Twins Box

Anyone with an interest in Wil Strijbos’ puzzle boxes will know that he’s been working on the follow-up to his super-fun Angel Box for a while now – we were talking about the project back in 2017 and already back then the traditional backstory had taken shape. It’s a classic Strijbos-story that ties into his Angel Box where he chances upon twin daughters in the Ikebukuro branch of Tokyo Hands. If you’re on his mailing list, you’ve seen the story, and if you have an Angel Box, then Wil’s probably already been in touch to offer you a Twins Box – for the first 100 copies produced he’s giving Angel Box owners first refusal on their edition number – some collectors really like that!

Development of the puzzle has sadly been delayed over the years, not least as a result of the significant Covid-era travel bans which stopped Wil from visiting Tom to work on the design and manufacture. With things slowly getting back to normal, and being able to get a few other projects out of the way, attention returned to the Twins Box and just before the last MPP Wil let me know that my copy was ready for shipping – I opted to wait for personal delivery over commercial courier given this thing weighs over 5kg… it’s invariably going to get dropped somewhere in the shipping chain and no matter how good the packaging, there’s a chance it’s going to get a little dinged.

In the end the Dutch contingent came across with an extra 11kg in their hand luggage in order to make a couple of us very happy puzzlers. Wil handed over my big beautiful lump on the Friday evening and I left it wrapped up on the dining room sideboard until Sunday when I got a chance to play…

On the Saturday, Wil gave Ali his copy and it ended up being placed in various spots around the hall so we could have it in shot for a few of the MPP pics without anyone actually interacting with it, just for a laugh: here’s one of the most eagerly awaited puzzles just lying around with no-one playing with it – childish, I know! :-) [Kudos to Matt W who I think was the first one to spot it and ask what it was!]

I got to play with my copy on the Sunday and it’s an absolute beast – you’re going to play with this one on a table, period, so Wil’s thoughtfully provided a protective cloth and board to stop you damaging both your nicely finished shiny puzzle, and the table that you’re playing on…

There are a couple of interesting little windows and holes around the box… one of which appears to have a little girl peering through it begging you to save her -  no sight of her sister, mind - and on one end there’s the famous “Hers” keyholders that Wil’s been trying to source from around the world over the past few years – it’s good to see where that’s been used after years of scouring shops for copies of these suckers. It comes with a keyring and a couple of keys that both fit in said “Hers” keyholder – they turn, but don’t seem to do anything…

The first series of moves are wonderfully novel – I’ve never seen anything like them before! When things get going there are some amusing discoveries and even some alarming discoveries… while I’m playing on the Sunday afternoon Wil is casting an occasional eye in my direction to observe the progress and he seems happy until I begin to start asking silly questions – for the record “Don’t drop things into holes unless you KNOW that you can control them!” – (I‘d run out of good ideas, in my defence…)

I make a reasonable amount of progress, free my first twin and then find myself somewhat stuck…

…and there I remain for a couple of weeks (including a period of virtually no puzzling while I focused on upgrading my Prusa puzzle-maker) until Louis encouraged me to try something again – something I was pretty sure I’d tried many times already and at first it seemed to do the same (no)thing that it had before, but then something changed and I was moving again…

From there another delightful puzzling journey ensued with a further slew of new mechanisms to identify and defeat. The second half has another unique concept that I haven’t seen in a puzzle before… the progression is pretty positive through to the final compartment where the second twin is released. HUZZAH!

It’s great to see this puzzle in the flesh after at least(!) 8 years in gestation – it’s another classic Strijbos sequential discovery with several brand-new puzzle mechanisms to discover and defeat. (I have huge respect for folks like Wil who can see everyday items and then picture them in the midst of a puzzle providing a surprising challenge – and then actually bringing it all to life as well.)

It’s big. It’s heavy. And it’s expensive… but I’m very chuffed to have the Twins next to my Angel Box. I expect everyone who ends up playing with it is going to get a massive kick out of it!

Thanks Wil for carrying it over to me! Awesome service and a(nother) fantastic puzzle in the Strijbos series! 

 

keebox

I’m often late to the party and after seeing a few of my mates enjoying the solve on the keebox puzzles, I decided I should treat myself to a set of the Blue, Orange and Yellow puzzle boxes.

