Peter Hajek’s End-of-Year Puzzle Party (EPP)

The first time I heard about Peter’s EPPs was when I picked up a copy of a colour booklet called “The Best Puzzle Finds of the Year 2009 / 2010” from Wil Strijbos back in October. It’s a soft cover 60-odd page booklet documenting a collection of puzzlists presenting their best three puzzle finds of the year – with quite of few of them attending the EPP at Peter’s house at the end of 2009 and 2010 to share their finds with others.  I was delighted to have come across the booklet as it contained several puzzles I recognised, some that I already have, and a number on a wish list for “one day when I grow up!”- all of them described by people who were enthusiastic about them and considered them one of their three best puzzle finds of the year. What better recommendation could you wish for? 

Wil in action

A little while later, Peter sent out an invitation on Nobnet for contributions to this year’s selection, and also invited anyone who’d be in London at the end of December to come along – I decided this was way too good an offer to refuse, so set about choosing my 3 three puzzle finds of the year to email off to Peter – and made some enquiries about going along on the day ... Peter was really encouraging and as it turned out, Gill and I were going to be in London that day to see some friends from South Africa who were over on holiday, so I made arrangements to attend. 

I was one of the first to arrive on the day – not counting Wil and Joop who were staying there – but pretty soon the place was filled with puzzlists wandering around peering at the crates of puzzles for trade / sale, chatting about our nominated puzzles and picking up and playing with the odd puzzle dotted around the Hajek house. 

David Singmaster with his prized find

Peter played the perfect host and made sure that everyone had been introduced and given something to drink before allowing us to mingle and get to know one another for a while ... given that Wil was the only person there that I’d already met, I ended up meeting a bunch of new puzzle-fiends, and a couple of magicians (Peter doesn’t discriminate!). One of the gents I met comes from just down the road from me – and it turns out is a rather accomplished designer of puzzles – although to my shame I only discovered that afterwards – hopefully I’ll be able to convince Sam Cornwell to come along to one or two of our MPPs in the near future – I know there are a few people who’d like to meet him!

Peter always manages to arrange for a lecture or a performance of some sort during the afternoon – in 2009 and 2010 there were a couple of magic performances and lectures from Laurie Brokenshire, William Houston and Angelo Carbone. This year Peter had lined up artist Patrick Hughes to talk about his mind-blowing perspective-mangling art. I hadn’t come across Patrick’s work before so did a little Googling beforehand and read up a little but it didn’t really prepare me for what I was about to experience – Patrick had brought along one of his works (“Volumes” 6/7 from memory) and had it displayed up at the front of the room – he gave a wonderfully self-effacing talk for someone who was clearly a very gifted artist from where I was sitting and talked about how he found art that challenged your perception or your assumptions really interesting, mentioning a couple of pieces of others’ art in his own collection to illustrate his points – then he turned his attention to the piece he’d brought along and started describing some aspects that,  to be honest, didn’t make a lot of sense to me given where I’d been sitting (toward the back of the room). He’d been talking about how the piece seems to move in unusual ways when you moved across it and that this was partly the result of your brain trying to make sense of something that didn’t really make sense because of how it had been painted – he’d illustrated the concepts earlier by talking about the Ames Window but I was having difficulty linking those ideas with the painting I was looking at, or rather from where I was looking at it. 

Patrick Hughes

At the end of his talk, Patrick encouraged us all to experiment with his painting and when I wandered up close it made sense all of a sudden! What I was looking at wasn’t a flat painting, it was a painting on a series of projections where the painting had been given a forced perspective – some of which were right (i.e. exaggerated) and some of which were wrong – so as you looked at the painting your brain tried (unsuccessfully in my case!) to make sense of what it was seeing, forcing one interpretation on it – which was fine, until you moved – up or down or left or right – then the combination of forced perspective and actual projections caused things to move in a way that your brain wasn’t expecting, helpfully (!) your brain then tries to compensate and tells you that the things in the picture must actually be moving around in a rather strange way ... a very spooky effect indeed! Several times later that afternoon there’d be three or four of us standing in front of that piece swaying sideways or bobbing up and down and remarking about how weird it was. Patrick is clearly a master of perception and knows just how to toy with it to create some really disturbing effects – and I’m glad that I’ve been introduced to his work – not sure I’m ever going to be able to add any of it to my collection, but privileged to have been exposed to it by the man himself. 

