
A few days later, he was posting me a few other things and he
knew that we were heading for another Midlands Puzzle Party so he added a cola
bottle #7 / 8 to the package and asked me to take it along to the MPP for folks
to play with…
When the package arrived, I had a jolly good laugh as I
opened it and found the cola bottle in question – it is most definitely a new
Strijbos cola bottle!
Technically, it should be cola bottle #8, but there are 7
things inside it…

…and staring at me from inside this new cola bottle was a
pen from the IPP hotel, a marble and an assembled copy of High Five! I
literally laughed out loud when I first saw that…
It went down pretty well at MPP7 a couple of days later,
although several folks were a bit tentative when it came to trying to extract
the High Five, as it won’t come out in the assembled position… and the thought
of having to reassemble it inside the bottle was a bridge too far for some…

... and if you decide that you want to have one of your own to experiment on, drop Wil a note – he doesn't have any of the IPP hotel pens left, but I’m sure he’ll be able to find a suitable substitute!
…even without the back-story and the in-jokes, it’s a
cracking puzzle! With them, it’s irresistible…
Thanks Wil!
Strijbos cola bottles - a quick summary
After all of our confusion over the naming of Wil's cola bottles, he sent out a plea for help to "those that know" and it was duly answered by John Rausch and between them they produced the following pic and a brief summary of the generally available Cola Bottles - be warned there have been several specials and one-offs just to confuse things ... so here you are for anyone who's interested:
The (current) Complete(?!) list of Wil Strijbos cola bottle puzzles:
- Cola Bottle #1 Red Stick with Nut and Bolt
- Cola Bottle #2 Black Stick with 2 Nuts - different solution to #1
- Cola Bottle #3 Red Stick with Lock and key ring
- Cola Bottle #4 Chain with Lock - no marble
- Cola Bottle #4B Chain with Lock and short black stick
- Cola Bottle #5 Red stick with Bolt and screw somewhere in the middle and a tool
- Cola Bottle #6 was a one-off made for a friend. Some of those ideas appeared in a subsequent pair of Whiskey Bottles that are still available.]
- Cola Bottle #7 3 Locks suspended from a red rod through the Bottle - no marble
- Cola Bottle #7B 4 locks suspended from a red rod spanning two bottles - aim is to release the plastic washer on the rod between the bottles
- Cola Bottle #8 The IPP32 Commemorative Bottle - in two flavours: one with the IPP hotel pen, others with "something else"
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Strijbos cola bottle family - photo courtesy John Rausch |
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