Etsy duly provided and I was massively impressed with the design of not only the puzzles, but also the packaging, with each of the boxes having custom inserts to cushion the puzzle from the hardships of the outside world – someone has gone to a lot of trouble to customise packaging to the individual puzzles – I appreciate that!

The three provide differing levels of challenge from “easy-peasy” for the Blue, through “a real challenge” and on to “my brain hurts” for the Yellow.

The Blue has a few knobs on the sides – a large knob on the top and a coloured side panel that seems to flap around a little when it’s inspected. You’ll probably start twiddling and fiddling with things and with a bit of luck you’ll find something interesting to explore and stuff will no doubt being to happen… and if you’re anything like me you’re going to find some stuff happening when you least expect it and you’re going to be crawling around on the floor picking up bits and pieces…

Blue provides a relatively short solve without too many diversions – there are one or two delightful little uses for some tools that’ll bring a smile to even the most jaded of solvers – the blue k-token is literally delivered on a platter. I’m not sure I’d call it “easy peasy” but it does provide an introduction to the series and shows you some of what’s to come…

Orange comes with a set of sliders with weird symbols on one side, three knobs on top and another on one side, another of those coloured plates that might do something at some point and a maze inscribed on the back.

Fiddling and twiddling is always a great place to start and soon enough you’ll find yourself with a few tool-shaped objects as a reward for your exploits… somewhere along the way you’ll spot a little ball bearing and with the right encouragement you can even get it into a partially hidden maze… some of those symbols make an appearance and at the right time your can use those to unlock another secret…

There’s a lot to be done on this one – certainly a lot more than on the Blue – but the flow is nice and logical and if you’re stick it’s always worth pausing and considering what you’ve found and what you’ve used… and sometimes more interestingly what you haven’t used… the visual clues are more important on this one than on the Blue – and they all lead you nicely to the spot where you can release the orange k-token.

Yellow looks a bit more intimidating: there appears to be a combination lock built into one side, several sliders and knobs, another of those coloured panels that seems less-well-attached and a complex set of hole patterns on the base… it threatens to hurt your brain – and it will certainly make those little grey cells sweat a little.

Yellow is part physical puzzle, part mental challenge and part pattern recognition – there are several physical surprises (a couple of times I found myself thinking “I wasn’t expecting THAT!” when something interesting happened.

As with the others, there’s a good flow to the solve, with everything following a neat solution path, so if something doesn’t make sense yet or if you find yourself having to guess, you haven’t found everything you’re supposed to have, yet. There are some really excellent little clues along the way – I loved the re-use of some of the elements to provide different clues – that was clever!

…and this time the yellow k-token seems to fall into your lap when you’re done, leaving you wondering where the heck it came from… perhaps that’s just me!

It’s a great series of puzzles for a pretty decent price – I’ve already raved about the design and the packaging, but their hints and reset instructions are worth a shout out as well, providing you with a series of gradual hints for each section of the solve, starting out with a nudge toward where you should be paying attention, via a number of further hints, to a blow-blow-walk-through for each step... a lot of thought and care has gone into these puzzles! 

Tortoise Protocol

Juno’s sequential discovery puzzles are legendary! Latterly they’ve tended to come along pretty much annually. They’re hotly anticipated and tend to sell out in minutes – this year’s release of Tortoise Protocol didn’t disappoint on that front – it was literally gone in minutes with some folks probably ruing their decision to enable two-factor authentication on their purchases.

My copy made the trip over to the UK in great time and I was happily puzzling the following weekend. Tortoise Protocol is a chunky puzzle – it’s definitely more than a handful and all of the requisite tortoise-y bits are where you’d expect them to be. The shell seems to have a bit of wiggle relative to the body, so at some point we’re going to expect to be able to open things up… but at the start, we just have a few appendages to fiddle with to try and make some progress.

There are some obvious things to get the tortoise to do and some of them appear to open the doors to even more things, so we decide this must be progress and we forge on until we find ourself with fewer appendages and a whole new world opening up to us.

