IPP 43 - seconda parte

Rox gives us a lecture on what to expect on our trip to the WPC the next day and there are plenty of questions and answers until the deafening applause from the rear of the room signals the end of that session and dinner time.

In spite of the warning from others who’ve been here for a few days already we decide to try the hotel restaurant – in fairness we have a large table but we struggle to attract the attention of a waiter until Jo literally rugby-tackles one of them only for us to discover that he’s not entrusted with the magic order pad so we switch our attentions to said waiter…. We eventually manage to order, but there’s a farcical series of events that sees Nick getting his starter after his main course, several main courses getting substituted and my total inability to grab a Coke Zero… we still enjoy a fun evening together anyway and it’s great catching up with Doog!

Next morning there’s an absolute throng of people in the breakfast room but I manage to grab some brekkie while catching up with Simon, Tom and Dor…. The room magically empties on the stroke of 8am as the buses begin loading up for the trip to the WPC… so I get to finish my breakfast at a more leisurely pace… I see off some of the buses before heading down for a second round of pastries and coffees with Deidre, Gill, Nigel and Steve. We chat for a while and then I head off to Panicale with Steve… I’m navigating and we sort of make it there without incident although we need to get Benny to park Steve’s rental car because it’s a pretty tight spot!

Ali hooks us up with our wristbands to allow us entry into the WPC and we start chatting with our mates… it doesn’t take long for the allure of the food vans to take hold and I enjoy a wonderful hot dog in the park across the road with the Finnish crew… and when Vesa points out that there’s a crossword on the back of the hot dog wrapper, Tomas and I feel the need to complete it… we fail miserably but it gives my Finnish friends plenty of opportunities to have a laugh at our expense so it’s all worthwhile…

I do a quick tour of the WPC and I’m impressed with how much extra work has been completed since my previous visit!

I find myself outside again in the park with Steve and Ali and we decide it’s time for an ice cream so we round up a bunch of folks who want a gelato… somehow we end up in  one of the bars on the piazza for an hour or two having a pretty amusing time – I blame Benny! – before we make it to the gelato joint (superb!) and then I head off back to the hotel with Doog and Laura – the trip home turns out to be quite memorable when a local tries to kill us on the road and then a big chunk of our route is given over to road works that google maps seems unable to route us around… Doog triumphs in spite of the adversity and gets us safely back to the hotel.

We round up a bunch for dinner and head into town in a large taxi and the Doog-mobile to grab some pizzas… which turn out to be both excellent and inexpensive at a place that Gill had found earlier in the day. We feast and chat and laugh and enjoy another good meal with friends… Doog and Laura fit into the group really well.

I end up crashing soon after getting back to the hotel knowing that I need to be sensible for an early morning meeting on Friday…

I am duly up at the proverbial crack of dawn and grab some breakfast with Scott before heading off to a meeting for an hour or two. There’s a bit of time between the meeting and the first workshop which is a talk by Oskar, George and Andreas. The opening ballet involved some moving music controlled by Nigel, with Oskar, Andreas and George floating their respective pieces of Oskar’s cubes into position for the assembly… it is hilarious.

Oskar takes the lead telling the story of Oskar’s Cubes over the years before Andreas talks us through the next generation of BurrTools and trying to get a room full of puzzlers walked through the radically new user interface – I haven’t taken a laptop so I’m able to concentrate on his demo and I learn a stack about it…. Chris and Dan just about manage to get through the demo… and then George talks about the manufacturing process and gives away another Bambu printer to great cheers.

We all get a copy of the puzzle to assemble (Thanks Dan!).

I have a bit of a wander and chat to all three monkeys, catch up with Doog and Tim and Rainer… I head up to the room for a sandwich because the hotel restaurant wasn’t going to be open, although it actually does seem to be open today after all – I must be confused. The sandwich is great!

After lunch I chew the fat with John a bit before we head down for Marc and Ryan’s talk about puzzle cataloguing – PUZZ.BUZZ seems to be the future and it all looks pretty handy – especially if you already have some sort of catalogue of your own – there’s an easy way to stitch yours into the motherlode!

