Blah Box

by Eric Fuller,

is anything but!

It is excellent!

And yes, I know that the name came from his disappointment that he couldn’t use it the way he’d first intended, but boy am I glad he decided to release it in its own right – it’s an excellent puzzle…

Once again, Eric uses all he knows about how we solve puzzles, against us…

This one had me bashing my head against a literal brick wall for several weeks trying to find some way in. 

When you first get hold of this modest sized box, you’ll spot the obvious sliding lid and clock that it’s locked almost as quickly – it’ll move a little, but it’s very clearly currently locked. There are a couple of holes on the one end of the (obvious) lid, but you can’t really see much through them…

There’s something rolling around inside, and perhaps that's interesting…. Both of the short ends appear to be floating and one has a hole in the centre of it with something shiny peeking through – could be a magnet…

And that’s it. That’s literally all I had for several weeks. 

I’d pick it up, try a few things – try some more unusual things. I tried tapping and rapping it a few times, and sometimes I almost convinced myself that something somewhere had changed…

After a couple of weeks of polite exploration I finally managed to find some real progress – it was obvious I’d made some progress, only problem was that I’d come up against another virtually impervious brick wall… sometime later I spotted something interesting that I’d managed to overlook and that gave me something rather interesting to play with – MORE PROGRESS!

And with that progress, an even bigger brick wall – this one took quite a lot more thinking, and experimenting – and I ended up spending several more days caught here – before I finally tried something different, and found myself marvelling at that Fuller bloke’s serious skillz and subterfuge. He really does use your own mind against you on this one – you know certain things, only you don’t…

I’m a huge fan of this one – it has a few very distinct phases, each of which would be pretty good on its own – lump them together in a confusing little package and it’s a great puzzle box.

[There is a potential short-cut that Eric’s designed out with an after-sales modification that any muggle can fit for you if you want the full experience… alternatively, just treat this little beauty with some respect and you probably won’t be bothered by the short-cut at all!]