Judge's Gavel Puzzle

Judges have cool toys.

I first noticed Mike Toulouzas’ Judge’s Gavel in the entries for last year’s Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition on John Rausch’s web site – and soon after the end of IPP31 spotted that it had been awarded a Jury First Prize Award … and then a couple of weeks later I really enjoyed reading Brian Pletcher’s descriptions of his experiences with the various competition entries – and the one thing that made me smile was his references to the loud “THWACK!” whenever anyone was working on Mike’s Gavel.

Toward the end of last year, I’d been swapping emails with Mike about another of his puzzles and I mentioned in passing that if he ever made another run of Gavels, I’d love a copy, and then promptly forgot about that for a couple of months – during which time I found myself playing with a copy at Peter Hajek’s place and thinking to myself that it really was a rather cute puzzle … so when Mike got back in touch a few months later and said he had some available if I was still interested … it didn’t take long to Pay(pal) the man and take receipt of a nicely packaged block and hammer!

The new run is, I suspect, a little smaller than the earlier run (and I’m going on my recollection of the size of the Gavel on Peter’s bookshelf back in December – so I may well have that wrong!) and has had a neat brass plate added to the block that proclaims “Judges Gavel Puzzle”. The block is made of Lignum Vitae – that super dense wood that actually sinks in water, and the Gavel is made of a combination of Mahogany and Mexican Ebony. The shaft of the gavel has a trapped ring spinning loosely around it and your goal is to free the ring … the only strange thing you’ll notice more or less straight away is a small hole on one side of the head of the actual gavel.

You’ll probably be tempted to try unscrewing the handle from the head (yip it spins pretty freely – although sometimes it seems even freer!)  or even unscrewing parts of the head itself – and they won’t get you far. At some point your inner child will get the better of you and you’ll have a bit of a “THWACK!” and you’ll find that quite satisfying and you’ll probably have a few more goes before you get to wondering if all that thwhacking might actually even be useful – result! – A puzzle that encourages you to play like a child!

Brian’s original description got it spot on – what makes the puzzle great is that it’s very gavel-ness is central to the solution of the puzzle – and that’s very satisfying.

Mike’s lathe-work is expert. The gavel absolutely looks the part and you’ll have no qualms about giving it a decent tonk on the supplied block – if it weren’t a puzzle, it would still look great – knowing it’s an award-winning puzzle as well makes it something really special. 

Thanks Mike – it’s brilliant!

Neil's written about his thoughts on the Judges Gavel over here as well... 
 

Cocobolo Maze Burr

...sailing toward Split...

One of the web-sites I enjoy looking through from time to time is Kagen Scheafer’s – and a while go he said he’d be making another round of his rather well-received Maze Burrs (the one that won the IPP Puzzle Design Competition in 2006) – this time around in Cocobolo, Ebony and Holly wood.

Within a day or two my puzzle-mate Nigel had pulled a group of us together for a bulk order from Kagen and took care of all the arrangements. A few weeks later Kagen let us know that the puzzles were on their way and they duly arrived at Nigel’s place. The timing was a bit unfortunate and all our carefully laid plans of getting together for a grand ritual joint opening (unveiling, as opposed to solving – some of us are a bit slower than the others!) of the puzzles got blown to heck because Nigel was about to go away for the weekend and I was about to disappear on a 2 week cruise – but I did manage to play with it a bit and take some pics before I got on the boat, so here are some thoughts and some pics to show off Kagen’s incredible handiwork. 

The Maze Burr is basically a cube with a pair of wooden plates on each face: a Holly plate with a square Ebony pin and a Cocobolo plate with a maze cut into it – the sets of plates engage into an Ebony framework that allows the two plates to move at 90 degrees to one another (maze / pin plate permitting, of course). The edges also interfere with one another depending on how they are positioned. The way the internal frame is designed, there’s space in there for an extra six maze plates ... two of the maze plates have an extra channel cut in them to allow the plate to be slid all the way on or off - depending on which maze plates are used, and how they’re oriented relative to one another, you can either give yourself a pretty simple challenge, or a really tough challenge. 

It’s all in the details – I’ve already mentioned that the maze pins are square – and in fact all of the mazes are cut with square corners – now I’m no craftsman, but I suspect that that little detail added significantly to the complexity of making up these guys. On the back of the Holly plates, Kagen’s added a cork pad so that the back of the Holly plates don’t scrape against the Maze plates not currently in use ... and at the same time provide the right amount of pressure to keep the maze pin properly engaged ... it’s all in the details – very nice work. 

Kagen provides a booklet with each puzzle that not only gives a brief history of the puzzle but also a number of suggested constructions along with their solutions courtesy of John Rausch.

I’m not sure if he’s done this with all of the puzzles in this batch, but mine arrived well and truly locked up in a configuration that requires 89 moves to solve. Nice guy, Kagen!

I’m looking forward to experimenting, as I reckon that’s where a puzzler can really have a lot of fun coming up with new and interesting constructions and solutions (requiring anywhere between 7 and 116 moves to open, or close) – the good thing is that because you effectively have to lock up the puzzle from an open position, you know that any configuration that you can close up, you can definitely re-open again. (I always worry about locking up a puzzle unintentionally and then ending up with an expensive paper weight!)

... Kagen still has some for sale over here if you're tempted ...