Karakuri Christmas 2013

[Blogger tells me this is post #300 - which I think is a pretty decent milestone. :-) ]

I think this is my third year of participating in the Karakuri Club, and I wasn’t disappointed. I still love the idea of getting a number of brand new, unseen puzzle boxes just in time for Christmas – at a price that seriously cannot be beaten – the only catch, if that’s what it is, is that you pay up front and literally have no idea what your chosen craftsman will produce that year. Gill managed to intercept the package while I was at work and made sure that I didn’t give myself an early Christmas present, hiding the box under the tree. 

As it turned out I got to open my Karakuri presents a few days after Christmas when we were back down in Brum after spending Christmas with the family up in Glasgow. 

I subscribed to five craftsmen this year:

Akio Kamei produced a variation on last year’s Christmas present which I expect will end up being called Expansion VII (or something similar if I’ve lost count!). Physically it looks identical to last year’s gift although the mechanism is a bit different. It draws on some of the ideas used in earlier Expansion boxes and adds a new twist that makes things work a little differently. 

It’s not a particularly tricky puzzle box to open, and the space inside is pretty tiny, but it’s a nice addition to the series and makes for a good extra little challenge alongside the other Expansion boxes in the collection. 

Tatsuo Miyamoto gave us a rather fun looking Treasure Chest with an obviously hinged lid on it. Opening the lid reveals a wooden padlock that is loosely attached to the top of the box – it seems to move although that doesn’t appear to be all that useful. 

Hunting around reveals one or two more interesting aspects of the chest until you find a way to release the treasure inside, one more move and you’re done. It’s only a handful of moves in total but some of them are rather nicely hidden. I thought it was a wonderfully whimsical little puzzle box and I’ve taken the opportunity to add some treasure to it for future puzzlers to discover their own loot. 

Shiro Tajima’s puzzle box comes in the form of a tiny Shogi table with a knight (and promoted knight) playing piece. At first the box seems totally impervious to almost any form of attack, even after you’ve noticed that the token seems to have an embedded magnet and there are some magnetic hot spots dotted around the playing surface. 

I spent ages fiddling around without much of a clue before I managed to get one panel to move just a little – and it remained like that, taunting me for a day or two until I finally managed to work out the second set of moves required to open the panel fully… I’m still not sure I understand the logic behind the moves (I suspect there will be a clear reason for the moves if you understand how to play Shogi) but I’m happy that I understand how the box needs to be manipulated to open and close it properly… this one’s reasonably tricky though…

Hideaki Kawashima gives us another Ring Box (Ring Box 2?) after the one which appeared for sale on the Karakuri web site earlier in 2013. This one looks a bit different given the lovely wood it uses. 

No problem I thought, I’ve seen this one before: slide a few panels to open the box – tick – find that the ring is securely trapped – tick – release the ring… except that the method for releasing the ring on this one is somewhat different to that used on the first version, and had me tied up in knots and thinking © for quite a while until I noticed something subtle, and then tried something a bit less than obvious to find the ring released. Job done. I like it!

Lastly, but definitely not least is a drawer with two sliders from Hiroshi Iwahara. This one had me stumped for ages! The drawer merrily slides out under the merest tug of gravity … the two sliders on the top of the box will slide back and forth with apparently no use whatsoever, and in case you think this isn’t really a puzzle box at all, there’s a little card in the box that points out that the drawer is partitioned and your goal is to get to the second part of the drawer.

 

It took a long time and a fair amount of experimentation for me to get one of the sliders to do anything unusual at all, and even longer to get the second one to do anything interesting – getting them both to behave, at the same time, turned out to be the key – and it took a lot of methodical experimentation to get there – definitely the most challenging puzzle box in my presents this year. Oh, and it resets instantly – nice touch!

EPP 2013

Peter Hajek hosted another fantastic End-of-year Puzzle Party last Saturday. This year I decided to drive down to London rather than take the train and the weather definitely played ball – sunny skies made for a very pleasant drive until just before Oxford where three cars had a bit of a coming together in the fast lane – no-one appeared to be hurt, but they managed to snarl up the motorway good and proper! I arrived a bit later than expected to find most of the usual suspects already there. 

Peter greeted me like a long-lost puzzler and made sure I had something to drink before allowing me through to see the rest of the gang. Strijbos had set up shop in the conservatory and had a lovely display of aluminium puzzles ranging from his dovetails right up to an Angel Box, along with the usual Constantin array and piles of cricket boxes. 

Wil had brought along a few things I’d ordered over the past month or so and I ended up leaving with a fistful of new Constantin n-ary puzzles, a bolt, a copy of Cast Twist and a couple of cricket boxes (the first in my collection). 

