Midlands Puzzle Party #9

Saturday saw a bunch of the usual suspects meeting up in Warwick for MPP9. A couple of old friends showed up as well as a bunch of new faces... in spite of the foul weather that the Met office managed to conjure up for us!

I rocked up a few minutes late having had to stop on the motorway to remove a precariously dangling wing mirror, only to come across a chap who’d parked his 1-series in the central barrier at speed (he was fine) and managed to get two lanes of said motorway closed... so by the time I’d arrived, several folks were already there and unpacking, the tea, coffee and nibbles were already laid out and there was nothing left for me to help with... so I unpacked some puzzles, made a cup of coffee and piled into the banter, puzzling, and ritual winding up of Kevin, Oli and whoever happened to be nearest at the time.

I’d taken a bunch of Stickmen along under strict instructions from newcomer Jamie (“Bring your most precious Stickmen and the puzzles you took to Peter Hajek’s place!” was the direct quote I believe – how could I refuse?)   - and several folks had a go at them over the course of the day. I got a huge kick seeing the smile on Vadim’s face (he of TP-forum-fame) when he solved the Stickman Sliding Tile Box from scratch, finding both compartments without any prompting.

A few of the guys had a go on the Checkmate Box – I’d suggested they don’t bother trying without the solution in front of them and Oli managed to navigate his way through solving one half of the box ... but I suspect he was the only one who managed it on the day.

Joe had brought along a great selection of John Devost’s packing puzzles and I spent a while working on one of the Coffin designs, and got absolutely nowhere. (Nope, I’m not surprised either!) He’d also made up a bunch of braided dollar bills that he was dishing out to anyone who showed the slightest interest in them or in the impossible folded cards he had on display.

Bruce had brought along a fearsome collection of hedgehog puzzles, ranging from Wil’s Prague Special, through a series of wooden and aluminium traditional hedgehogs, up to a set of highly colourful and extremely funky Japanese creatures in cages.

Kevin had brought some of the bounty he’s been buying from Bernhard (and there were some beautiful wooden pieces among them!) along with some of the unusual twisty puzzles he’s been playing with and blogging about recently ... and watching some of the less timid (or more twisty?) puzzlers playing with some of the shape-shifting designs I was reminded of just how rubbish a puzzler I am – shape-shifting twisty puzzles scare the daylights out of me!

Nigel’s table looked like a veritable Wil Strijbos exhibition – nicely themed with professional-looking labels for each puzzle – with just about every recent (and not so recent!) Strijbos cola bottle, aluminium puzzle and dovetail out for the world to play with. 

Chris had brought a selection of the more unusual puzzle boxes in his collection to show Satomi, one of our guests for the day, some of the more interesting Japanese puzzle boxes out there. Satomi has recently begun selling Japanese puzzle boxes locally and a few of the guys were recommending her great service and pretty competitive prices. 

Ali had brought along a set of memory drawers that we all had a play around with (how the heck does it remember?!) and a few of the guys brought their Super-Cubi’s along for a group photo with the King... how often do you see that? 

Satomi’s table generally had a bunch of people clustered around it having a rake through the puzzle boxes she had for sale and judging from some of the pics of loot that various folks have already posted, I suspect she did OK out of it. 

Ali brought the entire collection of Rocky bolts, Popplocks and a bunch of other very fine puzzles. 

Several KCubes made an appearance although nobody had a serious go at Steve’s 3000-odd move one. Several folks had brought along various Revomazes in Neil’s stunning clear sleeves and there were plenty of admiring noises from those that hadn’t received theirs yet ... it was fun watching Joe solve my Gold without the benefit of the combination code... :-) 

Steve Nicholls has clearly been exercising his 3D printer and had a crate-full of printed puzzles for sale, including a couple of the very latest super-high level burrs that have literally only just been published! A couple of those found their way to a good home ... and I couldn’t resist a psychedelic peanut and a rather patriotic-looking CubeBurr before I had a root around in Steve’s crates of spare puzzles – anything for a fiver! – and helping myself to a bunch of heavy metal entanglement puzzles (that I’m rubbish at!). 

