MPP XXXXC

Gosh! That’s quite a momentous number!

I really like the fact that these things have been going for a while now and people still keep showing up and possibly having fun… who am I kidding – this is a purely selfish means of getting my mates to come and visit and bring puzzles! ;-)

OK, enough of the sentiment – this was another biggish MPP with Wil and Louis coming over from the Netherlands on Friday evening. They whizzed through customs and immigration and found me grabbing the cake and biscuits from the Marks & Spencer in Arrivals. Traffic is light and we do the proper greeting-and-catch-up-thing while the hounds become reacquainted with our visitors. The puzzles come out across the dining room table almost immediately: Wil’s given me a new cube Puzzle Box from Jean Claude and he watches me struggle with it for quite a while… it’s a beautifully decorated box with several panels that have subtle bits of movement, but nothing that seems to actually be of any use whatsoever….

I spend a while getting quite literally nowhere until Wil takes pity on me – mark the date! – and gives me a nudge on the first step or three… I’m glad he did as I’d never have found that set of moves to get things going… inside there’s another set of challenges and we all agree that the insides alone are probably worthy of being a great puzzle, so hopefully folks who end up buying one of these will actually make it into the second part of the puzzle!

In return I’ve hauled out my latest set of the Karakuri Christmas puzzles for Wil to play through… most yield relatively quickly but a couple of them manage to hold up his progress for at least a while, and a few of them predictably put a large smile on the face during the solve… you can probably guess which ones!

The puzzles are briefly cleared away so we can scarf a pile of pizzas and the puzzling duly continues.

Louis has brought along his copy of the Time Traveller’s Artifact and encourages me to have a go at it. It’s a big beast of a puzzle that combines laser-cut wood and 3D printed bits and pieces to produce a superb steampunk feel… it looks like something that a time traveller might leave behind on a mission. I spend an hour or two wandering through the solution with the occasional hint from Louis while he’s absent-mindedly solving something impossible on the other side of the table. Each part of the solution presents a whole new world inside the device – and while you’re sort of expecting it because it’s linked to the solve-bits you’ve just been through, each time still feels like a new surprise. There are literally whole worlds hidden inside this box! The puzzles are nicely themed in their little worlds and there are some lovely subtle little hints to nudge you forward on your path – and if you get really stuck, there’s a web-site with nudges to point you in the right direction without spoiling anything… well worth a punt in my humble opinion!

We call it a day at a vaguely sensible hour and the next morning we grab some breakfast and pack puzzles into crates to head down to the hall. Dale’s already waiting in the carpark and we open up the hall and cart our kit into the hall before I leave Louis in charge to get tables and chairs set up while I head back up to the shops to collect cold drinks, milk, coffee and other essentials for the day.

By the time I get back there are a couple more folks around and soon enough it starts feeling like a puzzle party: the puzzles are out and folks are piling into puzzles they haven’t seen before.

I’ve taken along my set of the Karakuri Christmas puzzles and the last two puzzles from the blog and a bunch of other recent arrivals… the Jukebox gets a lot of exercising and holds up superbly – everyone seems to really enjoy it with nobody ever getting stuck along the solution path – it really does lead you through the solve in a neat, methodical manner.

Ali and I spend a while walking through the solve of Free The Two – I’ve had my copy for months and only recently managed to get it fully reset, but I wasn’t happy with a couple of the steps on the reset and couldn’t help but notice that I hadn’t used a couple of features of the box, so we agreed to walk through it at MPP… and I’m glad we did as my “solution” was indeed missing several steps – and all of the somewhat inelegant “moves” I was relying on shouldn’t have been in the sequence.

Wil had brought along an intriguing gift puzzle consisting of four identical pieces with a number of assembly challenges. The pieces look vaguely familiar, although a quick check on Friday evening proved that they were not in fact mathematically-similar to the shapes in a super-well-known tray-packing puzzle. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the challenges and who doesn’t love a free puzzle?!

Warwick’s provided pig rolls for a good proportion of the assembled masses, but sadly the local chippy was shut for lunch which meant that the folks who had their hearts set on a kebab were all disappointed and ended up having something a whole lot healthier… life is full of disappointments I’m told.

It was great to have Anthony and New-Steve join us – they both joined in the general goings on and it didn’t take them long to find a puzzle that intrigued them and mucked in with the solving and general chatter.

Super to see Mikes Q and D again. Chloe and Tamsin provided finesse. Phil brought along a pile of brass puzzles and promptly left one behind (Tamsin has it for you.). Kevin brought his traditional pile of Pelikans for folks to play with. Frank was dishing out nicely printed Kumiki cranes to anyone who wanted one and the Monkeys had some stock of their recent merch. Rich Gain had brought along his IPP Design Competition trophy but it stubbornly resisted all attempts at taking it apart through the course of the day.