Several of the others had brought along crate-loads of spare puzzles they were keen to trade or sell and I ended up spending a while raking through all of them during the course of the day. I picked out a copy of the Hazelgrove box as I didn’t have one yet and Duncan had somehow ended up with a spare unopened copy in his “£10 or more” box. Steve gave me a copy of his 3D printed version of Coffin’s HO HO puzzle, resplendent in Stewart’s original yellow, red and blue colour scheme – thanks Steve!

Martin Watson made the mistake of confiding in Steve that he didn’t have space for any more puzzles and must not leave with any new acquisitions – so Steve and I made it our duty to ensure that he failed singularly in that ambition and in the end he left with more puzzles than he’d arrived with – success!

Frans was showing off an interesting corporate gift that his architecture firm had produced depicting a new building they’d been the lead architects on in Rotterdam. Part Kumiki puzzle, part burr, it has the rather distinctive shape of the building and comes with a neat little stand to keep everything together… it turned out he had a couple of spare copies so I helpfully relieved him of one of them. 

Oli managed to get rid of some of the puzzles in his crate, but I suspect that he went home with more than he came with. 

The afternoon’s more formal activities kicked off with his three picks and a short magic show by Laurie Brokenshire that kept us thoroughly entertained (if not also well-mystified) and then we each took turns to present our three best puzzle finds of the year. 

Peter began with his three in order of weight, starting with a small antique Chinese trick lock. He demonstrated the opening mechanism using the oddly-shaped thin, flat “key” and then absent-mindedly threaded the “key” onto the shackle and locked it … and then realised the error of his ways in about a second: with the key locked in that way, there’s no way to open the lock again. 

 

Shock. 

Horror. 

And a little embarrassment. 

And a photograph. 

[Don’t worry, he fashioned a new key a day or two later and it’s back in play again … so he won’t have to settle on another best find of the year!] His next two finds were somewhat larger, and decidedly heavier – an antique writing slope with multiple hidden compartments and a copy of Berrocal’s Goliath. 

I was up next and (in order of weight in deference to our host!) nominated Derek’s Helical Burr, Rob’s Borg Box (I know it’s old, but I only managed to acquire one in 2013!) and Wil’s Angel Box.

Some of the other stand-outs for me included a gorgeous pewter “African Puzzle” that Steve presented along with a new wooden puzzle from the Hayducks. A couple of folks presented the Popplock T8 and Martin Watson gave his usual highly entertaining presentation including the “Ego Buster”, complete with some rather amusing faces on the front of the box – something we felt the need to replicate for an unofficial group photo later in the afternoon. 

Ali and Duncan both presented the Bucolic Cube  from this year’s Design Competition and several folks had a bash at them during the course of the afternoon – at one stage John Davenport was puzzling away furiously, oblivious to the fact that Frans was sitting next to him with the solved puzzle in his hands. 

Frans presented a wonderful Swiss box with a really unusual mechanism that I’d seen at the DCD along with a set of well-old Chinese Tangram plates recently brought back from China by one of Peter’s colleagues. 

Once all the presentations had been concluded, Laurie dressed for dinner and we all wandered off to the kitchen for the traditional Hajek puzzle party spread – and awesome it was! There was a lot of chatting and chomping in the kitchen before we decamped back to the lounge for a quick talk by Tim Rowett on vanishing area / vanishing object puzzles / paradoxes. It was fascinating seeing the development of the ideas starting out in mathematical texts hundreds of years old through to recent developments including the never-ending slab of chocolate that Laurie had presented earlier in the day. 

After the talk, plenty more raking through crates of puzzles, playing with some of Peter’s incredible collection and just plain catching up with folks we hadn’t seen for a while ensued before things wound down and we headed our separate ways (and there weren’t any idiots clogging up the motorway on the way home!). 

Another wonderful EPP – Thanks Peter for a grand day’s puzzling!

The Motley Crew

Christmas Conundrum Competition Champion

Thanks to the folks who entered – everyone managed to identify pretty much all of the puzzles and the only thing that ended up separating the winner from the others was naming the designers. 

First of all, yes, I did realise that I’d included 54 pictures in the collage and I’d told you that I thought there were 53 recognisable puzzles in there – one of the puzzles was pictured twice … deliberately. :-) … and yes I do think the Angel inside the Angel Box is also a bit of a puzzle – if you’ve got one, you’ll understand why. :-)

Honourable mention to Will Hu for getting all bar one of the puzzles correctly named (the last one was the Cooksey Maze in case you were wondering, Will) – if only you’d listed the designers, you’d have been in with a shout!

Ryan correctly named all of the puzzles, but got four of the designers wrong. 

Chris and Steve managed to each only get two of the designers wrong (naming all of the puzzles correctly), and I’ve decided that Steve is my winner on the grounds of fewer spelling mistakes on the designers’ names! (I get to make the rules, after all!)

Well done Steve – I have a copy of Wil Strijbos’ “Nipple Bolt” with your name on it… 

Thanks for playing guys – hope it provided some amusement!

... and I hope your 2014 is truly puzzling!