought I was onto something until something rather terrifying happened, so my better judgement persuaded me to leave that avenue alone… and I think it was a wise move.

A little more serious inspection identified something potentially useful, which in turn led a friend to send me a bit of a warning which helped rather a lot… the lid was duly removed and the littlest brass ice cubes sprayed all across my desk…

Once the Ice Bucket was opened, it took me quite a bit of Think(c)ing to work out what the heck was going on in there, and even longer to work out how I’d managed to over-complicate things… Phil's designed an elegant challenge that gives the aspirant solver plenty of potential blind alleys to explore and lose themselves in for hours… and I suspect he might get a bit of a kick out of that…

Nice one Phil – that kept me out for quite a while and then confused me long after I’d opened it!

Keyring 2

Visually there are some similarities between the first and second Keyring puzzles from MW Puzzles – they’re both around the same size with a steel tube and a brass ring around them… the first keyring challenged you to remove the trapped key, whereas thing one asks you (politely) to remove the ring - that’s the brass ring, not the split ring as one of my mates suggested cheekily. (The instructions also request no banging…)

There’s one of MW Puzzles’ customary tokens attached to the split ring and it’s not hard to imagine attaching your keys to said split ring and using this as a functional key ring… should anyone need any encouraging to buy a copy.

At the start of the solve the brass ring moves freely on the steel tube, but is stopped at one end by a large hex screw that refuses to budge and in the centre by a pin securing the split ring… beyond that there’s another steel pin that spins happily but won’t budge… at least there’s a potential path to freedom, right?!

At this point there is literally only one thing even vaguely feasible, and doing that yields a couple of potential tools, but not a strong clue for where to go next…

I found something I thought should be useful (I was pretty sure it would be useful in fact!) but then I discovered that exercising that tool didn’t really do much of use… sure I could see things changing, they just didn’t seem to be opening up anything useful for me…

…and here I stuck for a few weeks, picking it up and doing the same things over and over again, sometimes with more force than strictly necessary – always with the same outcome – no further progress…

…until I asked myself an important question, and that unlocked things for me, figuratively and literally.

A great little pocket puzzle… and (unusually) they’re still available as I write this. 

Postscript - it turns out I hadn't actually solved it! I got chatting to Peter about the solve and discovered we'd both opened it different ways and when I tested that with ace-solver-Ali, he told me our "solutions" weren't nearly elegant enough - only he was far more polite than that! So when I got home I fished out my copy and had another go... I tried all the same stuff again and got nowhere, then I had a little Think(c) before I tried something else and BINGO! Now I know I've solved it properly - that is an excellent puzzle!! I'm a very big fan of this one now that I've solved it properly! (Sorry I didn't get it right the first time, Matthew!)