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!