Ferris’ Box

(Nope, that’s not a typo!)

Ferris’ Box was Peter Wiltshire’s entry in the 2012 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition and he duly went and won a Jury First Prize for his trouble. It’s a great puzzle box, superbly crafted by a bloke who clearly loves his hobby.

I really enjoyed playing with the Design Competition puzzle – not so much because it was a difficult puzzle to solve, but because it was so darn unusual and a really rewarding puzzle. 

There was a lot of chat about the puzzle at IPP and I’m sure that I was one of many people who were pestering him about making some more… at that stage he’d made a run of them to serve as his contribution to the Apothecary Chest and as an entry into the design competition – with a few spare copies already having been dispatched to some very deserving homes.

There was clearly more than enough demand around for them so Peter managed to convince himself to make another short run, albeit in different wood this time around in order to differentiate them from the earlier run … and so it came to pass that John Devost announced that a number of maple and purple heart Ferris’ Boxes would be auctioned on Puzzle Paradise – and I duly joined the queue of enthusiastic bidders.

Now I’m sure there’s some clever economic theory that would tell me how best to place my bids on the auctions (there were a number of overlapping auctions for essentially identical puzzles) in order to maximise my chances of getting a box at the lowest price, however I wasn’t going to take any chances and made sure that I took one really early on in the process rather than lurking and hoping to snag a (relative) bargain… and a short while later a well-packed box from Canada dropped on the porch.

At first glance it looks like a purple heart Rubik’s cube captured inside a maple cage – except that all of the usual sorts of movements that you might attempt don’t really do anything at all…

Finding the first move is a bit of a surprise.

The second move is pretty darn unusual…

…and the third move is very cute!

It’s “only” a three-move box, but it’s brilliant! Those moves will put a smile on the most jaundiced of puzzlers and Peter’s workmanship is simply stunning, so the moves are beautifully hidden.

I am delighted that I finally managed to get my hands on one of these after enjoying it so much in Washington in 2012 … I love watching puzzlers faces when they start playing with it – when they find the first move there’s a flicker of delight, at the second there’s serious respect for the craftsman and the third is the icing on the top.

Peter added a little something extra to the auction versions, tossing in a little artefact that served as the original inspiration for the design, along with a couple of PDF files explain the design and manufacture process and giving a rather unique view of the innards that you won’t ever get to see…

Very chuffed to have snagged one of these…. Thanks for making a few more, Peter!

A quick plug...

[UPDATE - and we're all done at $13,201 ... ]   

[Pic courtesy of the Stickman.]

...for an awesome project from some of my puzzle-buddies. 

Just in case you haven't already seen this, and you're a fan of puzzle boxes - this is without a doubt the single-most-epic-puzzle-box-you-will-ever-find.Bar none. 

As I write this the bidding has gone past $10,000 ... and it's still a bargain, albeit one my bank manager won't allow me to enjoy! If you don't have an account set up yet, Nick will be glad to oblige  ... Oh and by the way there are some other little things on sale too... [at puzzles.baxterweb.com]

The Stickman Apothecary Puzzlechest is a realized vision, over 4 years in the making, with the goal of representing an entire era of some of the best puzzle designers and craftsmen from around the world.  Twelve prolific artists from 5 different countries participated in orchestrating its creation.  Each drawer within has been quality hand-crafted to exhibit the best abilities and individual styles of these artists.  

The chest itself is also a complex mechanical puzzle.  The solution of individual puzzlebox drawers is required to obtain mechanical parts, and these are required to progress its sequential movement.  Within the chest, mechanical pistons lock drawers into place while still allowing them to slide freely.  Pushing in on a drawer causes others to automatically extrude from the chest.  And in turn, pushing those drawers back causes yet other drawers to come out in an apparently random fashion.  Deducing the pattern and sequence of drawer movements is part of the puzzle to this chest, as drawers can only be released under certain conditions.  Once a puzzle drawer has been removed and solved, pressing it back into its slot will automatically re-engage it into its locking mechanical piston.  

Enough cannot be said about the puzzle drawers designed by contributing artists; many of whom have received awards for their abilities.  The only restriction placed upon designs was the size of the puzzle, which required parameter sides of 3” just to fit into the chest, (some puzzles are 3” cube and others measure 3” x 3” x 4”).  The goal was as to require minimal restrictions in order to ensure the true flavor and style of each artist.

[Pic courtesy of the Stickman.]

The designs of puzzlebox drawers vary from the seemingly simple to exhaustingly complex.  Some require just a few profound and elusive steps, while others require moves going into the hundreds.  Many of these puzzles are exclusive to only this chest, or significantly limited in production, and are therefore rare.  With such diversity in complexity, concepts, and styles, there is something appealing to everyone in this chest. The chest is crafted from quality sapele wood, decoratively accented with purpleheart inlays, and measures 18” x 16” x 12”.  It rests up on a base of intricately carved wooden feet and comes with a 15-page, fully illustrated instruction book.  All drawers have been signed and numbered by each artist. 

Originally, the only way to obtain one of these chests was to be an artist contributing to the project, and none were intended for public sale.  However project bylaws have since been expanded, now allowing for two additional copies to be sold at auction to help cover expenses.  Stickman Apothecary Puzzle Chests are limited in edition to only 15 completed copies, and this particular chest is #15 out of the limited edition set.