Steve’s copy of Ned Kelly got a thorough dismembering courtesy of Adin – who did significantly better than Chris and I had managed at James’ place a little while back when we could only get as far as ripping his chest open...

Things only really started to wind down at about 6pm – after we’d been going for 9 hours solid! I reckon that says a lot about what happens when a bunch of puzzlers get together and someone throws in some random puzzles. 

As Gromit might say “That were another grand day out.”

Stewart Coffin’s Seven Woods by Lee Krasnow

I’ve drooled over the wonderful puzzles on Lee Krasnow’s sumptuous web-site for a very long time. I’ve seen Merkabas changing hands for silly money on auctions and sighed. I’ve trawled through Lee’s gallery pages and marvelled at his intricate designs and the obvious precision of his work. I’ve read comments about his work and the one thing that everyone always comments on is his utter precision. One day I had to get my grubby little paws on at least one Krasnow original...

A few months ago Lee was visiting the UK with his puzzle-crafting-buddy Eric Fuller (yip, that one!) and they met up with a bunch of local puzzlers in London – unfortunately I couldn’t make the meeting or the subsequent faire (the main reason for their visit – apart from the beer!), however my good mate Nigel could, and did, and bought me a little piece of Krasnow precision. 

Seven Woods is Stewart Coffin’s design number 42 – that’s got to be significant! (Got your towels ready?) It’s based on the standard diagonal burr, but it’s had its ends cut off rather severely so that it ends up looking more like a lightly carved up cube than a diagonal burr. Each face is made up of two triangles in a matching wood – which gives you six woods... and the seventh is hidden inside and only becomes visible when you begin to pull the pieces apart.

As with the diagonal burr, taking it apart is dead simple – pick any pair of pieces and simply pull them apart – and as you do the entire assembly expands in your hands until it’s held together by the very tips of the pieces alone ... a fraction further and you get four pieces on the table below and a piece in each hand. 

Putting it back together is a trifle trickier as you need to get everything lined up properly and introduce the pieces to one another rather precisely.

 

...and when I say precisely, boy do I mean it! There is absolutely zero wiggle on any of the pieces – when expanding and contracting the pieces you can literally feel the air resistance in both directions as air strains to get in and out of the puzzle – to get six pieces moving in formation like that requires phenomenal precision ... 

Now I know why everyone raves about Lee’s puzzles...

I can see clearly now...

I've written a couple of posts in the past about Revomazes ... I really enjoyed solving (most of) them and the buzz you get when you open one of the metal puzzles and see the beautifully machined core stays with you for a long time ... but you have to work pretty hard to solve them (even the simpler ones) so a lot of folks never get to see those mazes - and trying to explain what's happening inside there can be a bit of a mission...

Now one of the things that the folks on the Revomaze forum have been baying for for a while, has been a clear sleeve, so you can see the insides as you're going through the maze - for demonstration purposes after you've solved the puzzle, of course!

...after several years of promises, attempts and false starts by a number of earnest puzzlers, my fellow blogger and mate from the 'States has finally achieved the impossible - he has machined a clear acrylic Revomaze sleeve, and sold a couple to eager puzzlers wanting to show off their Revomazes... and they are simply stunning!

How clear are they? Well, here's a close-up showing the pin through the sleeve and the maze itself... I think they're clear enough!

Well Done Neil! (and Thanks!)


[For the record, no I don't consider any of these pictures to be spoilers.]

EPP 2012

Back at the end of December I found myself on a train heading into London with a couple of treasured puzzles in my rucksack – Gill and I were heading to Peter Hajek’s annual End-Of-The-Year Puzzle Party, or EPP. Peter’s been hosting these puzzle parties at his home for the past six years and attracts a mix of puzzlers and magicians all of whom take turns to present their best puzzle finds of the year to everyone else. 