At this point (and it’s not really a spoiler!) you find yourself with all of the stuff you’ve done up until now out on display and easily accessible and another half of the story apparently totally locked up… sure there’s a lot of things to investigate and poke about with, just nothing actually seems to give you any progress at all…

I spent quite a while at this point in the solve pondering my life choices and wondering where the heck my inspiration would come from… there was obviously still a pile of things to do – just no apparent way in to start things off… this particular brick wall kept me at bay for ages.

Eventually I stumbled across the key to defeating my current nemesis that started a wonderful romp of a solve through the rest of the puzzle. There’s a wonderfully whimsical series of linked challenges to amuse the solver, with each giving just enough up to guide you through to the next challenge, be that a peek of something useful, or the discovery of a new tool. Given this is Juno, it’s worth keeping an open mind about things you come across – most things are tools in the right hands!

No tortoises harmed in this blog post

 

There are some fun steps along the way, and I found myself wondering how some things worked and where the heck some tools had magically appeared from.

There is a very clear end goal – you’ll know when you’ve found it!

And the best part? Resetting is wonderfully non-trivial – if you did miss anything along the way, you’ll be forced to work it out in order to reset everything… and there was one little “feature” I thought I hadn’t used until almost the very end of the reset – and I smiled to myself when I twigged why it was there – everything is there for a reason!

Juno’s sequential discovery fans are going to love this one and I suspect that if it ends up getting entered into any puzzle design competitions it’s going to give the other entries a damn good run for their money!

Another epic sequential discovery puzzle from one of the masters of the art!

 

Midas Touch Puzzlebox, aka Stickman #38

I was super chuffed when I got the first email from Robert Yarger announcing his 38^th numbered puzzlebox. Midas Touch came about as a result of the clamour of requests over the years for “something similar” to his iconic Gordian Knot puzzlebox, and given that Midas was Gordian’s son in Greek mythology, it seems fitting.

Visually, Midas Touch has a very strong resemblance to Gordian Knot – there’s a dizzying patchwork of bits and pieces wrapped around a cube, although Midas Touch is significantly larger than Gordian Knot… oh and there’s a huge trapped Stickman coin inviting you to remove it from the outer shell of Midas Touch.

My copy arrived a couple of days before MPP and in spite of having a couple of plays with it, I felt like I’d made almost no progress – there were some bits and pieces that could be successively manipulated in the outer shell and with some careful scrutiny, a bit of experimentation I managed to string a few useful things together until I hit a total brick wall…

A few folks had a bash at it at MPP and made similar amounts of progress until the already well-documented sabotage by a Welsh puzzler which brought play to a halt. A couple of days later I’d decided how best to repair it, broke out the glue and then spent a while holding things firmly in place for the glue to set.

Next day I was happy with my repair, but still not really able to make much progress beyond the series of steps I’d discovered the week before. I spent quite a while trying similar things and making no progress whatsoever… and it required some serious exploration before I managed to make that next bit of progress, but it was pretty darn mind-blowing. I’d decided how this box was going to be solved, and how it would probably end up opening, and I was totally wrong.

This is a classic Stickman gotcha! Rob makes you think you understand things and then you realise he’s parked you in a blind alley and you’ve been in there for hours on your own enjoying making absolutely no progress!

That first big “A-Ha!” was massive for me and seriously ramped up my expectation of this puzzlebox on the one hand, but on the other it gave me a whole new way to think about things… and that turned out to be quite important!

The attention definitely shifts gear and these new aspects are fun to explore. You’re in proper classic puzzlebox territory although a lot of the time it’s really hard to figure out what could be impeding your progress, and how the heck you get around whatever that is – the interplay between the outer shell and the hidden innards is really clever and kept me guessing for ages.

There’s a wonderful sense of triumph when you finally open a drawer and get into the box, although the elation doesn’t last when you remember that Rob’s told you there are two internal drawers to discover and open…

The last act is another neat little challenge providing just enough motivation without making you feel like you’ve had to head right back to school again.

Getting everything fully opened is a great reward for the not inconsiderable effort required to solve it – and if you’re anything like me, that challenge is a long way from over because reassembly is another significant challenge – unless you’ve taken lots to notes you’re definitely going to find yourself going backwards and forwards a few times as you come to realise you’ve backed yourself into a corner you can’t get out of.

Midas Touch is definitely a worthy extension to this royal family of challenges.

Another wonderfully bonkers puzzlebox from the Stickmeister himself.