Doog’s Single Barrelled Side By Side

OK, so this is a bit embarrassing… I’ve been struggling with the final step on this box for a very long time… almost since I got the box from Doog in Assisi – and that was several months ago!

With this box, Doog announced that he was challenging himself to push his design and workmanship to the next level – which is quite a statement given that I’ve never heard anyone complain about either the novelty of his designs or the functioning of his mechanism. Sure, some of his earlier boxes might have looked a little rustic, but that very element conned me into woefully underestimating their puzzling – and when I did solve them, I had not only found a lot of respect for Doog’s ingenuity, but also his craftsmanship.

I really liked it when he began putting nice wooden veneer on the outside of his puzzles (I admit it, I’m shallow!) so when he announces he’s stepping up a(nother) level, I’m all in!

The name on this one’s a neat allusion to one of the locking mechanisms – usually a single-barrelled thing couldn’t possibly be a side-by-side, but this one manages it.

The chassis is (very neatly!) constructed of plywood making it incredibly stable. It’s dressed up in some beautiful veneer and it appears to have three sections to it, with the top one having three aluminium rods peering out of it. There are a couple more bolts and rods on the sides and that’s about all you have to start off…

Finding the first tool isn’t too challenging and finding a use for it is also reasonably straight-forward. That may lead to another discovery or two but then you may find yourself wanting for a little while…

The next discovery is terrific because it really works against the puzzler on a couple of levels at the same time. Crack that one and you’re gifted the mother-load of bits and pieces which you must somehow use to defeat the final set of locks…

…and this is the part that had me scratching my head for months… not because the mechanism is finicky or things required “encouragement” – they do not – on both accounts! Doog’s even tried to be helpful with some of the breadcrumbs he’s sprinkled around – I was just thinking on altogether the wrong wavelength – and as I kept trying to do the wrong things, I found my way consistently barred… I even tried brute-forcing that part of the solve and failed abysmally.

I watched Rich blast through it and he tried to be helpful by telling me to trust Doog, but I couldn’t make enough sense of the breadcrumbs… and thus it remained until Louis solved it and said something differently which made me realise just how much I’d been overcomplicating things… and so yesterday, after having this box on my desk-of-shame for months, I took it out and worked through the solve properly… and it was glorious – the precision on the final locks is incredible.

Doog said he wanted to push his workmanship to the next level – I reckon job done mate! It’s sublime. (And I’m really sorry I overcomplicated it and it took me so long to finally solve it myself!)