Burrr.exe ERROR

I reckon this one deserves a specific shout-out given just how innovative it is… spoiler alert: there might be a little repetition of some of my gushy praise from the last MPP write-up! You’ve been warned!

Adin has been designing puzzles for several years – he’s turned his hand to a wide variety of puzzles, from symmetry puzzles (one of which was included in my IPP34 exchange puzzle in London) to burrs (including Amulet, which attracted Eric’s attention and ended up in a 2017 Cubic Dissection release). While he’s been a little quieter on the puzzle scene over the past few years while he and Sophie have been looking after little Oren, it’s clear the bug hasn’t left him!

He'd been along to one or two MPP again recently and then a few months ago he started asking innocent questions about 3D printers because he’d had an idea for a puzzle that would work a lot better in 3D printing than in wood – bear with me! I know that sounds like blasphemy…

He talked to a few of us (mainly Steve!) and the inevitable result was that when a suitably discounted offer was open, he bought himself a Bambu printer… and I think it’s fair to say that he was pretty darn delighted with just how easy these things are to use these days – gone are the days of fettling and tuning for hours to get a successful print every n’th attempt – they really do just work now!

A couple of weeks later he was posting pictures of a weird looking experiment with a burr sticking out of a base at a pretty wonky angle – inviting puzzlers Excalibur-like to “Take me out if you dare!”. Dubbed “Burr.exe ERROR” it looks like some sort of an AI image experiment gone wrong… but here it was in real life…

I grabbed a copy from him at MPP and have to say he’s done an excellent job – for a bloke who only printed his first thing a month or two earlier – this is a great print of an excellent design… the text on the base is playfully offset – right off the base – and adds to the idea that something has gone horribly wrong in the process – to the point that you might prefer to reboot the universe (something that might be a grand idea with some of the weird stuff happening around the planet at the moment!).

The pale blue six-piece burr is well and truly trapped in the base – it’s clear what you need to do, and the base helpfully tells you this is (only!) a level 9 burr… and it’s a really great solve – it’s easy enough to find something that moves, and then some more, but there’s a wonderful little pause in the middle that catches a lot of folks out – in spite of it only being 9 moves to remove the first piece – it’s anything but trivial.

The base, and the angling of the burr is genius – it stops a whole heap of moves that would render the puzzle trivial and then he’s done some clever stuff inside there to make things a bit more interesting.

Sure you could describe this as just a burr in a simple cage that applies a few restrictions, but that’s missing the point. This is a burr that’s sunk into a base plate and made a terrific puzzle – who doesn’t love a little entropy in a puzzle design?

Take all the pieces out and you understand why certain things are blocked and just why the angle of the wonk is exactly what it is…

Putting it back together is probably the simpler of the steps because you know where things are, but it will still exercise the little grey cells a little.

I just really love the idea of this puzzle – and the actual mechanics / movement are pretty darn good as well… Adin is well and truly back on the puzzle-scene – welcome back, mate! We’ve missed you. :-)

Box 1

Phil Wigfield’s been hand-crafting stunning brass puzzles for ages and he’s had a bit of an itch that he’s been wanting to scratch for a while now: he’s wanted to make a puzzle box… he’s been talking about it on and off and the stars have eventually aligned…

Enter Box 1, a handsome little brass box with a definite Rocky Chiaro vibe about it – which shouldn’t be surprising given just how much the master of brass has inspired our Phil! 

Phil was originally going to call it “Simple Box” as he reckoned that would describe it best… which is interesting because I found the solve anything but…

Back at DCD he’d told us he was planning to tee up some boxes shortly, and then four weeks later he rocked up to MPP with enough copies for anyone who wanted to buy one – which, given the amount of work that goes into each of these little guys, is phenomenal!

I handed over some cash and popped the little black velvet bag into one of my crates to play with the next day (ironically, I always get more puzzling time the day after an MPP for some reason).

It’s a handsome little lump of brass with a prominent hinge and a neatly decorated lid that literally won’t budge – if you put this on a shelf next to your Rocky puzzles, nobody would bat an eyelid – it looks the part.

I spent far too long solving this one! …and when I eventually did and examined the locking mechanism, I was astonished at just how elegant it is – elegant and delightfully exacting – as long as you do exactly the right thing, it will open perfectly, but if you do anything else in between, you will be doomed to fiddle aimlessly for ages… kind of like I did… I definitely got value for money on this solve.

Open the box and you’ll find Phil’s signature and your serial number - #2 for me – Oh and a word to the wise: solve over a table… you’ll thank me!

