Wil Strijbos’ Egg

At the risk of becoming a “me-too” blogger, I feel I need to write about Wil Strijbos’ latest new release. Jerry and Kevin have already shared their impressions, so I’ll try not to repeat too much of what they’ve already covered and give you my impressions.

Both of the guys have covered the pre-history of the Egg, its recent re-discovery in James Dalgety’s collection and alluded to the challenges involved in getting the Egg produced in China – Wil’s been working on getting the Egg just right for quite a while now, so when he announced it was finally ready there were quite a lot of us throwing money in his direction for the privilege of being puzzled.

His first run of 55 Eggs sold out in a little over a week(!) … don’t worry if you missed out, there’s bound to be another run along in the near future.

Right – onto the puzzley-bits…

Dainty, she ain’t – I’m not going to give you another shot of Wil’s Egg next to a standard chicken egg, suffice it to say, Wil’s Egg’s bigger! It’s a rather nicely anodised pink aluminium number with some lettering giving you the puzzle’s name, a serial number and Wil’s great, if almost illegible, signature on the bottom. 

The top and bottom halves of the Egg are clearly separate pieces (no that’s not a spoiler!), but at the start of the solve, there’s precious little movement between the two pieces. You’ll need to spend some time playing with it and working out how to get things going and once you do, you’ll be rewarded with a little movement, first this way, and then that way…

Make a little more progress and you’ll even be able to peek inside a little – not enough to be in any way useful of course, but enough to let you know you’re making progress. You may be able to work out what was stopping your earliest progress, but you certainly won’t get any clues on how to progress! (Wil’s mean like that!)

I spent quite a while in the middle of this solve, spread over a couple of evenings… mainly because I’d got some other puzzles at the same time and I was flitting between a couple of them trying to progress them all, so whenever I found I needed to pause and think, I was picking up one of the other puzzles…

In the end I must have spent an hour or two on opening the Egg the first time – and I’m not ashamed to say that it needed a pretty ruthless, rigorous approach to working out how to get into it… the mechanism is so finely tuned that unless you get the solution pretty much spot on it throws you back a bunch of steps … generally without you even realising it!

There’s just enough feedback to keep making progress and work out what you’re trying to do, and ultimately being able to picture what’s probably going on in there is a really valuable skill. (Alternatively access to a handy NHS X-ray machine if you’re that way inclined!)

When you do get it open you have to appreciate the tremendous balance between simplicity and incredible engineering to get all that stuff working together so nicely… you’ll also realise why the Egg needs to be that size.

Having opened it I set about studying the insides very closely … and spotted a number of incredibly subtle little details that probably didn’t have to be there, but adding them significantly increases the potential traps for the unwary.

Locking it all up again requires a sequence of actions to get everything back where you started from – there’s no easy reset on this one!

It’s a CRACKing puzzle, EGGseptional in every way, superbly EGGineered, good OVALue for money and EGGstremely good looking. No YOLKing!

[Hey, I behaved myself right up until the end! You know you’d be disappointed if I hadn’t done that … :-) ]

IPP33 - Day 3 - Hakone...

After having breakfast with Rob Hegge I spend a little while in the lobby catching up on emails before Scott Elliott arrives with a bunch of his printed puzzles and we explore them for a while (I manage to assemble them all, much to my own amusement!) before I rather rudely excuse myself, dash upstairs for my bag and sprint off to the waiting buses outside the hotel... today we're heading for Hakone, aka Puzzle Mountain - for some serious puzzle box shopping.

I find myself next to Stan Isaacs and really enjoy the bus ride getting to know a wonderful gent and a terrific puzzler. I pass him a copy of Cast Cylinder and my little yellow burr and they amuse him for a while as we travel through increasingly more beautiful (and less urban) countryside until we eventually climb up a steep, winding mountain pass and crest the ridge before dropping down into the picturesque town of Hakone.

While the bus is parking we spot Frank Potts with Brian and Sue Young waiting outside what turns out to be a shop most of us will recognise from their web-shop - Izumiya. My first thought is that given the head start that the three of them have had, they've probably hoovered up all the best stuff, although spotting a 3 foot kumiki robot in the shop later on makes me doubt that, as I know at least one of them kind of likes kumiki puzzles!

Before we're allowed off the bus the house-rules for puzzle-buying during the first half an hour are explained to ensure that everyone gets a fair chance to buy something special - being a wimp I hang back from what I'm assuming will be some heavily competitive shopping inside and spend some time looking through Mine's stall set up outside the shop. I pick up quite a few puzzles from Mine that end up becoming some of the puzzles I spend the most time on during my stay in Japan ... and a copy of his Design Competition entry for this year, only I don't realise it at the time. 

Once the rush has subsided I venture inside and find a throng of puzzlers at the back of the shop (the front of the store has everything imaginable decorated in yosegi and the puzzles and cabinets are at the back of the store). I spend at least an hour ogling various puzzle boxes, playing with (even solving!) some of them, watching demos of others and pawing even more of them before I make up my mind on a couple of things to buy ... only to return to the store three or four times later during the day to pick up just a couple more puzzles each time.

From Izumiya we wandered up the street to Maruyama and a couple of other shops that stock puzzles. Maruyama has a terrific collection of Karakuri boxes in a glass display cabinet that takes up most of the length of the shop - great for ogling at, while a craftsman shaves off wafer-thin slices of yosegi from blocks on his bench and passes them out to visiting puzzlers.

Hakone really is a treasure and anyone interested in puzzle boxes should visit at some point...

In between puzzle shopping, lunch was a couple of Oreo ice-creams - Gill wasn't there so I was allowed!