Next up Vinco runs a fantastic workshop where we make our own copies of his OMPIC puzzle, although in fairness he’s done literally all of the hard work, so we’re literally just bevelling the pieces and then gluing them together as Vinco’s already made the boxes… everything goes together beautifully with the jigs that Vinco has given us… everything gets a coat of wax and then we’re able to play with our puzzles and pack them into their boxes. Vinco put a huge effort into teeing everything up perfectly – down to the funky behind-the-scenes videos he’s created to show us the work that went into prepping our goodie bags – it’s a great couple of hours spent with friends building a puzzle of our own. I end up spending more time than I’d care to admit finding the solution, having several spells of wondering if I’ve glued the pieces correctly when I can’t even find a cube assembly, let alone get them into the box.

We freshen up a wee bit before heading up to the Welcome Reception where there’s already quite a buzz with excited puzzlers milling around and enjoying the free wine, beer and water. There’s a charity auction table set up with a bunch of desirable puzzles laid out and there’s much excitement and speculation on the best strategy with various people trying to psych one another out. I know other’s pockets are WAY deeper than mine and I resolve to bid on a breeding pair of Standard Puzzle Hamsters, even if only to make sure that they raise a decent price… later it transpires I needn’t have worried as the bidding quickly goes way beyond what I was planning to bid anyway – it seems there are several generous people out there with a sense of humour and good knowledge of MPP meme-ology.  

 

I get to have a few chats with my mates in between the flag tossers and the marching bands and there’s a stonking great spread of dinner with plenty left over after everyone’s had their fill… I make use of the lesser-known buffet tables down in the garden rather than join the throng on the roof terrace – it feels like a good choice.

I migrate back upstairs for the auction ably handled by Kellian who seems to be introduced as Killian for some strange reason throughout the party. Anne supports her by parading the various lots around the room with someone shining a phone torch on them so that people can actually see them properly. Kellian does an excellent job of whipping up excitement and has the audience yelling out any stereotypical Italian words when they wanted to bid… so there was plenty of “Cappuccino” and “Tagliatelle” randomly being called out as money was being raised for a good cause… not sure what yet. Tom buys a little wooden chest that he’s not allowed to touch until after the end of the Party… we’re all intrigued.

The higher end puzzles become the subject of a silent auction that goes into the next day. I spend a while at the bar where I find I can get a soft drink, so a few us end up having a chat there while we hear the frantic yells of random Italian phrases still ringing out from the roof terrace. There’s a television showing the World Cup games and it’s being pretty much totally ignored…

I retire at a vaguely sensible hour, conscious that the party is going to continue for quite some time!

IPP43 - prima parte

We start our travels on Saturday afternoon heading down to London for pizzas with Chris and Ken at Social Dough before crashing at Chris’ place for the night. Next morning we head to the pod parking and we’re in the terminal in plenty of time to grab some breakfast at Nero before saying goodbye to our bags and heading into the duty-free paradise(!) that is terminal 5.

We stock up on M&Ms for the room and Longchamp bags for the carrying thereof…we mooch around for a while and head to the gate where there’s an absolute masterclass in not listening to the pleas not to gather at the entrance to the gate before your group number is called…we get on toward the end of boarding and there’s plenty space in the overheads so we relax for the short haul to Rome.

Rome is nice and warm (30C) and we get through immigration fairly quickly after expecting the worst with the new EU entry requirements – we found the shorter queue somehow… We get our bags and join the queue for the taxis after establishing that Nick and Anne are already well clear of the airport. Our bear of a cab driver drops us at our hotel and we’re welcomed to our room for the next few days…

We meet up with Nick and Anne a short while later and head out for a lemonade (with basil) and some pastries in lieu of lunch… then we head off into the underbelly of Rome managing to avoid most of the tourist spots until Nick navigates us to the Villa Borghese where they’re setting up for some sort of celebration for the local police chief, apparently… the grounds are massive and we spend ages wandering through them before heading down Via Veneto (I’ve heard of that one) which is fairly quiet as it’s a warm Sunday afternoon. We cut back and forwards toward our hotel and arrange to meet for a spot of dinner a little later…

Dinner is at a pizza joint that Chris has recommend (she also recommended the hotel and several other eateries around the hotel) and it’s brilliant! The pizzas are excellent and the waiter’s recommendation of lemon cake for dessert is really memorable! There’s a queue waiting for tables pretty much the entire time we’re there – clearly the locals like this place as well! We crash at a reasonable hour and get a brilliant night’s sleep.

