Wil Strijbos’ NEW Perrier Puzzle Bottle

Back in October I mentioned that I’d managed to acquire one of Wil’s latest Perrier Puzzle Bottles at the Dutch Cube Day and promised to write about it, so I guess I’d better...  

Wil’s first Perrier Puzzle Bottle had a steel tube fixed into the mouth and a bullet-shaped piece of plastic rod languishing inside the bottle – and it came with the solution inside an envelope. Your job was to get the rod out of the bottle… and there were a couple of ways to do that – mostly involving varying degrees of dexterity – but there was one very elegant solution that even totally uncoordinated people like me will manage…

Wil’s new Perrier Puzzle Bottle has a steel tube fixed into the mouth and a bullet-shaped plastic rod languishing inside the bottle … only this time there’s no envelope with the solution provided (by the way, don’t get your hopes up – that solution was a slip of paper with the word “Solution” typed on it! Wil hasn’t gone soft…) and there’s a cap over the mouth of the bottle. 

So far so good – sounds like a simple variation on the first version… until you think about it – sure, the alternative solutions requiring a bit of dexterity will probably work on this version (and indeed James Dalgety has proved that to his own satisfaction) – but the elegant solution (let’s call it that) can’t be the same…

 

Right – first things first, unless there’s a cunning trapdoor hidden somewhere in the bottle itself, if we can’t remove the cap from the bottle, we aren’t going anywhere … thankfully the cap turns out to have a reasonably snug press-fit, but it can be removed using just your fingers. Setting the cap to one side I start to work out a plan of attack … that little rod inside the bottle will stand upright on the base, but there’s just enough of a gap between the bottom of the tube and the top of the rod that unless you have excellent dexterity, almost every attempt to get it out through the tube will fail … or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! (I couldn’t get the old-fashioned-toy method to work even once – although James has...) 

After a bit of head scratching and some experimentation I manage to stumble across something I hadn’t expected and then as a grin progressively works its way across my ugly mug I work out what the elegant solution must be, and it works perfectly – and it really is elegant!

Once you’ve freed the rod from the bottle, there’s one more little discovery to go – “A present from Dita” was how I think Wil put it… trust me, it’ll all make sense! (Sorry - but I suspect that the final bit is only in the Dita-version.)

Wil’s new Perrier Puzzle Bottle comes in two flavours – there’s the somewhat limited edition version with the Dita Von Teese branding, and “personalised memorabilia” – limited as Wil was only able to snag a few of these bottles – and a standard version providing exactly the same puzzle but in a standard Perrier-branded bottle. I suspect that the former will all have gone by now, but Wil should still have the standard version available if you drop him a line.