After Patrick’s talk and a brief break, we each took turns to present our three best puzzle (or magic!) finds of the year ... we took turns alphabetically and managed to tie ourselves in knots once or twice and promptly rearranged the alphabet but managed to get all of our turns taken in the end. 

I’d nominated Brian Young’s Opening Bat, Robert Yarger’s Little Game Hunter and Coffin’s Rosebud made by Scott Peterson as my three puzzle finds for the year: 

• Opening Bat because it is an epic puzzle that keeps you going for ages and then rewards you superbly at the end when you solve the final part of the puzzle,
• Little Game Hunter because I managed to get one straight from Rob after starting a small collection of Stickmen earlier in the year and getting yards and yards of advice and encouragement from Rob while I was finishing off my DIY Chopstick box and the Grandfather Clock – I love his puzzles because they’re all so entirely different and each presents a unique challenge,
• Rosebud because it’s an iconic Coffin design and it was both my first puzzle from Scott Peterson and my first taste of Coffin’s unusual geometry – both of which will hopefully stay with me for quite some time!

It turns out that someone else at the EPP (Steve Nicholls) had also nominated the Opening Bat, and in fact, so had 6 other people who’d provided email submissions – making it the runaway best pick of the year with a total of 8 nominations! The previous record for multiple nominations (shared by the Stickman Gordian Knot Box and Oskar’s Gear Cube) was four nominations, back in 2010. Peter reckons the record is likely to stand for a while – I reckon it reflects what an incredible creation Brian came up with...

After the presentations Peter and Katja provided a tremendous spread for dinner that kept us going for ages before we inevitably lapsed into more puzzle chat, bartering and outright buying. 

At one point Peter called me to join a couple of others who wanted to see his puzzle room upstairs – there were a couple of us who hadn’t see the puzzle room before and the first puzzle turned out to be how to get into the puzzle room! The door appeared to be locked, with a keyhole on the side where you’d normally expect it, and a handle not quite where you’d expect it – helpfully there was a key supplied, unfortunately it was rather well attached to a chain on a hook in the middle of the door, and wouldn’t you know it, the chain was too short to allow it into the keyhole ... and it kept us out until Peter helped us out and showed us in ... WOW! The puzzle room houses an absolutely stunning collection, most of it beautifully displayed in glass-fronted cabinets ... from a number of early Stickmen, through the genesis of the Karakuri Group, via an exceptional collection of Kamei’s and onto an impressive set of Coffins, key-chain puzzles a-plenty (even though most of them are in the cabinets of drawers) and best of all (for me at any rate) a collection of Trevor Wood boxes, including Takashima’s Tantalizing Temple in pride of place ... lovely.

Back downstairs Tim Rowett did the rounds dishing out Christmas presents to everyone and telling stories about each of the little goodies he was handing out and somehow didn’t seem to tire of telling them – everyone got the same treatment whether you were first in line or last...

Slowly the numbers dwindled and we were hit by a sudden realisation that we’d missed the opportunity to take a group photo before folks started leaving, so we ended up with a slightly depleted group photo – maybe next year we’ll be more vigilant... 

While things wound down, we naturally found ourselves gravitating toward the study where everyone managed to find something interesting to play with or discuss – me, I found a recent little Mike Toulouzas creation that I hadn’t seen in the flesh before and enjoyed solving it for the first time – and I managed to do it quietly, unlike the majority of the folks at the last IPP who seemed to make quite a racket playing with it judging by Brian P’s account.  I can see why it won a Jury First Prize award though...

In the intervening weeks Peter has been beavering away and has already sent us all  (including those who emailed their selections) a soft copy of the booklet – complete with write-ups and photos – he is incredibly efficient ... as well as a tremendous host!