An excellent first box from Phil – I suspect a lot of us would love there to be a whole series, but judging by the amount of work that Phil’s realised go into these little masterpieces, I’m not totally convinced there’ll be a lot more of them…

Nice 1, Phil!!

MPP LCIIII

[I think that's what I ended up calling it on the day...]

This one starts with a Friday 5pm airport run to collect three blokes from The Netherlands and a chap from Bulgaria… I time the first arrival almost perfectly and the Dutch contingent isn’t too far behind and soon enough we’re all piled into Gill’s Mini heading for Barnt Green. <…begging the question “How do you fit 5 puzzlers in a Mini?”>

The hounds give the visitors a very warm welcome before we chuck some pizzas in the oven and settle down to some dinner. After dinner the puzzles come out and there’s a familiar buzz of puzzlers chatting and challenging one another with their current favourite puzzles.

Stefan’s been printing more of his tiny puzzles and he gives me a copy of the Kostick’s RDS Interlock that is 9.5mm across… and yes, it is actually a fully working copy, complete with the spare plates for anyone stupid enough to want to try some of the additional challenges. Stefan’s 3D printing skills at this scale are truly remarkable… he also insists on gifting me a full-size copy to replace the one I gave to James a couple of weeks ago… thank you, sir!

Wil gives me a really cute stand for my Butterfly Puzzle from a Belgian friend of his – complete with a puzzling compartment to store the extra tool that I've never taken out of it's sealed home… ;-) That’s going to display the puzzle really nicely in the Strijbos section of The Hoard. Thanks Wil!

We puzzle until sometime around midnight Dutch time and then I run the boys down to their Airbnb and head home to crash.

Next morning, Stefan and I grab some breakfast and load up the Mini with a few crates of puzzles before swinging by the boys to collect them on the way to the hall. Soon after we get there the puzzlers begin descending from all around the countryside. We have the usual bunch from London-ish, several folks from up north, including Fraser from north of The Wall. Andrew represents the south and there’s even a couple of us from the Midlands – there must be about 25 of us all told by the time everyone’s arrived – a goodly bunch!

I’ve done my usual thing of printing off a bunch of spare copies of puzzles that I’ve ben toying with recently and leave them in a pile for anyone who wants a copy… Dan and I both end up giving away a bunch of George Bell’s Second Stellations and I manage to get rid of a pile of sundry Barcode Burrs that Louis and I had managed to partially assemble the night before after the essential hardware for assembling them got delayed in the post. [We really are incredibly fortunate to have designers like Lee and George who’ve happily published their designs for anyone to print their own copies and give them away.] By the end of the day I’m down to one last copy of Second Stellation that has now been added to The Hoard.

Steve gives me a box with a few recent arrivals from Japan and an incredibly generous gift and refuses to take any money for the Japanese goodies – thanks mate! At least I can reciprocate and give him a copy of Yuu Asaka’s Jigsaw 28, but I’m still well in his debt.

Wil has a large table of his wares displayed and there’s the usual knot of puzzlers around the table pretty much all day sampling the wares and buying things – I mean, where else can you pick up a new copy of his Butterfly Puzzle and a display stand for it? He has copies of his recent exchange puzzles and plenty copies of his new Bottle Puzzle and he’s giving away copies of his latest symmetry puzzle that still has me puzzled from my DCD trip…

Richard has brought along a large selection of his 3D printed puzzles – including a number of Happiness Cubes – nicely printed in matching colours with their names neatly printed on one side. I think he’s gone and done something clever to import the data in an efficient manner in order to generate all the pieces and add all the finishing touches auto-magically – he’s a clever lad! <Correction: he's not a clever lad - he did it all by hand and clearly enjoys dull repetitive jobs!>

I spend a while playing with a couple of identical looking 5-piece burrs – one is a design he stumbled across [Switchboard Burr by Jim Gooch] and the other is his variation on it that removes a potential false solution and forces a really interesting series of moves that I don’t think I’ve seen on another burr… but don’t take my word for that as I’m not really a burr-guy!

During the course of the day several folks have a bash at Rich’s puzzles and generally find them rather hard to reassemble so a growing pile of pieces begins to form on Rich’s table – and then at some point some slightly more mischievous puzzlers remember the Immense Happiness that resulted from disassembling a large number of Happiness Cubes and leaving them all in a big pile. During the course of the day there must have been at least ten puzzlers contributing to the growing pile of pieces to challenge Rich. Things went badly downhill when one of the Monkeys decided it would be even more fun if some of the pieces were hidden – so a veritable arms-race ensued of Rich trying to count the pieces into one of his crates (to ensure he had a multiple of six and might be reasonably sure that he had all the bits he needed) while Steve tried to thwart that by adding or removing handfuls of bits… no puzzlers were harmed in the making of this mayhem.