Several folks had a bash at Volker Latussek’s Apotheka during the course of the day. I’ve spent hours not solving it – even with the help of BurrTools! I was hoping that Louis would finally be able to solve it so that I could stop bashing my own head against a brick wall. He and Steve duly tried at MPP but it stubbornly resisted and remained victorious.

Dan insisted on tormenting himself watching the rugby on his phone, complete with live-streamed taunts and abuse from various family members as England managed to plumb the depths.

At one point Ali and Andrew spend a while working through Idan’s Whale to trouble-shoot something or other – I must get hold of a copy of one of them – by all accounts it’s a cracking puzzle!

A bit earlier than usual I did a bit of a roll-call and established that everyone who was still at the hall was planning on coming back to the house afterwards so we tidied everything up and locked the hall and headed up the hill to Puzzling Times Central. (The neighbours must really love it when we end up with cars parked all the way down one side of the street!)

I told the new guys where the puzzles were and left them to find something to amuse themselves… I suspect they did judging by the number of Juno’s that New-Steve worked his way through over the course of the evening, although I think he only discovered the main puzzle cave just before he was planning to leave – I guess he’ll need to come back again sometime!

Thankfully by the time I needed to feed the underfed puzzlers, the local chippy was open for business once more and large quantities of cod and chips were duly procured and collected.

At one point a few of us congregated around the television set to watch some Scots push rocks along an icy patch – that too, sadly ended less well than we’d hoped – so while the sporting conquests may have been left wanting a little, the puzzling thirst was definitely quenched.

Everyone called it a night at a sensible hour –that either means we’re all getting old or sensible… and there’s probably an obvious answer for anyone who knows us!

Sunday was a nice relaxing day of puzzling with my two Dutch mates. As expected Louis recommenced battle with Apotheka and after a bit of wrangling with my BurrTools models and tweaking of the questions it was being asked, he duly produced something that led to a wonderfully elegant solution – leaving both of us wondering how the heck Volker designs puzzles like this time after time… there is literally only one way of introducing pieces into the box that will allow things just enough clearance to do the clever little things that they need to because of that one little protuberance.

He also made relatively short work of Minima Smiley and Sally which had been defeating me since I got it from Pelikan months ago… I’ve missed having my regular puzzle-solving service visit!

I dropped the guys at the airport in time for them to grab some dinner before their evening flight back to Schiphol and they ended up getting home some time around 1am on Monday… a seriously long puzzling weekend.

Having done 60 of them now, I guess we might as well do a few more. Thanks to all who came and made it another really fun day for me with my friends.

Bach’s Box

 

I’ve been a fan of Luke Waier’s puzzles since I first stumbled across his Chained Key Puzzle, and then Fáfnir's Fortress made it onto my top three picks for 2025. His mechanisms are really interesting and his use of 3D printing combined with interesting bits and bobs of hardware makes for strong puzzles at a really good price point… so I didn’t waste much time considering the options when he announced Bach’s Box in the shape of a dinky little upright piano.

This one’s another great-looking puzzle consisting of a piano and a stool, both with mirror-finished piano black panels and brass and stainless steel accents. This puzzle looks way better than its price point suggests it should and I think that it says a huge amount about Luke’s commitment to making good-looking objects as well as brilliant puzzles.

Bach’s Box comes with a polishing cloth to keep those panels shiny and smooth (and get rid of the inevitable fingerprints after a good playing with) and it displays beautifully.

Puzzling-wise, it is terrific! From the get-go there’s a bunch of interesting things to investigate and some of them might actually do something useful – I’m a fairly destructive sort of puzzler and found myself just taking as much of it apart as I possibly could and while I had great fun doing that, I invariably ended up with more pieces than strictly necessary… everything goes back together when it needs to though…

From fairly early on in the solve, things start coming apart in great chunks and presenting you with what can only be termed tools… even if they don’t appear to be actual tools! I found quite a few things that I wanted to do and couldn’t, only to realise later that I just hadn’t released the correct tools yet… patience is always rewarded.

The last step or two in the puzzle are totally in keeping with the theme, things happen exactly as they ought to, presenting you with a lovely little musical treasure to mark the end of your puzzling journey.

It’s definitely worth keeping track of everything on the reset to make sure you don’t end up with some spare bits at the end when everything’s (almost!) all reassembled again.

Luke’s definitely got a great mind for puzzle design but his ability to bring them to life in a really cost-effective and yet thoroughly beautiful way is impressive. Kudos, sir!

Jukebox

I was very chuffed to see Daniel Czuriga and Tibor Folytán’s Jukebox pre-orders go live a while back and I signed up straight away. I’d seen it at the Houston Design Competition but didn’t end up having a play with it… I had had heard several people saying some very positive things about it, including some folks whose opinions I will generally accept as being right on the money…. And then if I needed any further encouragement, it won the Jury Grand Prize.