Each year he also arranges some sort of entertainment and this year his friend Clive Panto had us somewhat flummoxed with his short magic show. Clive started out with a great effect that had coloured light bulbs slavishly following their colour-coded switches irrespective of where they were placed ... and a brilliant card trick that had his prediction impaled on a hunting knife embedded in Peter’s table – Clive had forgotten to bring his own! :-) 

Steve Nicholls gave us a talk on his newest toy – a Makerbot 3D printer that he’s been using to build all sorts of interesting puzzles with. He gave us a demonstration of the printer in action over the course of the afternoon and showed us how easy it is to design and send files to the printer, for it to magically produce puzzles.  He’d brought along a box full of things he’d printed recently including a bunch of his wonky burrs that I’d seen on his Facebook page and had been featured on Thingigverse. They’re fairly simple burrs, except they’ve had their main axes twisted or slanted a bit and as a result are rather disorientating. Steve was dishing out samples left, right and centre and I was very chuffed to be given one of the wonky ones! Cheers Steve!

 

Most of the afternoon was taken up with each person presenting their best three puzzle (or magic) finds of the past year. I think these events are great as they not only let me live vicariously through others’ puzzle acquisitions, but they also invariably give you an insight into what they’re like as puzzles and where they came from. 

My three best puzzle finds of 2012 were:

• Jack Krijnen’s Level5 Burr Set – because of its incredible workmanship and attention to detail, not to mention years of puzzling!
• Robert Yarger’s Stickman Checkmate Puzzlebox – because I’d been lusting after one of these puzzle / automatons for years and finally managed to get hold of one in 2012.
• Jane Kostick’s 3-layer Tetraxis Array – because it’s a beautiful object and stacks of fun to play with!

After everyone had presented their finds of 2012, Peter and Katja treated us all to a wonderful spread for dinner, then there was a free-for-all while folks rooted through everyone else’s boxes of swaps and items for sale... Wil had brought several crates of goodies over from Holland and seemed to have at least two people poring over his wares pretty much all the time. I picked up a copy of Cast Harmony from Wil and a copy of Peter’s Z-Shift that I’d previously missed out on before rooting through Martin Watson’s crates of surplus puzzles and relieving him of a few odd and ends as well.

Peter takes nominations from puzzlers around the world via Nobnet and then combines all of the submissions into a booklet with photos and a short write-up on everyone’s three best finds of the year... and about a week after the EPP, the first draft of the latest booklet arrived and it made fascinating reading...

This year’s most coveted puzzle was Jack Krijnen’s Level 5 Burr Set ... with 5 people selecting it among their best puzzle finds of the year – what makes that SO incredible, is that Jack only made 8 sets in total! 

A number of great puzzles were nominated three times, including Iwahiro’s Square in Bag, Chinny’s Ze House of Mouse Ze Duong, Tajima’s Snake Box, Scot Elliot’s It’s Nuts and Wil Strijbos’ Dovetails.

 

Sign up to Nobnet if you want details of this year’s inevitable EPP and if you’d like to nominate your best finds for inclusion.

Fifth Avenue

I was fortunate to meet Allan Boardman at IPP32. On his tiny 45mm x 25mm business cards, Allan describes himself as a microxylometagrobologist - or a micro wooden puzzler if you prefer – there’s a clue in that the tiny business card is printed on paper thin 2-ply Birdseye Maple.

Allan has been making micro wooden puzzles for years and has produced a range of well-known puzzles in minute scale... every serious puzzle collection really needs to have at least one Boardman creation in it ... or that’s my theory (or rather excuse) at least!

Fifth Avenue was designed by the great Nob Yoshigahara and it consists of a 5x5 tray with a set of 2 dominoes and 7 trominoes (giving you a total of 25 tiles) with various combinations of five woods. The aim of the puzzle is to pack the pieces into the tray such that each row and each column of the resulting square has each type of wood represented only once. Sort of like a mini Sudoku, in wood ... except that the way that Nob has joined those pieces means there’s a unique solution – ignoring rotations and reflections... which makes it rather non-trivial!

Allan’s version – his IPP 18 exchange puzzle version, comes in a walnut box that is a mere 32mm square and the entire box is only 9mm tall ... yet there are slipfeathers on all of the corners, there’s a lip inside the box and a sheet of instructions nestling on top of the pieces inside. The pieces are made up of 5.5mm cubes in five different hardwoods. The craftsmanship at that scale is quite simply staggering.

If you’re interested in making a copy of your own, pick up a copy of Allan’s Puzzle Projects for Woodworkers – mercifully the version in the book is 4 times larger than this little guy!