Thanks to Peter and Katja for opening up your home to a bunch of puzzlists, including a number of unknown quantities like myself who came along for the first time, for making us all feel at home and giving us a great day (and night’s) entertainment – your hospitality was supreme! 

And finally thanks to Patrick for introducing me to your work and opening my eyes to seeing perspective differently – I’m not sure I’m ever going to get over that... :-)

Cubic Dissections action

There are a few websites that I like to keep an eye on fairly regularly just in case something interesting comes up – Cubic Dissections is one of them. A couple of weeks back I happened to notice some really weird things happening to some of the listings – they seemed to be multiplying and moving around on the web page, then they started changing, but they all seemed to be referring to items that were sold out. 

The next day the movements seemed to begin to take shape and settle down and shortly after that I received Eric’s traditional email warning that some new stuff had been added to the web site for anyone that was interested.

Now last time that happened a couple of months back, the warning email arrived just after I’d turned off the netbook for the night and by the time I logged on the next morning, a couple of the really interesting items had already all been sold out – dagnabbit!

I did get a few really nice items anyway, and managed to pick up a copy of Three Sticks Trapped when Oli decided to get rid of a couple of the items he’d managed to buy, so it wasn’t a total loss by any means – just in case you’re beginning to feel the need to be sympathetic!

This time around, things were different – I piled in straight away and managed to get everything that I wanted – and Eric’s usual efficiency and the fact that the parcel came straight to my front door (instead of spending a week or so in customs first!) meant that I had my new toys pretty soon afterwards – and in good time for the next MPP where a few of them got passed around among some of the folks who hadn’t managed to pile in quite as quickly as I had. 

Here are the highlights: 

Stand Py Me was designed by Gregory Benedetti and published earlier this year. It was added to Ishino’s website in May this year and 4 short months later(!) there was a discussion about it on Renegades, with Gregory explaining the name was a play on words around a “Py-ramid on a Stand” – with the basic internal structure resembling those pesky offset cube puzzles like Coffin’s rather famous three-piece block puzzle. 

Stand Py Me starts with a four-piece offset cube structure in the shape of a tetrahedron – but adds a twist by insisting that it should be built in a frame that captures three sides of the pyramid. 

Now Gregory is rather well-known for his puzzles having a bit of a twist to them – in fact his Youtube channel name is “Rotations Required” ... so when I attacked this puzzle, I had that foremost in my mind and subsequently spent several fruitless sessions trying to engineer a means of partially assembling the pyramid in situ and then twisting the last pieces into place. After trying that approach for quite a while, I wondered out loud if there might be a simpler, purer, better way of doing things –the dogs gave me a very strange look at this point. From there it honestly didn’t take long to find the right, rather elegant solution that allows everything to slide perfectly into place out of position and then slide into the final positions required to make the pyramid. 

Eric has made these puzzles beautifully - his attention to the details is staggering: just take a look at the joints on those frames! And his kindly using a contrasting wood for the extremities definitely helps numpties like me solve the thing. 

Neil’s already shared his thoughts on this puzzle in his blog and you can read them over here.

Two Pi is another Gregory Benedetti design from 2009.

This one is a three-piece cube that Eric’s made out of Zebrawood. 

It’s a reasonably straight-forward co-ordinated motion puzzle with the shapes of the pieces designed to have you pulling against yourself for all of the usual means of gripping a cube. There’s another interesting little feature of the design that from some angles, it looks like a simple 3*3*3 cube, but from other angles there are clearly some rather odd diagonals. The coolest thing about the cube is that playing with it and trying to tug it apart using any natural feeling grip will give the impression of a totally unyielding cube – yet in the right orientation, a simple spin on a flat surface will send the pieces flying apart. [Don’t do that near the edge of a desk like I did, or one of the pieces may well end up on the floor in more bits than desired – it’s back together again, but it doesn’t fly apart quite as slickly as after Eric had put it together the first time!] 

