
Nick flies in from the West Coast and manages to Escape
Heathrow in a record 32 minutes, putting him way ahead of schedule into Birmingham,
so Gill has to collect him from the station while I finish up my meetings for
the morning – pesky day job!
By the time I get home, Gill and Nick are chatting in the
kitchen and the hounds are making a fuss of Nick – not just because he’s
brought them some treats from the US. We get to spend some time chatting about
life in general, an almost finished souvenir book, an upcoming puzzle auction
and indeed actually play with some puzzles as well. Gill makes sure we’re well-fed
at the appropriate times and later that evening we head out to BHX (oddly, via a local gaming arcade, at Nick's insistence) to collect Louis.

We’re all up fairly early the next morning for breakfast
before heading up the motorway toward Lancashire. Louis gives me a beautiful
Heartwood Creations puzzle box – the first Heartwood box in the collection –
and a stack of as yet unidentified hexagonal sticks made by Jerry McFarland… I
say they’re unidentified as there aren’t enough sticks for what we think they
are, and we don’t know if there are supposed to be more sticks. Time will tell…

James and Lindsey, Ali, Michael, Shane and Steve are already
there and there’s plenty of snacks laid out on the counter – might as well get
some puzzles out!
Frank and I do the customary birthday present exchange: I’ve
got a spare Chinnyhedron for him and he’s given me a lovely copy of his Digits sliding
tile puzzle in clear acrylic with LEDs around the edge to pick out the etching –
he’d talked about trying to get it to work on a previous trip and I have to say
that it looks fab! Thanks Frank!

We puzzle – a lot.
The Brass Monkeys have brought along several sets of Nova Plexus
in anticipation of a world record attempt at interlinked Nova Plexii (‘cos that’s
clearly the plural, right?).
<NOPE! - Geoff reliably informs us that Nova Plexus is already plural... so it should be Nova Plexus!>
Louis has found a neat method for interlinking a number of them, but ran out of sticks at home – the boys have a few spare so the stage is set. Careful to colour-code things neatly, Louis starts with a steel assembly in the centre and then carefully builds three further assemblies in brass, each sharing a common rod with the steel assembly until he has a set of four forming a flat triangular shape. Even with all it’s lackey bands in situ, it looks impressive… Louis spends a few minutes checking everything is oriented the right way around before starting to remove the rubber bands… some of which have become somewhat jammed between a few of the rods.
<NOPE! - Geoff reliably informs us that Nova Plexus is already plural... so it should be Nova Plexus!>
Louis has found a neat method for interlinking a number of them, but ran out of sticks at home – the boys have a few spare so the stage is set. Careful to colour-code things neatly, Louis starts with a steel assembly in the centre and then carefully builds three further assemblies in brass, each sharing a common rod with the steel assembly until he has a set of four forming a flat triangular shape. Even with all it’s lackey bands in situ, it looks impressive… Louis spends a few minutes checking everything is oriented the right way around before starting to remove the rubber bands… some of which have become somewhat jammed between a few of the rods.
By the time the
last bands are off there’s a sigh of relief in the room and calls for some nice
photographs to be taken. Frank produces a suitable light tent and we take
portraits for posterity. [I wonder if Geoff ever thought that would happen?]



I’d also taken along my copy of Ken’s Broken Soma… I’d
inflicted it on Nick and Louis the day before and they both liked it so I made
sure that some more people got to “enjoy” it at Frank’s – I say “enjoy” because
it is positively EVIL… and deserves a blog post all on its own… so I won’t say
much more here other than nobody found it simple.

Jo wrangled a scrumptious dinner for twenty and we feasted
for absolute ages – almost making a dent in the provisions. After supper there
was a(nother) brilliant puzzling birthday cake for Frank and I – complete with replica
Shuckman Kumiki puzzles made in icing. After the pyrotechnics we cut the cake
and enjoyed it as dessert.

More puzzling followed – including a group solve of my new
Mr Puzzle puzzle – that I’ve still got virtually nowhere on – they avoided
doing anything useful anywhere near me, but they did manage to take it apart
and then left Louis to just put it back together again… which subsequently took
him more than an hour. I am suitably worried that it may never come apart in my
paws.
I did manage to slay Ice 9 after a suitable battle – that thing
is mean!
Shane had a pretty good go at Felix Ure’s Titan – but didn’t
quite manage to get all the way through it – probably just to make me feel
slightly less bad about my almost total lack of progress! Thanks mate!

Nick left at sparrow’s next morning to grab a train to the
airport and a flight to Frankfurt for the World Puzzle Championships – where his
USA team won first spot the following week – WELL DONE!


Another fantastic time with friends and puzzles, way too
much good food, lots of belly laughs – I’d say it was another excellent
Northern Puzzle Party.
Thanks Jo & Frank, and Happy Birthday mate!
So close to me... I hope to get an invite one day!
ReplyDelete(Mike)
Puzzling Time
Feel free to join us at the next Midlands Puzzle Party on the 2nd of November Mike - we have people from The Netherlands, Bulgaria and EVEN Sheffield coming along - and it's open to anyone.
DeleteMike, drop me a line, be great to get in touch :)
DeleteFrank
Indeed, I never imagined anyone would link more than one Nova Plexus nor that anyone would hold such a thing as a puzzle party. I have some ideas, however, on Plexii.
ReplyDeleteThe name Nova Plexus is already dog Latin. It is so bad that I would call it dogged Latin or even mongrelled Latin. Plexus is an adjective meaning braided or intricate. Converting it to a noun follows the anatomical term, Solar Plexus, in its mis-use. Then, thinking of it as a ‘new braid’ I added the adjective, ‘Nova’. Now, if plexus had been a noun, it could have been first declension, masculine - plural plexi, third declension, neuter - plural plexora or fourth declension, feminine - plural plexus. Since I used the feminine ‘Nova’, I guess the plural is Novae Plexus.
Of course, the days of pedantic schoolboys doing violence to the Latin language are gone with the days of Latin as a compulsory subject. I still find it fun.
So glad my little sculpture is creating so much interest. I wish you all well.
Geoff
Thanks so much for dropping by, Geoff! And for the Latin lesson... I managed to skip Latin entirely so all my attempts at butchering it are thoroughly ill-informed!
DeleteThere was a theory on some further extensions so this chapter might yet run a little...
Thanks A STACK for letting the boys make some more of these - they make a great assembly challenge and look tremendous!
The name is excellent in one respect: if you google it, the search engine takes you straight to the puzzle.
Delete