We sleep in the next morning and Nick and Anne end up putting us to shame and heading out hours before us even though they’re the ones who should be jet-lagged. We end up back at the local coffee shop for a pain au chocolate and an espresso before meandering down toward Piazza Navona and a cold drink. Lunch consists of a massive plate of starters for me and a Caesar salad for Gill… we wander past the Trevi Fountain and I get a great pic of the assembled throng of tourists all clamouring for the perfect shot of the fountain…

The walk back to the hotel is largely uphill and as a result we take a pretty direct route before chilling for a few hours.

We meet up with Dave and Jan and Nick and Anne in the lobby and Dave wrangles us a cab down to Travestere where we have a secret food tour booked… we find Frank and Jo already in the first bar so we join them… it would be rude not to after all! After a short while our guide for the evening joins us and following the usual introductions and a long explanation of why we meet up once a year somewhere around the world – which for some reason includes an introductory lesson in mechanical puzzles.

Ludo then proceeds to introduce us to a bunch of local Roman dishes from a series of specialist establishments – deep-fried zucchini with anchovy and mozzarella at the second stop, proper Roman pasta at the fourth, Maritozzi was a revelation and the final round of gelato was superb…we’re all grateful to Jan for finding this one and for taking the initiative – it’s a brilliant evening for friends to reconnect and experience some of the local specialities.

Gill and I fade stupidly early – we don’t have the excuse of being jet-lagged so it must be an age thing!

 

Tuesday morning is another leisurely start with breakfast at our usual spot and then a trip to the local supermarket for some hotel snacks and breakfast the next day… then we grab a cab down to Piazza Navona for a little sight-seeing before our pasta and tiramisu-making class.

We meet up with the Potts and the Baxters and enjoy a welcome glass of prosecco before heading into the restaurant to start the process of making our pasta… literally from scratch – one egg and some flour and fair amount of gentle encouragement and we have a large sheet of pasta on our boards about an hour later… that duly gets chopped into strands and we choose our pasta sauces…

Next we’re onto the tiramisu and that’s even harder work as the real Italians don’t believe in using electric mixers! Once it’s fully beaten into submission we head out for a starter and some cold drinks in the warm piazza – those misting machines are superb! We end up having a wonderfully leisurely lunch made largely by our own fair hands and end up chatting there for an hour or two.

We’re feeling lazy and grab a cab back to the hotel where we end up chilling for the rest of the afternoon…

We meet the Rossettis and the Baxters for dinner at a local Taverna that Dave’s chosen with the help of Google and it’s superb! We literally feast on some simply superb dishes over several hours and have a brilliant evening before a gentle wander back to the hotel.

We end up getting all our packing sorted before crashing – we’ve set alarms for the morning but don’t end up needing them…simple breakfast in the hotel room and the final packing before meeting the gang downstairs and grabbing a taxi van to the train station… we manage to evade the alleged plague of pickpockets, grab another coffee and pastry before heading off to the platform, which it turns out is a long hike across the other side of the station… we make it with about 10 minutes to spare but the Potts don’t…

They end up grabbing a cab to another Rome station and getting a later train from there to try and catch up with us at our change-over where we should have just over an hour between trains… we watch their progress over the next couple of hours with their window of opportunity getting progressively smaller and smaller but they manage it with a couple of minutes to spare in the end…

We get onboard and find Duncan and his wife in the same carriage, only I insist on calling him Donald for some reason… in Assisi, Jan is off the train in a flash and wrangles us the only taxi on the rank and all 8 of us pile into it and head up the hill to our hotels.

We check in and unpack and then start running into all of our friends in the lobby and at registration – it’s good to be among my tribe again, especially now that there’s a growing number of MPP-ers among them!

 

MPP XXXXCIIIV

[Apologies for the tumbleweed – some of my puzzling/blogging time is being taken up by other aspects of the hobby – it’s a good thing, it just means that I need to be a bit more selective about my blogging so there’ll probably be a bit less of it going forward.] 

