No Way Box

I’d heard that there was a new puzzle box coming from Peter Hajek courtesy of Pelikan and I was keeping an eye out for the usual notifications when I spotted a posting on Facebook mentioning that it was available. I reached out to Jakub on FB Messenger and a few hours later I’d managed to order and pay for a copy. 

 

A week or so later it arrived, just before the American invasion at MPP. I got to spend a little while playing with it before the gang started arriving and even managed to make a little progress…

It’s a big old lump of a puzzle box with some handsome inlay work on the top and the instructions (Find six queens and a gear) etched on the bottom. There appear to be hinges on all four sides of the lid, which is interesting, to quote an old Laurie-ism, because that would ordinarily be about three sides too many! Finally there are a pair of hinged doors on opposite sides of the box. (Little wonder the credits include a nod to Ivo Splichal for hinge production! – He’s clearly put a lot of work into this box.)

There’s certainly a lot to explore, but depending on your approach, you might be stuck at the very start for quite a while… if you’re a distrusting sort, or someone familiar with Peter’s other puzzles, you’ll probably start questioning all of the assumptions you didn’t even know you’d already made (trust me, you have!) and that will help you off to a great start.

There are a couple of phases that pretty much every puzzler has found reasonably quickly. (I took it along to MPP the following day and several folks had a play with it.) They are beautifully executed and the mechanisms are delightfully positive – you know when you’re doing something useful.

I managed to storm through the initial phases and then found myself running out of ideas and time as the gang was arriving, so I reset it all and we took it along to MPP, where quite a few folks had a play and I recognised the progress they’d made, but no-one seemed to get through the next hurdle…

…and so it continued on the Sunday back at my place – a few more folks had a bash and all ended up stopping at the same place… having found all bar the final queen.

Dave, Nick and I spent a while chatting about it and spit-balling ideas, but nothing seemed to work and there was still an apparently massive internal space undiscovered…

Next morning I had an email from Dave before he headed back to London from his hotel suggesting a rather bonkers sounding idea… which could just work – I dropped everything and went down to the dining room and tried it and it works perfectly… final queen discovered and the box’s name now makes perfect sense – “No way!” is quite literally the very best response to the solution for the final compartment!

Peter understands the mind of the puzzler and uses this to toy with us. The solve on this one draws you in at the beginning, provides a lovely little fishy detour before thoroughly blowing your mind on the final stage of the solve. You need to keep your wits about you to complete all of the missions – it’s really easy to slip up and miss a few goals.

Most definitely a puzzlers’ puzzle!

Superb design Peter! Beautifully executed by Jakub and the gang at Pelikan! Kudos all…