Eric made up a beautiful version of Martin Watson’s Digigrams. Martin tells the story on his website about coming up with the idea for the puzzle one night when he couldn’t sleep and found himself watching his digital alarm clock tick over. Since then it’s been made in several formats and sizes (e..g take a Look at Steve Strickland’s version over here) and served as an IPP exchange puzzle in Tokyo in 2001. 

The premise is simple: arrange the digits 0-9 inside the 4*5 tray.

Deceptively simple.

Devilishly difficult.

Eric’s version uses clear laser-cut acrylic digits and they look terrific against the grandillo base of the tray.

You can read Jerry’s thoughts on this puzzle over here.

Galaxy by Osanori Yamamoto was one of the puzzles that I missed out on in the last round at Cubic Dissection so I was delighted to find that a couple more had been put up for sale in this round. Four identical burrs need to be inserted into a frame – and the clue to the complexity of this fiendish little puzzle is summed up in the fact that it’s a level 18.10 burr – so that’s 18 moves to release the first piece, and then another 10 moves before all three of the remaining bits come flying out, together. 

 

It goes without saying that Eric’s work is great on this puzzle as well – one little thing to be aware of is that because the puzzle has so much air in the middle, some of the pieces will want to lean over and that will impede progress – best to keep your bits upright. 

Havanna’s 2 by Alfons Eyckmans is a lovely four-burrs-in-a-box puzzle. Eric has made the burrs in purpleheart wood and it looks brilliant in the walnut box. This one’s pretty tricky and removing the first piece takes an awful lot of manoeuvring of all the bits in the box. 

The first time you try and take the puzzle apart, your immediate challenge is trying to work out where the stoppers inside the box are and more or less what shape the pieces are – and having removed them, realising that the pieces are somewhat more complex than I thought they were. 

 

Several far more eloquent writers have already blogged about the Zauberflöte. Neil raised some interesting questions about ‘solutions’ on Renegades using this puzzle as an example – specifically, if rotations are clearly possible on a puzzle design, should they be allowed in a solution – and it was quite interesting to hear from Gregory “Rotations Required” Benedetti who designed this puzzle, that as far as he was concerned, even if a puzzle wasn’t designed to use rotations (and this one hadn’t) if they were clearly possible and they resulted in a shorter solution, then absolutely they should be used and explored! 

 

You can read Neil’s take on the puzzle over here. Puzzle-solver extraordinaire Brian Pletcher has written about it over here and the professional number (think about it!), Kevin, has written about it over here.

All I’d add to their expert opinions is another vote for this format of clear acrylic boards combined with lovely hardwood bits – it looks great next to Eric’s Padaung Rings!

Rosebud and Super Nova

Some of my previous posts have already mentioned that I haven’t been a Coffin-collector (Big C, not small c- I don’t have the space!) for very long, and I should probably be ashamed to admit that until a couple of months ago I hadn’t ever seen a Rosebud, aka #39, let alone stared at one with a silly look on my face as it opened and closed, repeatedly.

I was first alerted to their existence when Oli started asking on the puzzle forums if anyone knew where he could find one – now I know that Oli has a good eye for great puzzles, so I thought it might be worth tagging along for the ride. I did a bit of Googling and found that Brian Pletcher had some incredibly good things to say about this puzzle and had particularly enjoyed playing with one while visiting Saul Bobroff in this blog post. The description in Stewart Coffin’s book makes the Rosebud sound like quite an enigma – it consists of ‘just’ 6 pieces (three pairs of identical, handed pieces) that assemble in a co-ordinated motion into one of two possible assemblies. Once it’s assembled in the main configuration, it can be expanded and contracted in "a most fascinating manner, rather like the petals of a blooming flower"– to quote the designer himself. Said designer also gives a pretty plain warning that this puzzle is not for the faint-hearted: “A few of these puzzles were produced some years ago and sold unassembled. After sufficient time had elapsed and almost none had been solved, the customers were given the opportunity to purchase (for an outrageous price!) an assembly jig and directions. With these, it is easy. Without the jig, it can be done with patience, using tape and rubber bands. Without such aids, it has been done but borders on the impossible.”