No puzzlers staying over means another more relaxed start to MPP. Rather unusually I’m the first to arrive at the hall and start getting everything laid out for the day’s festivities: the fridge is packed with pop and the cakes and biscuits are spread out invitingly. I start on lugging the tables and chairs out when I’m joined by Chris and Chloe, and Robin manages to time his entrance with the completion of all the heavy lifting.

The puzzles come out and the gang starts drifting in (in the gentle arrival sense, not the rubber burning sense – the car park isn’t that large after all). I’ve taken along my most recent Karakuri boxes from this year’s Idea Contest for folks to fiddle with… and several do – they’re enjoyed, but this year’s crop (at least the ones that I’ve secured) aren’t massively challenging.

Kevin arrives with a large jigsaw puzzle for Steve – he’d won an auction for one of the Hayducks’ lovely creations that was fairly local to Kevin so he’d muled for Steve.

It was great to meet Carlos, dipping his toes into the proverbial MPP swamp for the first time. He’d brought along a few of his own designs for folks to play on and then gifted me a copy of Pyramidst at the end of the day as a thank you – thank YOU, sir! Although having had a bit of a play with it, I suspect it’s going to be beyond my solving abilities – there are a lot of complex shapes to pack into that neat little box!

Toby bounded into his maiden MPP and fitted straight in, dispensing “helpful” banter like he’d been there since the start… he’ll probably fit in. There was plenty of discussion about the Games Expo down the road and which puzzles were worth picking up and where the puzzle stands were as some folks had already been and others were planning to head there on the Sunday.

After our success with Derek’s big ball at King’s Day, he’s sent me a copy of the STLs for his 480-piece Icosahedron Frequency 4 – it kept the printer humming away for a few days and I have the bits all neatly package up to challenge the assembling puzzlers… who don’t disappoint. Chris and Chloe put in the main shift, importantly noticing that the colour-coding that I’ve given them isn’t quite right and the lovely large picture that Derek’s supplied has every joint inverted. Once they get past the initial hurdles the jolly big ball goes together steadily over the course of a few hours and there’s some celebration when the final piece is locked into place, completing what turns out to be a remarkably stable structure – Thanks Derek! [Now I just need to find somewhere to put it…]

Several folks have a go on the Tartarus Stickman Safe – making a reasonable amount of progress before retreating and resetting it for the next puzzler.

Kyle ends up spending a fair amount of time getting about three-quarters of the way through Benno’s Red Treasure with a little encouragement from Carlos – they ask me for some advice at one point and it rapidly becomes clear that I’ve already forgotten most of the solve… that seems to be happening more quickly these days!

Several folks enjoy fiddling with Robin's copy of Henry Segerman’s transforming cube-cuboctohedron – it’s a fun object to fiddle with as the sides change length between states… very clever stuff.

The Monkeys have brought along several copies of their latest project: a run of Gary Foshee’s Transparent Locks – definitely one of my favourite Foshee designs: it all looks so totally open and honest when you start, yet there’s some delicious puzzling to be had. The guys had done an incredible job on bringing this one back to the market – it’s a faithful replica of Gary’s original (with his family’s blessing of course!) with the one small touch of brass, well, there had to be, didn’t there? Awesome job fellas!

Frank arrives around the middle of the afternoon after I’ve nipped home to check on the hounds – apparently the traffic on the motorway down was so bad he nearly had to stop for a nap. (#iykyk) He’s brought along a couple of copies of a new design he’s toying with – two (burry) rods in a box that need to be removed… which it turns out is a bit trickier than you might imagine. Of course there are all sorts of knobbly bits inside the box stopping you from doing what you want to do and in the end you’ll need a fairly decent dance between the pieces and box to find a way out… shows promise! ;-)

I’d printed off a fistful of George’s new four-piece dodecahedrons and we managed to make sure that in the end everyone got a set that would actually assemble – some folks are incapable of following simple instructions like take two “a” pieces and two “m” pieces… that one’s definitely worth a play because there are two very distinct assemblies.

Somewhere around 5pm we headed back up to Puzzling Times HQ for pizzas and more puzzling… Carlos and Toby managed to stay for a little – hopefully they’ll be back and be able to spend a bit longer next time.  

There were a few distinct cohorts developing – the serious puzzlers hunkered around the dining room table ploughing through a series of puzzles collected from the puzzle cave… some gentle puzzling and chatter in the lounge and then a bunch of us in the kitchen just chatting without even the pretence of puzzling… everyone seems to find their niche and all seemed to have a good time – so I’m calling this another successful MPP – our 62^nd!