After lunch Stan and I wandered around town a bit and found ourselves seeking some shade down by the dock on the lake, watching swan-shaped pedalos gliding around the bay, and huge tourist boats taking folks around the lake on a sight-seeing tour, while an elderly lady in a rowing boat was trimming stray plants in the basin in front of us - it's a magical place even without the puzzles...

A couple more visits to Izumiya took care of the rest of the money I was planning to spend there and as I was leaving the store Kenzi comes out from the back of the shop with a Dream of Zebra. When he spots the look on my face he quickly hides it behind the counter and says "Sorry, not for sale!" - I don't bother hiding my disappointment and even ham it up a bit ... but it really isn't for sale.

The long bus ride back was broken for a bite to eat at a motorway services - although given its size, it's probably better described as a small shopping mall attached to a massive food court next to a motorway. I suspect that the break allows the worst of the traffic ahead to clear and we end up back at the hotel at around 8pm.

This time there are many more puzzlers in the hotel lobby - and I recognise fellow-blogger Jerry Loo from his pictures online while he's chatting to Wil so I interrupt them and introduce myself. 

After a quick shower I head back down to the lobby with puzzles in hand and join a rather rowdy crowd of puzzlers including Brian and Sue, Frank and Jo and Jerry. Dick is entertaining Jo's son Dominic with some of his disentanglement puzzles and after discovering that Dominic has solved the Cast Devil, Jerry Slocum insists on shaking the young man's hand and congratulating him...

Chinny arrived in style with a sack full of goodies including a set of Pennyhedrons I'd bought from him and a copy of Bite Me! We passed them all around and pretty soon I was the only bloke there who hadn't solved them, although in my defence, some of them held Dirk and Rob up for a while ... and at least one of them is a Chinny special - it's glued together!

Marc brought out the Reincarnation box that he'd bought in Hakone and I tried - spectacularly unsuccessfully - to get anywhere on it. A bit later when I saw how stiff it was, I didn't feel too bad - gorgeous looking puzzle though and looks very special when it's opened.

Marc also brought out his copies of Alles Roger and the Lighter and soon enough just about everyone was shaking it like a maniac and I'd managed to nudge him into solving Alles Roger.

I had a great chat with Brian about this year's limited edition puzzle while he dished out little furry koala's to most people within shouting range. For the record - I suspect that Brian will be setting another benchmark with this year's limited edition puzzle - keep an eye out for it.

Great puzzle craic!

Jerry’s Ball in Cylinder puzzle

I’ve been reading Jerry’s puzzle blog since he started writing it back in June 2011. We seem to share a love for similar sorts of puzzles so it’s always a pleasure reading his points of view and thoughts on puzzles that I haven’t come across yet – and for getting another point of view on the ones I have. 

Back in November last year he wrote about a puzzle that he’d designed and had made up - the RevoLUTION Ball Puzzle – consisting of 6 metal disks that formed a maze, the object was to get a ball bearing from one end to the other by manipulating the disks relative to one another ... and judging by the pictures there were a lot of dead ends in there! In that post he mentioned he’d designed a second puzzle and was in the process of getting it made up...

...and then a little before Christmas I had a note out of the blue from Jerry asking me for my address so that he could send me one of his new puzzles as a Christmas present, in return for my thoughts on the design – and so it was that a little package arrived from Singapore about ten days later. 

The handsome little brushed aluminium cylinder looks every bit the professionally made puzzle. Mine came with a little bit of tape across one end and a little ball bearing in the single hole visible under the tape, and tilting the cylinder back and forth you’ll notice there’s something inside that goes backwards and forwards and bashes up against the taped up ball bearing. Being the cautious sort I dropped Jerry a note and asked if I was allowed to remove the tape – silly question! – Yip, remove the tape and a ball bearing pops out... OK drop it back in again and roll it out – so far so good – I think I understand this thing – repeat the exercise and the ball bearing stays in there... uh oh!

OK, now I’ve locked it ... the ball bearing is inside and tilting it backwards and forwards just rolls something else around ... but hang on there’s a new sound in there now – the sound of a ball bearing running around in circles! Guess where my original ball bearing is now! 

INSIDE! 

...and that’s where it stayed for about half an hour! Not because I’d lost interest, but because I couldn’t get it out! It stayed firmly locked inside there until I had a very close look at the puzzle and then fired up a couple of the little grey cells and a couple more of the senses ... which led me to notice something very subtle ... and about a minute later the ball bearing bounced off the desk and landed on the floor – success!

At which point I did what every puzzler does – threw it straight back in again and gave it a swish ... confirmed it was solidly in there... and then repeated the process! A-Ha! Gotcha...

I jotted off a quick email to Jerry and described how I’d solved it and what I thought was going on in there ... and the following morning he very politely told me that I was pretty close, but I’d imagined one thing the wrong way around... and of course it makes a lot more sense his way than mine!  [Mine would have been 50/50 ... his always works! :-) ]

I think it’s an elegantly simple puzzle – nothing is over complicated but it will provide a nice little challenge ... it’s very nicely made and looks the part among all the Strijbos puzzles in the collection (and that’s meant as high praise!). 

Jerry, if this is only your second puzzle design, I think you’re going to produce some absolute crackers if you decide to carry on designing more in the future ... please do!

You can read Kevin’s thoughts on Jerry’s Ball in Cylinder over here and if you’re interested in getting hold of one of them, please contact Jerry via his blog (there’s an email link on his profile page).  He’s already mentioned that his initial run of 15 have all gone, but I’m sure if there’s enough interest, he’ll think about getting some more made up... go on and badger him! You’ll enjoy it.