 

So getting back to our story, Oli’s pleas for help were duly answered by several voices out in the ether-web suggesting that he ask Scott Peterson to make him one, and a short while later, said gent duly appeared on the forum and confirmed that he’d gladly oblige – at which point I did the predictable “Me too, please sir” routine and next thing, Scott was lining up the orders. What happened next took me a bit by surprise – I got an email from Scott saying that he was about to start making my Rosebud, which woods would I like? Now I’m used to buying puzzles from e-shops or on auctions, where they’re already made – sometimes you might get a choice between a couple of models, but someone asking me what woods to use in a puzzle being made especially for me, was a new experience. A couple of email exchanges later I’d not only settled on a combination of Wenge and Flamewood for the Rosebud, but also established that Scott had a couple of spare Super Novas and ordered one of those as well.

A few days later Scott let me know that the puzzles were finished and sent me a couple of photos of the finished product – smitten, I sent him some cash and started stalking my postman. The puzzles arrived about a week later, along with the Assembly Jig (I’m not superhuman like that Pletcher chap!) – and they looked even better in the flesh!

Scott makes puzzles in his spare time and says he enjoys the idea of making puzzles for people who enjoy them – from what he charged me for the Rosebud and Super Nova, I can only assume that he gets a lot of pleasure out of making these puzzles, because he certainly isn’t making much money out of them! And they are phenomenally well made! The hardwood edges are really sharp and the pointy ends are very pointy! (I’ve subsequently knocked at least one of them off in my ham-fisted playing with it…) The fit between the six pieces is incredibly good – even spotting a seam is difficult. 

Opening and closing the Rosebud is really mesmerising – all six pieces slide in and out in perfect symmetry – so much so that all six pieces have to be perfectly aligned to start the assembly process, and all pieces will remain solidly locked together with less than a millimetre of overlap at the very tips of the pieces. Of course, moving them apart that millimetre results in six pieces falling apart at the same time.

Assembling the Rosebud with a jig is reasonably fiddly – I don’t want to imagine what it’s like without one – I’m going to leave that to the Pletchers of this world.

The Rosebud has an alternative assembly that is WAY simpler – even this old ham-fisted hoarder managed to work it out – it results in a nice, interesting looking lump, but it doesn’t have any of the magic of the main Rosebud configuration.

I also took the opportunity to get a Super Nova from Scott – this is another Coffin design also known endearingly as #14. It consists of six different pieces that combine to form a symmetric assembly - that interestingly can be taken apart in several different axes – clever!

It’s a handsome looking puzzle that’s also fairly accessible – by which I mean that even Muggins was able to solve this one unassisted! Even though the six pieces are dissimilar in the mathematical sense, they’re similar in the usual sense – which means you can separate them into two piles and build a pair of symmetrical halves to slide together without too much bother. Scott’s craftsmanship is evident in this puzzle as well as it’s totally unforgiving of any misalignment during assembly – you need to get the pair of sub-assemblies properly aligned and absolutely together, or you’ll find something somewhere will stop any progress.

Thanks Scott – beautiful work, mate!

Boxed LUV

I got a copy of Boxed LUV, a.k.a  Four Blocks in a Box or simply Coffin #189 from Tom Lensch after I dropped him a random email asking him if he, by any chance, had any stock of a few things listed as out of stock on his web-site – I know it’s a bit rude, but sometimes web-sites can be out of date, or folks might just have a couple of spare puzzles lying around for sale, you never know! 

He came back and let me know that he had a couple of Coffin puzzles available – one of which was Boxed LUV – I’d vaguely remembered having seen a packing puzzle by that name somewhere in the dim and distant past, so I took one (and a Four Fit and a 4-piece serially interlocking cube, but that’s another blog post altogether!). 