King’s Day 2026

Ali’s offered to drive us over again this year so Frank heads down to my place on Thursday evening for some pizza, puzzles and a bed for the night. Next morning we head over to Welwyn where Ali caffeinates us before we head south-ish to pick up Le shuttle, stopping just before at our usual Mickey-D’s for a spot or three to eat. The new fingerprint requirements haven’t yet been fully implemented at Folkstone so our journey is as efficient as ever. We fly through France and only slow down when we hit Antwerp’s traditional traffic jam – we give Louis an update on our progress, but said-traffic-jam holds us in its claws for quite a while so we only end up getting to Louis’ place after 7pm.

The tables are laden with Design Competition puzzles and heaps of snacks and our host sees to it that we’re well-lubricated after our long journey. We offload some supplies from Ali’s truck, but the puzzles we bring in remain largely untouched for the rest of the trip… there are potentially award-winning puzzles to be played with after all!

Somewhere around 11pm we head off to the hotel and check into our rooms after agreeing to meet for breakfast at about 8am… I’m the last to arrive just before 8am. The breakfast buffet is well-stocked and we all make our way through several platefuls. We head back to Louis’ just after 9 where we find even more tables and chairs set up and Nick’s traditional identification sheets with puzzles’ goals carefully described – Louis’ been up late/early printing them off for us and has them spread around the various tables for playing with and potentially solving. (The solutions sides haven’t appeared yet so we’re on our own!)

Over the course of the next few hours we have a steady stream of puzzlers arriving, including the Millers on their way to Rotterdam for a cruise. Everyone digs into the Design Competition entries and the gentle buzz of puzzlers heckling puzzlers in a somewhat encouraging manner ensues.

There’s a fantastically themed pizza challenging you to find all of the appropriate toppings – complete with not-only magical, but downright puzzling mechanics. I manage to retrieve all the toppings but my hubris is short-lived when I realise I’m having a lot of trouble resetting things…

I work my way through a Big Red Barn (Mr Robot reference anyone?) with the odd bit of advice/encouragement from Louis – there aren’t any cheat sheets yet! It’s good fun and you have to be impressed at the quality of the 3D printed puzzles on display this year. I particularly enjoy a cute little pizza joint that has you hunting for your pizza while finding a number of accoutrements along the way.

There’s an intriguing sliding piece puzzle where the actual challenge is to determine the start/end position before convincing yourself that the sliding-piece-bit is in fact doable. Canal had several of us engrossed for a while – trying to build a single canal in a tray using just four pieces – both puzzles providing a fresh puzzling perspective. Louis and Mieke provide a massive spread for the dozen puzzlers puzzling, with the puzzling intensifying (if that were possible) after the lunch shift.

I spend several hours after lunch working on Red Treasure – yet another superbly 3D Printed object with all the heft of something that has a metal chassis. I’ve been getting absolutely nowhere on my copy and if I'm honest, there are several points in the solving journey where I wouldn’t have gotten any further forward if it hadn’t been for a kindly puzzler offering words of advice when I’d been stopped for long enough to want a nudge. This one keeps on and on giving – each time when you think you’re almost done, you realise there’s another layer to go, until you finally discover where the puzzle gets its name from… 

During the course of the afternoon I try to interest a couple of puzzlers in building one of Derek’s 270-piece balls – I’ve printed off a set of the pieces and I’m hoping to get it assembled to give to Wil on Sunday… we have a couple of false-starts before we find a suitably coloured picture on ‘tinternet for us to follow. I get lucky when Oskar gets interested and in the end I’m able to watch him assemble pretty much the entire ball – I “encourage” the final piece into position and it holds together brilliantly - now if I can keep it in one piece I have a gift for Wil with some serious puzzling provenance: designed by Derek and assembled by Oskar!

Around dinner time Louis orders in a massive pile of pizzas and we feast in great Italian style.