...and Rox has an even better write-up over here - with more pictures!!!

More extreme puzzling generosity...

I met Peter Wiltshire for the first time in the bar of the hotel on the Wednesday evening at IPP32. I’d ‘seen’ him on the Renegades forum as Arc Light where we’d swapped the odd comment about puzzles and puzzling, but this was the first time we’d talked, and within minutes of being introduced to him, he’d given me a copy of Hidekuni Tamura’s Sway Cube that he’d made in maple and walnut.

He explained that at his first IPP, Ginda, one of the IPP veterans had given him a copy of her exchange puzzle because it was Peter’s first IPP, as a way to welcome him to IPP and in the hope that he might continue the tradition of giving first timers a copy of your exchange puzzle ... now even though Peter wasn’t actually exchanging his own puzzles this year, he’d made up a few copies of the Sway Cube and was presenting them to some of us newcomers ... gosh!

I sat and fiddled with it this way and that and didn’t get very far at all ... at one stage I voiced a theory that the rattling inside was just there to put me off and Peter just smiled ... I finally managed to open it later that evening in the hotel room – and I was wrong – dead wrong.

Thanks Peter, it’s a tremendous little puzzle that has been excellently made – the tolerances are spot-on and they leave absolutely no clue as to how it’s going to open. Thanks for continuing the tradition and while I almost certainly won’t be able to craft something like that myself, I shall definitely continue the tradition.  :-)

Stephen Chin, or Chinnomotto, is another Renegade I’d been looking forward to meeting at IPP. Chinny is a dentist form Australia known for his awesome lathe-working skills and wicked sense of humour. He’s been making off-beat puzzles for years, often cannibalising the electronic bits from musical greeting cards to add a little surprise to his puzzles. This year’s entry in the Design Competition was a little mouse house that nipped your finger when you did the obvious and then you had to listen to the mouse inside the house laughing at you! :-) Classic Chinny!

One evening in the competition room Chinny gave me his last mini wobbly top ... he’d been writing about creating these little beauties on the forum and everything I’ve read about them talks about the (literal!) dangers in producing them – after all you have to deliberately put the wood off centre in the lathe and then work the spinning projectile-to-be while it’s trying to free itself from the chuck – that takes a special sort of nutter! Step up to the plate master Chin!

The detail on this little top is astounding: three off-centre spindles supporting three lop-sided and off-centred plates, culminating in the little Chinny trademark whistle in the top, complete with decorative chattering around the base and on the delicate little reversible stand. Spin it and look at it from the side and it looks like a blur, with what looks like a pair of spindles while the whole thing gently wobbles around. Totally unique – entirely Chinny. Thanks mate!

I met Ginda Fisher (the one that Peter blamed for that tradition above! :-)  ) while Nick Baxter was sorting out how to get the Design Competition entries back to their respective creators. I’d read somewhere that she was also an actuary, so we chatted a little about our respective lines of work. Later that evening after the Awards Banquet she came over and presented me with a copy of her IPP29 exchange puzzle, Trickier Trivet.

This lovely puzzle was made by Kathleen Malcolmson in mahogany (I think!) and it consists of a pair in interleaved squares, with each side being a separate piece of wood. 

The series of notches as the various crossings and intersections are designed so that there’s one way to assemble this trivet properly ... and I can attest to the fact that there are a lot of ways of almost assembling it – getting seven pieces assembled only to find that the last piece is the wrong shape... and even when you do find an assembly that should work for the last piece, sod’s law says that you can’t finesse that final piece into place, so you need to chase the pieces around the circle one at a time until you get to the one piece that you can insert at the very end ... it’s a really cute puzzle, and as Ginda pointed out, you can actually use it as a trivet in the kitchen!

Thanks Ginda, but I’m afraid this one’s going nowhere near the kitchen! :-)

I also met Brian Young, aka Mr Puzzle at IPP32 for the first time, we’d chatted a bit in the Competition Room and I’d given him one of Louis’ impossible cards, then at the Founder’s reception he came barrelling across and proceeded to shower me with puzzles, including a wonderfully simple, irritatingly hard Stewart Coffin design. It consists of three identical hex sticks (OK one has a Mr Puzzle brand on it, but the shapes and holes are identical!) and three dowels ... even though they come with no instructions, you inherently know that you’re supposed to build a structure that has the dowels through the holes in the hex sticks and you’ll know when you’ve found it!

NOT a solution!

I spent ages experimenting and getting nowhere fast – the one structure I had managed wasn’t at all satisfactory and I knew it couldn’t be the answer, and it was only when one of the better puzzlers at MPP had a crack at it and came up with a far more pleasing structure that I was pretty sure that was the right answer ... when I got in touch with Sue, she told me that is was Stewart Coffin’s design 81A, a variant of the Nest Construction set #81 ... and that the description was: “As simple as it gets. 3 sticks and 3 dowels. Go together one way, or two stick and two dowels another way. A few made around 1988.” So not only had I not been able to find the main solution, I’d totally missed the fact that there’s a construction for 2+2 as well – and it’s just as neat!

Sue also mentioned that Brian had knocked them together from the off cuts from his other recent hex stick creations over here  – fantastic use of the off cuts, Brian! Thanks...