It's a sizeable old lump of puzzle and from the comments in Houston, it was a pretty complex beast, so when the guys at Moontree announced they’d be making a few hundred copies, we all understood that this wasn’t going to be a simple process, or a quick one… I paid my deposit and waited my turn in the queue… and I suspect I was probably toward the end of the queue, which meant that my copy ended up arriving a few weeks before Christmas… when the house-rules dictate that it goes under the tree until Christmas… life’s tough, eh?!

First impressions are that the guys have gone to some incredible lengths on the packaging to make sure that their puzzles are going to arrive in pristine condition – there are several layers of packaging and boxes with the final layer cushioning the puzzle and it’s accompanying paperwork in a custom padded box that literally immobilises the puzzle in a safe cocoon… unless your delivery person sets fire to it, this one will arrive in perfect condition. (Great job. Thank you, guys!)

Jukebox is a generously sized puzzle that looks like an old Wurlitzer – you’re probably going to want to play on a desk or a table and it might be worthwhile using the included chamois to protect your desk! (It’s brilliant for removing grubby pawprints from your beautiful puzzle after solving too!)

The solve is long and complex (their conservative count is 15 steps) – and beautifully themed along the way – things all makes sense in the context of this being a Jukebox. The mechanisms are all positive – you’re never expected to do anything stupid or brave and tools are all perfectly suited to their task (and if you think they aren’t, try something different!). You’re going to go through all the things you’d hope to be able to do on a Jukebox and then at the end you’re rewarded with one of the best tunes ever.

It is an awesome puzzle that I will be sharing with lots of my mates – the engineering is excellent and it’s solidly made: everything’s going to behave perfectly for a long time. It’s clear why it won the Jury Grand Prize!

Here’s hoping that Daniel and Tibor don’t wait too long for a follow-up, if it’s anywhere near as good, we’re in for another absolute treat! Great job guys!

Minima Tokyo aka Jammed Coin

I picked up a copy of this gorgeous puzzle from Tye at IPP in Tokyo… given that I’m a huge fan of Frederic’s Minima series, I was always going to be interested, but finding out that it had been made by the guys at Ars AEnigmae added an extra reason for getting hold of one… and it is a thoroughly beautiful object.

It’s clearly larger than Tye’s other Minima’s (is that “’s” redundant?) but appears to be based on the usual 2*2*3 voxel-space – and a quick peak in one of the holes shows a Japanese coin trapped inside one of said-voxels – and that pretty much determines the eventual size of the puzzle.

There’s an obvious bolt screwed into one side of the box and a few holes showing some of the cubies inside the box – albeit none of them quite as interesting as that split cubie with a coin in the centre of it. Nothing seems to move at this point although a gentle shake of the object suggests there’s a lot more going on inside than you might have assumed.

Given there’s pretty much nothing else to do at this point, you might as well unscrew the bolt and that releases a piece to slide out through one of the holes – trust me – that’s not a spoiler… Removing that piece frees up some space in the interior and allows the remaining pieces to shift around a little… and if you contrive to hang some of the bits out through the windows, you can even try something more adventurous with those pieces, but if you’re anything like me you’re going to get sick and tired of the fairly limited possibilities.

I spent a couple of months with this puzzle mocking me on my desk – I’d pick it up and run through the things I knew I could do – yup they all still worked perfectly, and then I’d experiment with all sorts of other things I could think of… generally with zero progress.

During my Christmas break I finally managed to get some traction on this puzzle and as soon as I did, my jaw dropped and I knew this was going to become a favourite. There was quite literally something magical going on and the progress was thick and fast from there even though there were some very surprising steps in the solution.

Somewhere in the middle of all this there’s a dramatic change of gear as you realise that your goal is shifting and you have a new challenge to focus on – those latter stages make for an excellent sequential discovery puzzle on their own.

I took a very long time to solve this one – and a huge chunk of that is down to the excellent craftsmanship from the guys at Ars AEnigmae – if anyone had any concerns that the boys might struggle to keep up to Eric’s insanely high standards, this puzzle will thoroughly banish those concerns – they’re doing him proud!

If you can’t find a copy to buy (I think Tye sold out pretty quickly!), find one to borrow from a friend – it is excellent!

Happy New Year

 ...so the end of 2025 was all a bit rubbish for us and I didn't end up having enough time to pull together the traditional puzzle, but as I was putting together the Merry Christmas notice, it just didn't feel right to do nothing at all... so I spent a little while and hid a little challenge in there and didn't tell anyone about it. 

I was delighted a couple of days later when Brendan P reached out with the attached pic:

 

 

...apparently he's also a big fan of Hashimoto-san's 4L. 

 

Not believing that there really wasn't a puzzle, and thinking that my fonts looked a bit janky, he'd spent a while fiddling around in Photoshop and found my challenge: "Using the medium of TANGRAM, tell me what your favourite puzzle is." - it's a bit clearer in Brendan's edited version below: 

...some puzzles are winging their way to Brendan for his amusement. 

Wishing you a wonderfully puzzling 2026!