There’s a bit more post pizza puzzling before most of the gang heads off homeward and we all pile into Ali’s truck in search of our escape room challenge for the evening… which turns out to be quite spectacular! The Crimsons Recipe starts in a bijoux bistro and then takes us on a magical journey where not everything is as it seems. Ali enjoys shooting some defenceless pigeons (eventually) and we discover some deep, rather dark secrets, all beautifully strung together with some wonderful story-telling… the puzzles and escaping are almost secondary – it’s a brilliant experience!

We drop Louis off at home and head back to the hotel where we reset and agree again to meet for brekkie at 8am.  Breakfast on Sunday is a relaxed affair, safe in the knowledge that we can’t leave before 9:30 for fear of getting to Wil’s too early… and when we do head off, we find the city is intent on digging up chunks of road in the direction our satnav is hoping to send us. The city wins and we head off in the wrong direction until the satnav eventually relents and gives us a new way out.

Ali gets us to Wil’s place bang on time and we park a block away because Wil’s roadworks are even more extreme! We let ourselves in through the back door and find Jan Willem and Wil deep in conversation while Wil’s getting the food and beverage station laid out in the kitchen… Wil likes the ball. 

It doesn’t take long for piles of puzzlers to arrive and there’s a goodly throng both outside and in. Oskar has his traditional table out in the sun (we’re careful to keep the puzzles cooler this year after last year’s wilting PLA saga!) and he takes great pleasure, almost too much, in showing a bunch of puzzlers his Taze-Maze which is literally a blind maze hooked up to a taser to let you know where the walls are… Ali manages to find his way through the maze with just a gentle smell of burning flesh in the air. 

At one point Nanco wanders around giving everyone a laser-cut symmetry challenge, which we totally fail to solve until much later that evening. I’ve taken the left-over balls from MPP and they duly get assembled and given new homes, with Louis making sure that he assembles a three-layered monster just to show it can be done. No-one knows where the small heap of sticky tape comes from afterwards…

I spend some time indoors, fiddling with some wonderfully collectible puzzles that I suspect I only see once a year at Wil’s place. I end up spending more time than I should playing with a few old dexterity puzzles and confirm my hypothesis that random shaking is virtually as successful as slow, careful tapping and tilting.

Wil provides a wonderfully generous spread for tea-time, lunch and afternoon tea before we all head off into town for dinner. Toby asks for directions but he decides he shouldn’t trust mine so asks someone else who duly consults Google Maps and literally gives him the exact same directions… we do see him at dinner so he must have followed my directions.

We rearrange the restaurant so we can all sit around one big table and it’s very convivial. Nanco’s symmetry puzzles (for it turns out they were all different!) come out and duly get mostly solved… with some sets providing not only a rotational symmetry solution (the challenge) but also a mirror symmetry solution…

After dinner we wander across to the riverside and grab a large number of ice creams – everyone loves an ice cream – before heading back to Wil’s for some more chat and puzzling.

When we do decide to leave, I forget my phone on the couch and realise a few minutes down the road what I’ve done… so Ali takes us back to Wil’s in a large loop and I duly collect my phone before getting engaged in a conversation with Wil about one of Doog’s boxes – good news Steve: I’ve found your globe-travelling box!

I make my excuses and run back to the waiting starship destroyer and this time we head back to Eindhoven, via Louis’ to collect some books…

I sleep very well and we head back across to Blighty after brekkie. Ali makes great time, with traffic slowing us down a bit around, you guessed it, Antwerp… we make use of Le Shuttle’s lounge and each get a generous lunch bag for the (half-hour) train journey.

We stop at Steve’s to drop him off and collect some shed-envy – TBMHQ having received a significant upgrade recently we’re keen to see it in person and it doesn’t disappoint – it is a brilliant space for designing, making and prototyping…

We offload the books and bags into Frank’s car and head back up to Brum following Google’s wise advice and travelling some roads neither of us have ever seen before, but Google somehow takes us around the afternoon traffic rather deftly and delivers us safely to Barnt Green after another brilliant weekend away with my mates… thank you all for making it such a brilliant weekend - and especially to Frank and Ali for some superb chauffeuring!

 

MPP XXXXCIIIIV

Another solo MPP with no residential visitors and by the time I’ve stopped at the shops to grab the drinks and milk, there are already a couple of familiar faces inside the hall and the chairs and tables are already neatly laid out – Steve and Phil have done an excellent job under Mike’s no-doubt strict oversight - thanks chaps!

