Pluredro House

Juno has taken it upon himself to fix the Housing Crisis by making an affordable starter home available for sale. As you’d expect it’s a neat little timber-framed number and it contains a number of rather puzzling features.

I placed my order and realising it was due to arrive while we were away in Italy, I asked Yukari to post my copy over to Steve’s place as there was going to be someone in residence while we were all enjoying the heatwave (and some Puzzling Time) in Italy. It arrived safe and sound and then Steve duly delivered it to me at the next MPP…

Rich had a bash at it that evening and made a modest amount of progress before resetting it for me… I duly threw myself into it and made a similarly modest amount of progress before hitting a brick wall, which is odd for a timber-framed house.

The first few steps flowed beautifully, but then there just seemed to be no way to progress…

I did the obvious things of going back to the start and then retracing my steps (even though I needed to cheat a bit in there – if you know… you know) but that yielded no further enlightenment… even trying it under a different star sign yielded no noticeable changes in outcome or indeed any further progress… I remained stuck for quite some time…

Now I should probably have expected this – Juno did warn us that he thought this puzzle was quite a bit harder than his previous sequential discovery puzzles. He also said that he’d taken pity on us lowly puzzlers and included a visual hint for the particularly contentious step in the solve… and I knew that I was even at that step yet!

Puzzles are getting harder and I’m getting slower in the brain department – that’s probably not a great combination.

When the next MPP rolled around a few folks spent a good deal of time on the House and eventually managed to blast through the brick wall – and several other not insignificant obstacles thereafter. Several far better puzzlers triumphed over the House and so the following day, complete with my puzzle guru nearby, I tackled it once more – this time with a handy source or encouragement and nudgings on tap.

Getting past the first brick wall was helped by engaging a little bit of Think (c) – mainly along the lines of what the heck could be stopping me and how could I get around it…? The next few steps where a rollocking ride with progress seeming to flow until I got to the “contentious” step – but here I found Juno’s visual clue to be spot on and helpful with things just magically all lining up and things just seeming to magically happen.

At some point we find ourselves having moved into a single-storey house and turning it into a double-storey – but the fun really comes when you – cue thick cockney accent - blow the bluddy roof off it.

The locks and their tools are classic Juno – but don’t be lulled into thinking you can set your tools aside once you’ve used them – some of them are somewhat multi-functional!

This one’s definitely a step up on the hardness scale  - a few things are reasonably blind but do ultimately yield to the right amount of Think (c) – sadly my stores of the latter seem to be depleting rapidly as I age!

Juno’s House has probably provided the most puzzling value for money I’ve had recently – and still it looks like a mere child’s toy. There is a proper shed-load of puzzling crammed in there though, all of it with well thought-out design and perfect tolerances… if it’s not working, it’s because you’re not doing the right thing, not because anything’s a bit finicky!

An excellent starter home for the well-seasoned puzzler!