I received this package o’ puzzles a couple of weeks before MPP2  and set about trying to solve them – but this one, evaded all attempts at solution. It seems so simple – it’s what I call an ‘honest’ puzzle: there’s nothing sneakily hidden or disguised, it’s all out there in plain view all the time. It’s a simple walnut box with a slide-on lid which helpfully has a hole cut out of it the same size as the standard cross-section of the pieces – that should be handy... inside the box are four maple pieces that make up the letters LUV (actually there’s a 3*1 cube stick, a pair of “L”-shaped 3*1*2 pieces and a “V”-shape made up of 3 joined cubes). I said this was an honest puzzle and you can quickly confirm (I sense you’re the sceptical sort, since you’re reading this!) that the cubes making up the pieces are identical and square – no funny business here!

OK, so it’s easy – put the pieces in the box, so that you can (easily!) close the lid – they’ve even left a window in the lid so you can have stuff peaking out if you like – this should be simple...

...and yet, in two weeks, I got nowhere! Actually that’s not quite true. In two weeks I did manage to find an awful lot of ways to not solve this puzzle ... in my defence, several came close, some would even ‘allow’ you to force the lid closed (while scoring lines in the inside of the lid!), some would have things sticking out of the window at strange angles, but none of them could really be called a solution. The size of the box is positively fiendish - effectively stopping all sensible ideas from working!

So when I had a puzzler-of-note staying over for the weekend, Gill and I hatched a plan – we would threaten not to feed Louis until he solved the Boxed LUV and put me out of my misery. In the end we forgot to issue the threat, but he did take up the challenge and managed to solve it in way less time than I’d wasted on it ... to be fair, it did take the puzzle-meister-of-note a good couple of hours, but he had succeeded where I had failed, somewhat dismally! 

The solution is very elegant and makes a mockery of all the rules your brain tries to impose in order to pack these oddly shaped pieces efficiently into the box – and don’t get me started on the biggest red-herring of all!

This puzzle quite quickly became one of my favourite “Give it to the non-puzzlers”-puzzles, not only because it’s pretty hardy and can withstand even an angry teenager, but also because once folks have played with it for a while, they are usually absolutely convinced that it's physically impossible to get those four simple blocks inside that box ... until you show them ...

Puzzling Repairs

It happens to the best of us, sometime ... you give someone a puzzle to play with and something happens and the next thing you know you have too many pieces and a far easier puzzle to solve! 

Someone was playing with my copy of FourFit a couple of days ago and after playing with it for a while (but not quite long enough, IMHO) they announced that they had solved it, across the room, so I wandered across and looked at the solution proposed and what struck me immediately was that there was a piece, squarely in the corner (and yes, that’s partly a give-away!) that I didn’t recognise. 

Now FourFit, for those of you who haven’t been introduced to this little Coffin-gem is a simple little tray packing puzzle that consists of, wait for it, Four pieces – hence the name... what I was looking at had five pieces neatly arranged inside the confines of the tray – see, solved – sort of ... anyway, then I had to explain that there were only supposed to be four pieces and that one of them seemed to have been re-kitted into two bits – although, in fairness, that did make the puzzle a lot more “accessible”.

 

All of which is a rather long story to get to the real point ... fixing puzzle pieces ... I get to do this from time to time (and sometimes I might even be able to blame others!) ... so how does a puzzler go about repairing broken bits ... mainly, a bit of wood glue and a lot patience – but most importantly you need a way of keeping the bits (that should be) straight – so most recently that involves a couple of plastic clamps and an aluminium channel from my model-building days – and that was doing quite well at holding these two parts of a FourFit bit, until I realised I needed something small and heavy to lay on top of the bits while they dried to keep them flat – so I cast an eye around the room and find just the thing – I’m sure every one of you would have done the same thing – I used the Popplock T2 to weight it down – no way is that thing not going to be flat now... :-) 

 

Coffin’s Grand Pin-Hole Cross

OK, so we seem to have a bit of a theme going here, let’s not disappoint ... on to Coffin’s Grand Pin-Hole Cross ... 

