Pinball Wizard

The latest sequential discovery masterpiece from MW Puzzles made an early guest appearance at MPP a while back and, even though it wasn’t quite finalised yet, it already looked stunning… I can’t really comment on how advanced the puzzling elements were as I managed to make literally zero progress on it!

When it became available on their website, I joined the throng and secured a place in the queue when the puzzles were ready. (Having already enjoyed several of their puzzles already, I had no qualms about doing this – these guys have earned their reputation for delivering on their promises!)

A few weeks later there was an email, an invoice, some PayPal was paid and then the cutest little pinball machine in the world duly arrived in an incredibly well-packaged parcel.

How can you not love a puzzle whose instructions literally start with “Play Pinball”!?

The next two steps are (only) slightly more pedestrian (“Find your unique Issue Number” and “Win the Trophy”) before the fourth task requires you to “Have Fun!”… so you kinda have to!

The attention to detail is excellent – this diminutive machine has a working plunger for launching the balls, bumpers, working flippers (well, it had to, didn’t it?), some obstacles and scoring holes and of course the inevitable drain… the backboard has a numeric display with an issue # / 350 – currently displaying 000 – but that can’t be right…

Looking around the machine, there are a few odd holes and strange-looking thingamabobs, but prodding them and twisting them doesn’t seem to do anything…

In shipping configuration there’s a big old chunk of cork jammed into a hole on the side, removing that frees your ball bearing, ready to play…

Dropping the ball into the chute and releasing the plunger sends the ball into play and the flippers are pretty responsive and soon enough you can launch the ball around the table to more or less any part that suits your fancy… Step 1 achieved.

While just playing pinball is fun, there’s clearly a lot more to this mechanical marvel, so I set about exploring some of the less obvious “features” – I find some things far more interesting than others and begin finding some tools. At one point I’m just tootling around when a tool quite literally launches itself into the air – this little guy is full of surprises it turns out!

There’s some lovely sequential stuff in the guts of the solve where pathways open up as you progress and you find new things to explore… several times I found myself getting stuck on an element and literally imagining a breakthrough several days later only to find that at least part of what I’d dreamt up turned out to be useful and provide some forward progress…

The final stage of this puzzle tortured me for several days – like any good puzzler I kept trying the same things over and over again expecting a different outcome…”knowing” what I needed to do… only to realise about a week later that one of my assumptions was literally as wrong as it could be!

Matthew clearly understands puzzlers, and in particular, he understands exactly how to lead them right up the garden path and into a blind alley! I’d love to see the mechanics inside this little guy because there are so many little surprising interactions that don’t always seem possible… right from that very first little surprise.

This one looks stunning and it’s a cracking sequential discovery puzzle to boot! What’s not to love?

….and you get to play as much pinball as you want!

 

Haleslock 6 aka Who Dares Wins

Take one part incredibly talented designer of puzzle locks, mix cautiously with two parts brass puzzle wizards, add a little monkey business and you have the perfect recipe for puzzling mayhem – enter Who Dares Wins, from Ali, Shane and Steve (other arrangements may be available!). 

I got to play with a prototype of this puzzle at an MPP several moons ago – I remember saying good things about it and encouraging Shane to make some more copies of it, mainly so that I could add one to my collection… ‘cos it made me smile when I solved it…

Some time later, the lads sent me a production version in the mail and boy had things changed! The form-factor was totally unrecognisable: now a handsome black cylinder with some brass accents around the waist and a brass lock peaking out the one end with Shane’s trademark signature stamped into the metal… it looks brilliant!

It comes with a rather pedestrian-looking key, the sort that you might bump into on a night out with the lads, albeit attached to a custom keyring complete with nameplate and goal neatly laid out. You have no excuses!

Of course introducing the key to the lock makes some very satisfying clicky noises, but seemingly does virtually nothing to actually unlock the puzzle… this is Haleslock 6! Your latest challenge has arrived…

Everyone already knows that Shane is an absolute whizz at designing and crafting puzzle locks. He is also a rather good solver and student of the solve, and of the solver, and as a result he knows how puzzlers think, so don’t be surprised if he ends up occasionally using that against you…

This puzzle has a wonderfully elegant solution, some surprising twists along the way, and a proper laugh out loud moment when you solve it. (I defy you not to laugh at that bit…you’ll know!) This puzzle screams “COLLABORATION!” – there are some clear touches from both the Monkeys and from Shane – and the whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts.

It’s way better than the prototype – this one didn’t just make me smile, it made me laugh out loud! 

....get one! You'll love it...

MPP LCIIV

(Insert own favourite Roman Numeral here)

Traditionally the first MPP after an IPP has at least one full set of all of the exchange puzzles (and assorted other treasures from the Puzzle Party) so that anyone who wasn’t able to make it along to IPP can still have a bash at the puzzles, so I schlepped four crates of puzzles along in honour of that tradition.

When I arrived at the hall I got a bit of a fright when I found someone already set up and about to host eight expecting couples to talk them through the impending changes their bundles of joy would be bringing… after a short chat, and a bit of checking on bookings we realised she should have been in the lounge, not the hall, so with impeccable timing, Ali and the London gang arrived to help move all her carefully prepared information stations into the room down the corridor… (thank guys!) while the rest of us set about getting some tables and chairs (and several hundred puzzles) out for some puzzling.