We grab the gear and grub out the car and get the kitchen set up and the puzzles laid out: I’ve brought along a tub of 3D printed bits for Derek’s balls – aka Mr Bosch’s sphere assemblies - in various sizes for folks to have a bash at. There’s also a few new Karakuri acquisitions and a bunch of Bennos that have just arrived…and I can’t resist taking along Minima XIII just in case anyone hasn’t had a play with that one yet. 

Ali and the girls arrive and they set up camp at the back of the hall where they proceed to amuse themselves pretty much the entire day, inexplicably without any puzzles!  

Robin arrives with a bit of a fanfare, and a couple of huge 3D printed balls which he is duly goaded into rolling the length of the hall to see if they’ll spontaneously disassemble – they remain intact so some subsequent disassembly is required.

Knowing that I’d missed out on the Karakuri Skull from the recent update, Fraser’s brought along his copy for me to have a play with and I have a grand old time fiddling with it – the theming is lovely and it’s a fun solve – this looks like a promising start for newcomer hakuu!

Fraser’d also brought along a copy of the rather nutty musical cube – where each face has whistles with a common pitch – so in order to solve the cube you’re obliged to whistle a convoluted cacophony along the way – several folks admired it during the day but I don’t remember hearing anyone trying to solve or scramble it…

Ethel arrives with several large crates full of puzzles that we help her set out for the assembled puzzle-gannets to rifle through. She’s brought a shopping bag along for me with a bunch of things she’s agreed to sell me. Pretty much everyone has a rake through the crates and most end up taking a few things off her… and in spite of already having a bag-full, I have a rifle and end up with one of Gary’s impossible objects and a pair of jars with Hanayama’s assembled inside of them – one of which will replace one of my Japanese exchange puzzles that didn’t quite manage to get home in one piece (so I have a doubly impossible broken jar with a Cast Vortex inside of it that still won’t come out, either through the top of the jar or the hole in the side of it!).

Fraser and Steve had independently brought along a large pile of the Hayduck’s Decorative puzzles and several of those got a good playing with. They are beautifully made and have such luxurious and tactiles pieces that it’s easy not to think of them as jigsaw puzzles.

We descend on the village, and several pig rolls, a few kebabs and a vegan wrap are duly acquired and scarfed back at the hall. (No vegans knowingly harmed in the process – promise!)

Steve had brought along his copy of Juno’s Snub Star for the experts to assemble and thoughtfully not brought the instructions… there was an initial inspection of the (60!) pieces before they abandoned the idea until I’d managed to make a trip home to collect my set of instructions – when those duly arrived Chris and Dan appointed themselves chief assembleators with Steve supplying (sometimes) the right pieces for them. 

Things started in a fairly amusing manner with the assembleators furiously shunning external aids like masking tape to hold pieces in situ – resulting in some rather amusing pictures of Dan inserting bits while Chris attempted to hold things together. Once they got past that it was fairly plan sailing with only a few bits of back-tracking when bits hadn’t been inserted in the correct direction or in quite the right holes – they were pretty proud of their work when the key piece finally went in… and I suspect that Steve was mighty grateful!

Several folks spend a while assembling various incarnations of Derek’s Balls – some masking tape is sacrificed in order to retain some element of puzzler sanity – perhaps I should have brought more masking tape – time will tell… at least a few sets of nested balls and one or two singles end up going into the wild and I still have a few spares to take along to King’s Day next weekend.

I get to spend a while playing with Chris’ copy of Idan’s I Need My Lunch and get almost nowhere… I manage to remove one bit, but can’t get it to release any more of its secrets. While I’m fiddling with it, I am able to notice one or two absolutely fantastic bits of machining – you know the sort of thing where you wonder something to yourself and then notice that that thing will in fact do that rather unusual thing you’ve imagined it might be able to… this one is clearly an absolute ripper and I’m going to need to get myself a copy – even if that means it ends up kicking my ass for an age (or three!).

Almost everyone heads back up to Puzzling Times Central where the hounds are glad to see old friends and new shoes. Most people dig into the puzzle cave and come out with something interesting, some end up chatting in the kitchen and everyone seems to be having a fine old time.

