Yup, I’m butchering my Roman Numerals once again, which can
only mean one thing: another excellent day’s puzzling with my mates from all
over the place. I collected Louis and Mieke from the airport on Friday evening
and after a couple of pizzas out on the deck – for the sun was shining(!) –
Louis and I grabbed a few hours puzzling while the girls caught up on life.
Louis had brought me a rather generous gift of a new JCC Telephone Box which I
think I spent altogether too many hours puzzling over during the course of the
rest of the weekend. I had in turn saved up a few things that Louis needed to
either solve for me or at least give me a nudge on… ‘cos I’m nice that way! I
spent a while talking him through what I’d discovered on one or two puzzles I’d
been struggling with and he gave me some sage words of advice – never more than
the very gentlest of nudges to get me going in more or less the right direction
once again.
Somewhere around midnight I was totally wiped out and
crashed so I left Louis in the cave with a long line of puzzles to solve… and
magically next morning most of them had changed order and been solved…
After a goodly round of breakfast, Louis and I headed down
to the hall to find Angela was already there negotiating with Dragan to get the
parking lot gate open. Gate negotiated, we set about getting the tables and
chairs set out in the hall and, most importantly getting the biscuits and
coffee sorted.
Before long the London taxi had arrived, rammed to the
gunwales with puzzles and puzzlers. Kevin, Mike, Dan and Amy weren’t long after
that and pretty soon we had enough people to sensibly call it a puzzle party
and settle down to some actual puzzling, and a bit of mild banter because it
would be rude not to.
Michael had brought along an entire sack of Einstein tiles
and several folks had a go at amusing themselves with tiling just a little bit
of the infinite plane. Some people seemed to enjoy not quite getting it right,
or indeed finding creative ways of not tiling the plane properly…. Step-hen!
Michael also had a copy of a new puzzle design fresh off the
printer from Steve – I managed one of the simplest of the challenges
Mike Q had brought along a tiny copy of the Dolls house puzzle,
along with an impressively super-sized version he’d cooked up especially for the
occasion, including a super-sized replica of the box the puzzle came in – a suitably
bonkers project in the true spirit of MPP that definitely deserves a shout-out!
Kevin had brought along a large selection of TICs and most
of the upcoming puzzles from Pelikan for everyone to play with. He also rather generously
gave away some spares copies that he had – thanks a stack for my Dino, mate – I
love him!
I took along a bunch of the recent Karakuri boxes, largely
for Ed to play with, but unfortunately, he came down with a bug and couldn’t make
it. The boxes ended up getting well-exercised without him as several folks
spent a while working their way through the selection… Horse with a Warrior was
definitely the favourite on the day, giving everyone a big smile after they’d
invariably been told that “No, you need to get a clear look at the whole
warrior to consider that puzzle solved.” Amusingly Bad Radio was given a wide berth
by most people…
Karakuri Packing and Coin Wallet also garnered several new
fans, generally after perplexing them for quite a while first – but the “A-Ha!”
is just so strong on those ones…
Steve had brought along a well-travelled copy of Doog’s Red
Herring Box and almost everyone ended up having a bash at it and then signing their
names on the guest book secreted inside it. I really enjoyed the solve, and
particularly like how Doog suckers you into thinking this is going to be pretty
straight-forward and then totally blows you aways with his creativity and his
most excellent craftsmanship. We totally forgot to take a picture in the hall with
all the solvers present, but we did remember to take a pic back at the house afterwards,
albeit a couple of folks hadn’t made it back to my place.
Matt and Chris, them of MW Puzzles fame, arrived with a box
of treasure and duly took some money from a bunch of us for a copy of The
Bandit. They’d brought a spare copy along for folks to play with in the hall and
it ended up being well exercised, although I don’t think very many people
actually managed to solve it… The Bandit is a super step up from their previous
puzzles – this one has even more puzzling than their previous releases, but they’ve
concentrated really hard on themeing and making this one look drop-dead
gorgeous, and succeeded. They also gave a couple of us a copy of their Key Ring
puzzle to try out… they said they weren’t sure about offering it for sale or
not (despite a little trace of it appearing on their web-site some time last
year) – and after fiddling with it on and off over the past week and getting absolutely
nowhere, I’m struggling to understand their hesitancy.
Somewhere around lunchtime we headed off to the deli for our
customary pig rolls only to find they were short staffed and weren’t offering them
– calamity! Frank and I settled for a Welsh Dragon sausage roll and chicken samosa
instead, albeit the sausage roll was so filling that the samosas ended up in
the fridge, untouched.
Gill and Mieke arrived with Barkley in tow some time after
lunch on their way to the tea shop for coffee and cake. Barkley didn’t show
much interest in the puzzles, but graciously accepted cuddles from the not-too-engrossed
puzzlers nearby.
Steve’s copy of Oskar’s Piston Plunger generally got a fair
amount of playing with and generated some of the bawdiest double entendres
of the day -and there were a lot of them! (I know, unusual, eh?)
I managed to acquire a few more Martin Gardener first editions
from Angela to add to the steadily growing set on the shelf. (Thanks Angela!)
Sometime after five, we started packing everything up and
loading up the cars before a few folks headed off home, while the majority
headed off to my place after receiving the obligatory puppy-briefing – to make
sure that the 6-month old didn’t cause too much chaos when the whole world
arrived at her home for a fish supper, and, of course, some more puzzling.
Everyone duly behaved impeccably and totally ignored Rolo
when she got a bit overwhelmed and started barking at everyone in the hallway –
to the point that they were resolutely ignoring one another as well, but we
managed to get past that and calm duly returned when she realised it wasn’t a
home invasion, well not a bad one anyway…
It was an absolutely stunning evening so most folks ended up
chatting and puzzling outside. Amy was quite disappointed when she opened the
biscuit tin in the kitchen only to find it was full of Rolo’s training treats –
she managed to find the human treats shortly afterwards!
Bananas came out to play, as did a bunch of older Iwahara
boxes and even some arcane disentanglements came out to confuse. Peter’s fish
suppers didn’t disappoint and set us up for a few hours more puzzling and
banter…
Somewhere around 10pm most folks headed off for a long drive
home and I left Louis to reassemble some of the partially solved puzzles dotted
around the house.
Sunday was an altogether quieter day’s puzzling with Louis
and chatting with Mieke. The weather was lovely again, so most of it was spent
outside puzzling in the sun… JCC’s Telephone Box (think mean multi-layer
partially-blind n-ary mashed together with a sequential discovery puzzle) and
MW Puzzle’s The Bandit getting most of my attention - both providing plenty of
puzzling fun.
Another thoroughly wonderful MPP weekend…
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Steve's solution to Rolo's desire to carry his shoes around
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