I’d come across a 3D printed variant of Frabjous called Stellated-Dodecathing (fab name!) on Printables and spent a few days printing out vast quantities of the requisite bits for some assembly fun… several folks had a bash at assembling them and helped me out by taking a copy home – I ended up with a single copy – so one of my crates was a lot lighter than when I’d arrived. I’d also 3D printed a large pile of Ken’s Fool’s Cube that I’d really enjoyed playing with at IPP. The premise is simple: you race with a friend to assemble a cube from the pieces on the keychain and then return them to the start position on the keychain… along the way there’s a wonderful moment when you realise that you might have just done something silly… and right about then you realise why everyone’s looking at you and grinning. It’s a really fun puzzle that I hope everyone else enjoyed as much as I did the first time Ken caught me out with it in Houston. (Thanks Ken!!)

I managed to get rid of several piles of puzzles various folks had asked me to bring back from Houston for some local(-ish) puzzlers, as well as a small pile of my spare exchange puzzles.

There was a bit of fun with the Stellated Dodecathings when Steve discovered that the void inside it would fit not only a copy of his Lone Star Burr, but also all of the cash we’d collected so far to cover the hire of the hall, as long as it was rolled up very tightly… which meant that at the end of the day I had a small collection of sterling notes all neatly rolled in straw-like structures - that didn’t look dodgy at all!

Michel managed to join us from a not-so-near camp-site where his family were currently holidaying and enjoying the best of the British summer (his expectations had clearly already been lowered and they were having a great time!). He’d been visiting all of the charity and puzzle shops he could find along the way and ended up giving me a copy of the Hi Q Eureka domino tray-packing puzzle and a Rubik’s fidget cube that he’d picked up in spite of already having copies of his own – thank you sir!

Lewis joined us for his first MPP experience (hopefully we didn’t put him off!) bringing along a prototype of his next Stickman collaboration – a Gordian Knot variation. He sportingly let me have a play with it and I managed to show just how much I’ve forgotten of the solve for that wonderful little puzzle… I managed to string together a few moves and confirm that he really has managed to recreate the look and play of the original puzzle rather expertly – he’s added a bit of twist on the original right at the end of the solve - so I have no idea what that is… but I suspect that Rich might have got very close to solving it later on back at my place.

Dale was dishing out his own variations on a set of coin and matchstick challenges that had several of us scratching our heads for quite a while, in fact I’m still stumped by several of them more than a week on!

During the course of observing Oli assembling a copy of the Stellated Dodecathing I made a startling scientific discovery: my first observation of Anti-Think(c) – Oli was connecting up sets of arms to the corner connectors and he had managed to connect them all perfectly wrong – there are two possible ways of adding an arm to a connector and he had managed to literally offer up every single arm he’d connected in the wrong orientation… if he’d just randomly bashed them together you’d have expected about half of them to be wrong and the others to be right, even by accident; but Oli had contrived to connect every single one of them wrong without even realising there was a right and a wrong way… something we could only put down to a hidden super power – Oli’s Anti-Think(c). Remember you read about it here first!

Oli had brought Jack along for a day’s puzzling and have to say that Soos-the-younger appeared to be a pretty gifted solver of sliding tile puzzles – who knows what that says about nature versus nurture!

Adin joined us for several hours puzzling and then gamely took home a copy of George’s Hex Screws that I had left over from the previous MPP – and barely a week later he’d assembled the first of the two challenges! (For the record, my copy was assembled by Rich – there is no way in heck I could get that thing together!)

I disappeared off home at lunchtime to let the hounds out and grab a sandwich while the others headed down to the High Street for the pig rolls that weren’t there… there were kebabs though…

Sometime after lunch Frank texted to say that he wouldn’t be coming as he was going to have a nap rather… too much excitement perhaps, or perhaps there was more to that story – I’m sure he’ll tell you if you ask him- I just remember that he chose to take a nap over coming to MPP.

I had a great time exploring Dan’s copy of Chained Key puzzle – I felt sure I was making great progress until I got thoroughly stopped in my tracks – I spent a while trying to get around the virtual roadblock without success before Dan admitted that he’d been stuck at precisely the same spot… something that seemed to catch everyone else out over the course of the rest of the day… a couple of days later he told me he’d conquered it and I found myself buying a copy from Luke’s website. It’s a great little puzzle!!

Later in the afternoon I spent a while totally embarrassing myself when I tried Dan’s own design for a second time… I spent ages chasing the things in the wrong dimension and made an absolute hash of the solve, possibly helping him to convince himself that he didn’t need to make it any harder than it already was!

We packed up some time after 5 and then headed back to my plaice for the traditional cod and chips. Hugo the Hippo and a bunch of the older Stickmans came out to play while Steve updated his social media profile. Several Minima’s and some recent Pelikan’s stoutly resisting solving… it was a good evening after another fun day’s puzzling with my mates – thank you folks!