Free Me 9

Joseph Turner’s been producing excellent trapped coin puzzles for a while now… I’ve been lucky to have been gifted or acquired a couple of them so far, but I totally missed out on the first round of Free Me 9…

The sting was reduced a bit when I got to spend a little time with the copy in last year’s Design Competition, but I didn’t come close to solving it, and I realised I really wanted a copy, so I asked Joe nicely if he’d put me on a waiting list.

Just before Christmas Joe let me know my number was up and it duly arrived just before Christmas and disappeared under the Christmas tree… where it waited until we returned after Boxing Day and I got some time to play…

Free Me 9 is a nice slab of Cherry wood, I think – with a pair of dovetail ends and three generous holes displaying the two Kennedy half-dollars either side of Lady Liberty, providing the nickname “Two Guys and a Gal”. The clear aim is to release the three somewhat trapped coins.

There are a couple of interesting little holes that might yield some clues to the inner mechanism, if not to the means of manufacture. The coins are all readily accessible and they’ll spin on their axes quite happily, but they aren’t coming out for love nor money.

Finding the first (useful!) step is a lovely little “A-Ha!” moment – make a little progress and you’ll find yourself with some tools and your first coin… so far, so good.

Enter a little period of experimentation and finding new and creative ways for wielding those tools, and you’ll release your second coin – cue small celebration – in my case mainly because I’d now been able to replicate my progress in the Design Competition room…

I’d spent a while trying to make more progress and got to the point where I’d decided it was my bedtime and I had to give up on it… fast forward a few months and I now have my mitts on my own copy and it’s time for the puzzler’s revenge… only that sweet taste of victory turns out for be pretty darned elusive…

I end up spending quite a while over the course of several days before I finally manage to string the right sequence of “stuff” together to free that elusive lady.

Free Me 9 is epic… Joe’s really outdone himself on this one – there’s a lot to discover and he’s done an excellent job of giving you all of the tools you need - without you realising it! I love the fact that I was staring the final stages of the solution in the face for ages without realising what I needed to do.

Thanks for putting me on the list, Joe!