DCD 2026

The Dutch Cube Day has become a firm fixture on our puzzling calendar and Ali’s offered to drive across again this year, so we end up with a pretty full truck-load making the trek down to the chunnel and then up to The Hague on Friday. The traffic is kind and the sat-nav helps us avoid the inevitable snarl-up around Antwerp so we get to the hotel around 6 in the evening. We find Stephan checking in at the same time and he ends up joining us in the hotel bar for some puzzling and libations after we’ve had a rather nice dinner. (Thanks Steve!) We’ve had a long day in the car and Stephan had to endure flight delays so we end up heading to bed at a reasonably sensible hour.

Next morning we have a relaxed breakfast and an hour or two chilling in the hotel until Louis arrives with a plan that sees us head off in the rough direction of Rob’s place intending to grab some lunch vaguely nearby… in the end we stumble across a Turkish greasy-spoon where they gladly make up a table for six and we enjoy an unexpectedly tasty lunch. By the time we finish lunch it’s more or less time to head to Rob’s place so we hop in the cars and seek to solve the navigate-to-Rob’s-place-puzzle – made slightly harder by Google maps not understanding the difference between a road and a pedestrian walkway/staircase. We engage puzzle-brains and manage to figure out where we need to get to and where we might be able to park – neither being a trivial puzzle!

Rob greets us downstairs and we head up to his living room and get out the puzzles we’re keen to inflict on one another. Yaccine’s brought along a set of puzzles from a Japanese designer that most of us haven’t seen before so we all end up having a bash at one or more of them. Wil brings out a new secret opening box in the shape of a clock from Jean-Claude that I manage to get part of the way through before hitting a proverbial brick wall – it’s a nice-looking thing and I end up buying a copy from him the next day.

Clive entertains us with his storytelling – this time how his wife gets off scot-free in spite of trying to run him over and breaking all sorts of bones in the process..  Clive is a very good storyteller!

I’ve brought along my copy of Volker’s Frau L and it’s generating a reputation for being a bit of a bastard (I'm she's positively lovely!) – several people end up spending many hours trying to solve it all without success and it’s only when Ivan manages to dredge up enough recollection of his solve that he finally manages to put us out of our misery. Steve takes charge of the solved puzzle and then duly tips out the pieces on Rob’s kitchen counter… the next day he manages to narrow things down sufficiently to be able to recreate the solution and several of us breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Rob orders the customary large pile of pizzas and there’s more than enough for everyone even though Rob thought he was ordering larger pizzas than actually appeared.

The UK-gang heads off to a nearby escape room with Louis for our evening challenge. Jason’s Legacy isn’t the newest escape room but it’s still getting darn good reviews and it’s not hard to see why – it’s an excellently immersive experience inside a double-storey house that’s been constructed inside what I suspect was a large industrial space. There are very few combination locks and ample use of NFC tags tracking where objects are being placed before magic just happens…  we have hints appearing a couple of times where our gamesmasters might be getting a bit worried about our lack of progress but we do a pretty decent job of working through the puzzles and completing the room… we all agreed it has a well-earned reputation.

We head back to the hotel bar where we find a whole bunch more puzzlers have arrived and they’re all furiously puzzling away – I suspect that our arrival both reduced the puzzling effectiveness score and increased the noise levels – but we had fun!

We play for a while and make sure that we all use up our free drinks vouchers (who needs clean towels?!) before making breakfasting and travel arrangements for the big day.

On Sunday morning we grab breakfast and head off toward Sint Maartens where we manage to find the secret new entrance. Having navigated that we load up the elevator with a trolley-full of puzzles and head up to the library which will be our venue for the day. There’s already a huge gaggle of puzzlers there and the monkeys manage to find a table in the corner to lay out their wares: they have their recent productions along with several crates of puzzles that they’re trying to get into a new home. I witness several amusing interchanges between Steve and sundry puzzlers as he attempted to bargain them down on their offers – invariably catching them off balance initially but always putting a smile on their faces… everyone ended up happy.

I grab a copy of Jack’s latest puzzle box (Jack asked me not to refer to his pricing as ridiculous again, so henceforth I will need to refer to it as offering exceptionally good value for money!) and also a copy of Twinkle – his current record-holding high level 18-piece burr which I freely admit I’m probably never going to take apart so he promises to send me the BurrTools file for it… I’m probably going to have to take it apart now, aren’t I?)

I spend a little while chatting to Arie and secure a lovely ball assembly in 5 colourful woods that I’m very glad I’ll be able to transport home fully assembled given it took Arie about four hours to assemble each of the two copies he had for sale. From his description this one doesn’t hold together very well until right near the end of the process.

Around lunchtime a few of us head up to the supermarket to grab some lunch – I opt for something that has cheese wrapped in pastry (how can you go wrong with that?!) but some of the others opt for something far more healthy… their loss!

Back at the school we find out that Mickey D’s was also a popular choice for lunch… turns out that not getting a lunch supplied as part of the DCD organisation isn’t really much of a hindrance to determined puzzlers!

The afternoon sees the usual lectures in a nearby classroom with George and Rox updating on the WPC and IPP43 (including several warnings to all who would listen not to ever offer to host an IPP along with some of George’s more philosophical musings), Sjaak gave us a talk on the development of his commercial sphere-packing puzzle and then Rob delivered his usual review of some of the IPP exchanges with Toby playing the role of Diniar this year.

When I wandered past Jan Willem’s table I was somewhat gob-smacked to see three little Ninomiya crates still desperate to find a home so after a short chat to share our surprise, I gave him pretty much the rest of my euros in return for re-homing them.

I end up acquiring a couple more puzzles from Wil just so that my case isn’t too empty on the way home and then things start winding down and we all lend a hand to turn the classrooms back into actual classrooms and the library back into a functioning space for the kids the next day.

Louis does an excellent job of rounding up takers for our traditional Chinese dinner after DCD only to discover that won’t be an option this year so we pivot to eating at the hotel restaurant that does an excellent job of catering for a table of about 20-odd puzzlers (yes, that hyphen is optional, isn’t it?). The puzzles continue to flow and the food is great – I can’t rate the burgers highly enough – I really enjoy mine!

Folks start drifting off to catch planes, trains and automobiles home until there’s a hardy few who’re all only leaving the next day… when I call it a night I leave Frederic’s anti-slide puzzle on the to-be-solved pile as it’s stubbornly resisted all attempts at solving all weekend… and when I retrieve it the next morning I find out it has retained it’s unbeaten record… some more Think (c) may be required.

I pack up my stuff in the hotel room and reckon that I’m definitely going home with less than I came with, although the football-sized ball in the back of Ali’s truck probably suggests otherwise.

Breakfast sees us saying our final goodbyes to puzzlers we won’t see for weeks (some of them are coming to our next MPP) or months (King’s Day or an IPP) before we load up the truck one more time and hit the road.

Ali does his normal sterling job of taking care of all of the driving, with several stops to let everyone unfold themselves and stretch our legs or grab something to eat. We make great time and end up back at Ali’s place before 4pm which allows Frank and I to get back to my place around six pm… earlier than we’d expected.

Another cracking weekend road trip with my mates… thanks especially to Ali for doing all of the driving and Steve for keeping us amused and buying us dinner… I largely failed to sponsor anything over the course of the weekend – in spite of trying – thank you guys!