Fraser played Santa inviting everyone to reach into his sack and help themselves to one of his balls – little white ones with a clear centre line and some ball bearings visible inside… several folks had a fiddle with his balls in the hall but I didn’t spot anyone solving them there – which I suspect made Fraser very happy. I got to play with mine the next morning and really enjoyed the solve – although I was surprised by just how much came out of that little ball when I did solve it… to the point that I found resetting it almost as challenging as the solve. Nice one Fraser – those balls are very nicely put together - and thank you!

Mike had brought along a bunch of Coremods’ new dexterity puzzles and several folks had some particularly choice words when they picked up one or two of them – my particular favourite was when folks noticed that the cake spun on its axis – at which point the most common reaction was “…kinell!” followed shortly thereafter by picking up a different puzzle. One or two of them managed to stay solved long enough for folks to admire them but generally the act of picking them up was more than enough to reset the little blighters! (I expect that will bring the designer a good degree of satisfaction!)

Phil had brought along a puzzle box he’d been working on and he did a fairly swift trade on the few copies he’d brought along. I took one for The Hoard and got to play with it on the Sunday morning – and there’s some very nice camouflage and misdirection in there – as always Phil’s machining is excellent!

Adin had brought several copies of his new design “Burr.exe ERROR” that looks absolutely brilliant – although his description of it as “just a caged burr” is really underselling it! He’s really embraced getting a 3D printer and his design mojo has clearly ramped right back up again… he’s produced a thoroughly intriguing six-piece burr trapped at a funky angle in a solid base… with some great detailing on the bases given some of the instructions… great job that man!! (I really enjoyed that solve on the Sunday as well – it’s a really nice solve where the “cage” does an unexpectedly good job of restricting things!

I managed to totally throw my name away when I told Steve I hadn’t managed to solve the latest puzzle he’d got for me from Endo-san… I’d managed to convince myself that the drawer could be extended in literally any direction and orientation, but I couldn’t find a cunning way to separate the two pieces in the couple of months that I’ve had the puzzle… at which point Steve pointed out that it wasn’t really a puzzle, just an interesting mechanism that amused Endo-san… the two parts didn’t come apart after all… and if I’d translated the Japanese description, I’d have saved myself several hours over the course of the last few months. [Insert own smart R’s comment here.]

Chris managed to lower the tone (quite an achievement given some of the folks there!) by renaming my latest Karakuri purchase while Steve has trying to solve it, reducing several of us to giggling school children for quite a while – and I’m never going to be able to look that little otter in the eye again without raising a smile.

Kevin had brought along a couple of Aaron’s diabolical creations and none of us was surprised when they remained thoroughly unsolved during the course of the day. He also brought along a bunch of the recent Pelikan creations and gifted some spare copies to a couple of us – thanks a stack for my copy of Fabrick!

It was great to see Shane after a bit of an absence due to the day job intervening – he’s always an absolute scream – and his surprised reaction whenever he solves anything is hilarious! Great to see you again, Shane!

Steve had a brainwave and brought along a bunch of puzzles he needed help identifying and that seemed to go quite well until the little bits of paper with the names/designers on them mysteriously vanished at some point… although I think they may have turned up later after Steve mentioned that he managed to remember all of the names that had been scribbled on the notes… thus dramatically reducing the jeopardy! There was an element of jeopardy that remained as the puzzles themselves seemed to spontaneously disassemble at one point. I’m sure it wasn’t simply a case of payback!

We had about eighteen folks join us for the traditional fish supper back at our place afterwards so there was a fair amount more puzzling until folks began to drift homewards.

The Dutch contingent continued puzzling for another hour or two until the lateness of the hour made some of them need their beds a bit more than others, so I dropped them at their place and duly crashed.

Next morning I gave Stefan some breakfast and dropped him off at the airport for the start of his long journey home before collect the Dutch contingent one last time ahead of some more puzzling and a bit of lunch.

Louis provided his usual sterling service at solving some of the puzzles that have eluded me for far too long – yup, he made pretty short work of most of them – it’s fine! I’m not a proud man! LOL

One or two puzzles did remain unsolved, including Pitt’s Blocked in Box which has remained unsolved since July… I’m beginning to think it might be hard.

After lunch and a final round of chocolate tart I dropped the boys off at the airport for their afternoon flight… marking the end of another thoroughly enjoyable MPP weekend – thank you all for making it thus!