This was the ultimate incarnation of Coffin’s Design #20 – The Pin-Hole Puzzle. Essentially the Pin-Hole Puzzle is a set of building blocks (think big boys' Tinkertoys!)  in a specific number of shapes: the Elbow (the left hand piece), the Pin and the Bar (in the centre) and the Cross (on the right hand side of the base). There are also a number of joints (picture an elbow with a bar attached to the unpinned end) for joining bits together. 

 

This one is made of Queensland Blackbean and came from Mr Puzzle. It formed part of his Limited Edition run from 2007 – and as at the time of writing, he had one left ... 

Seeing the dimensions of the puzzle on the web-site is one thing – seeing the pile of wood on your dining room table is another thing entirely! This puzzle is big, and heavy, and I now understand why Sue suggested that she ship my order in two parts – if nothing else, it saved me having to contribute to my postman’s disability benefits! The web-site says it comes assembled, but again Sue suggested that shipping it flat-packed might be a better idea – this results in receiving a pretty large lump o’ lumber – but that lump is infinitely easier to handle, secure and ship... good call Sue!

Right, so the lump o' lumber duly arrived on the morning of the MPP2 and it lay in the dining room table all day, and no-one made a serious attempt at constructing anything all day – not a good sign, as these as some of the best puzzlers I know ... what have I let myself in for? Brian’s web-site passes on the following helpful advice: ‘If you're worried about taking the Grand Cross apart Stewart offers the advice that "by persisting with the simpler figures you can gradually become familiar with the more difficult tasks".’  Hoo-boy!

During the course of the week I started fiddling around with some of the bits, and discovered that, given free reign with the bits, it’s not too challenging to make up a single cube ... however it’s pretty clear that you’ve been given just enough bits to complete the Grand Cross (picture a central cube with a cube coming off each face) ... literally, just enough... so this will require a little thought ...

OK, brain is engaged and we establish reasonably quickly that there are only really two ways to build a cube with the limitations imposed by the pieces we have – handily confirmed by Burr Tools. (For a laugh I also asked Burr Tools to solve the Grand Cross, giving it all the bits in the right quantities ... however, when it went away and thought for a little while and duly announced that it should have the solution within the next 18 years! I had flashes of Deep Thought spinning away for eons to proudly come up with “42”. So having eliminated that as an avenue of last resort – I really don’t have that sort of patience! – I had to rely on the mk. 1 noggin – Uh oh!)

Right, so notice that there are just enough joints to build the entire central cube of them, handily providing something to build all the outlying cubes onto ... spend a little time analysing the pieces you have and working out what you need inside the inner cube and what you want on the arms (so you don’t find yourself building 6 cubes then realising you have the wrong bits left for the last one) and then get to it ... I started by building the central cube as a framework for the rest of the pieces, and then worked my way around the outlying cubes – one of them needed a bit of thought as there’s a sticky-outy-bit that sort-of stops you from building the cube the way you might like to ... but the old mk. 1 manages to see a way around that and has it all together in just a little while...

The resulting construction is impressive, it really has presence!

[But if you don’t like the shape, Brian provides a card with a bunch of other constructions to try your hand at ... I like the Grand Cross, just the way it is...]

Coffin Involute Cube

Unlike the previous puzzle, I had managed to find out a little about this one before I ordered it from Kayleb’s Corner. Bernhard Schweitzer helpfully has a short write up in his Puzzlewood Gallery here and the Metagrobology wiki lists it as Stewart Coffin’s design #214. 

From the description it sounded like it would be a challenging little puzzle, being a development of his well known Convolution Cube, that had itself brought a new twist to an old topic. This one was made chiefly of maple and has dark wood corner cubes – that’s got to help, right? 

OK, so first off there’s a coded clue in the description of the puzzle that suggests that Burr Tools isn’t going to be a whole lot of use ... Great! There goes the main tool in my attack! But I can take it apart without help, can’t I?

Good news – this one starts out a lot easier than the Seven Block – there’s a reasonably easy to find key piece that comes out relatively easily, which logically releases  some bits to slide across and disengage – so far so good...