I decide it’s time for a major break with tradition(!) and order a pizza delivery instead of heading down to the chippy for fish suppers… there doesn’t seem to be much disappointment and there’s not a huge amount of pizza left (especially after we manage to convince someone to take the last half a pizza home with them at the end of the night).

One of our smaller MPPs, but definitely another excellent day with my puzzling friends – thank you all!

 

Jammed Gem Again 3D

A few weeks ago Tye sent me an advance copy of Jammed Gem Again – a new production of Frederic Boucher’s 2024 Jury Honourable Mention award-winning design now being made by Joshua Clouser.

I didn’t get to play with it in the Design Competition (too busy chatting with my puzzling friends from around the world!) so I was chuffed to be able to have a go at it in the calm surroundings of my study. The family resemblance is clear: there’s a box with pieces inside it based on a 2*2*3 internal space. Some of the pieces are visible through holes in the side, but they don’t really seem to be able to move much at all… which is interesting. You’re also aware that this is probably going to be a little more than just a “pack the pieces in the box” or “get the pieces out the box” puzzle, given that you’re being asked to find a few gems, your number and a secret message… and the magical phrase “sequential discovery” has also been noted somewhere in the description – all of which, coupled with the designer’s name, should be more than enough to pique any puzzler-worth-their-salt’s interest.

Mine certainly was, so I dived in soon after it arrived. It has a pleasing heft to it – it feels like it’s probably not going to succumb to some enthusiastic puzzlers’ ham-fisted attempts at doing the wrong things… which is a very good thing as I can be quite ham-fisted! An initial inspection shows up a couple of things that are sure to be interesting at some point, but are more or less impossible to use at this stage…

A little more investigation and I managed to unlock a couple of tools that immediately felt really helpful… and I really enjoyed playing with them all over the place, but sadly my progress ended up being somewhat blocked… and it remained thusly blocked for more than a week – and not because I wasn’t trying to make progress! I ended up running through my full gamut of “let me try this”s and “I wonder if there’s a that” – and when they didn’t work, I tried them all again, this time with more enthusiasm… the puzzle held firm and I was still blocked.

And I stayed blocked until a kindly Tye asked how I was doing and what I thought, so I told him what I’d done and I could sense the disappointment in his response – he told me he was surprised I hadn’t made another discovery yet… so while I explained that I’d tried moving everything that I could get to and to prove my point I ran around them all one more time, only to find something different happening… which was particularly galling as I know I’d tried that exact thing many times already and it hadn’t given me anything… turned out I hadn’t – I’d missed a spot, so to speak.

Armed with a new and intriguing tool I knew exactly what I wanted to do and with a bit of a fiddle I began to grow my little pile of bits and pieces deep from within this puzzle.

At one point I really began to fear that I’d never find homes for all of these little things that I’d freed… but I needn’t have worried – it’s all very logical and the reset manages to bypass a lot of the fiddliest bits. (Thank you Frederic!)

When you get all the way to the end there’s a heartfelt tribute to one of the giants – a lovely touch.

I’m so glad that Tye goaded me into trying harder – solving that has been the highlight of my Easter weekend – it’s instantly become a favourite!

Great design by Frederic – with some VERY clever tools – very nicely executed by Joshua… and if you’re tempted, Tye has them available for pre-order over here at time of writing. 

Pocket Change – Green

I’m very lucky to have some rather generous puzzling friends. Ali had recently spotted a new Puzzled-by-Piker Pocket Change puzzle had come out so he bought an extra copy for me – cheers mate!

The Green is another eminently pocketable puzzle where the aim is immediately obvious: on the underside there’s a slidey-tray with a coin captured in it – so free the coin! That slider carries the coin backwards and forwards, but there’s no obvious way for the coin to come out… good start!

On the top of the puzzle, there’s some interesting looking things to play with: a knob in the centre will rotate and there seem to be a few ball bearings in a slot on the one side, while the slot on the other side appears well-devoid of ball bearings.

Manipulating these things seem to allow you to move the balls from one side to the other, and sometimes that almost appears to be helpful in your quest… but somehow it’s never quite enough… some Think (c) required.

…OK some more Think (c) – and indeed some more discoveries necessary and then you’re able to neatly remove the coin from its hiding place.

Another great addition to the canon – perfectly safe to carry in your pocket – you’re never going to unintentionally lose anything.

Thanks Ali!