Then me hits the usual little brick wall – and I spent a while staring at half a cube with one floppy piece moving around all over the place, but refusing to come free ... so a couple of times I rebuild it and try something different, reckoning that this is a blind alley or a red herring designed to lead the unwary puzzler astray ... and this little 4*4*4 cube is making me feel rather unwary!

OK so we go backwards and forwards on that track a couple of times, trying without much luck to find any other alternative moves – nada! And again this thing feels like the rest of the cube could well be glued together (but I’ve learnt my lesson on that one: Coffin wouldn’t do that, he’s too much of a gent!). 

Having convinced myself there are no alternatives to what I’ve already discovered, I concentrate on what I can do from there, apply a couple of the little grey cells and deduce (thanks Father William of Ockham!) what should happen, and it jolly does – this little A-HA! moment is terrific! Right, so you know there’s a twist in the tail, but that twist is beautifully disguised and requires things to be done just-so ... and when they are, a little magic happens ... and the rest of the pieces will allow themselves to be teased slowly apart... 

Putting it back together is easy if you keep the pieces all nicely lined up (see previous comments about second- rate puzzler!) – but actually those coloured corner cubes are quite useful ... and if you’re really stuck, you can always use Burr Tools (can you tell I’m a big fan?!) – of course it’ll quite rightly tell you there’s only a single assembly, but that, sadly, there are no solutions ... ! :-0

[...yes, I've kept the key piece out of shot again just to confuse you!] 

I’m quite new to Mr Coffin’s designs, but I’m already a big fan! Thank you sir!

Stewart Coffin Seven Block

One of the puzzles in the box from Kayleb’s Corner was a Stewart Coffin Seven Block puzzle. I hadn’t been able to find out anything about it in a brief search on the web before I ordered it and it’s always hard to tell what you’re in for when you get an unknown cube assembly / disassembly puzzle like this. I was hoping that I wouldn’t be disappointed, but the Coffin moniker should have been all the reassurance I needed...

 

The puzzle came in a cute little decorative box with no particular markings on it, and the puzzle itself is a reasonably non-descript 4*4*4 cube made of maple. There’s a little white sticker with the words ”Stewart Coffin Seven Block “ on one side, but other than that, it looks just like a simple cube construction. So you take it out of the box carefully, just so that it doesn’t fall apart (Yeah, right! Little did I know...) and start looking at the cube – no obvious easy ways in, no pieces trying to make a bid for freedom yet – looks nice. 

OK, so it didn’t fall apart – good start ... so let’s find a way in – start pushing and pulling at the most likely candidates, hmm, not much give at all ... OK let’s try some of the edges – nope, nothing there. Corners? Nope. Opposite corners? Nope ... Hmmm ... Ah!! I know, friction along the faces in many directions – maybe it’s one of those co-ordinated motion cubes ... 6 faces later, nope, not that either ... Retreats to think while placing the puzzle back in the box...

Thinks ... for a while ... comes back to it a while later (not quite so careful about taking it out the box this time!) and tries a few new theories – none of which do anything at all ... 

Hmmm, maybe it’s one of those in-jokes, you know the ones where the pieces are all actually glued together? Given how little movement there is between the pieces, this could actually be feasible! Puts it away to think some more ... and laugh at the fact that I was worried about it falling apart or not presenting much of a challenge!

 

A couple of sessions later I finally manage to work out how the key piece works, and it’s brilliant! 

It keeps its secrets incredibly well hidden, and even once released, the rest of the cube is slow to give up its secrets – it’s like peeling and onion until you eventually have the seven pieces apart – ah, so that’s where it gets its name from. [Yes dear eagle-eyed reader, there is a piece missing from that picture - the key-piece, just to make it a little more interesting for you...]

While I was writing up this post I got hold of Georges to ask him about the puzzle and it turns out it came from Bernhard Schweitzer and there’s a short write-up in Bernhard’s Puzzlewood Gallery.

It’s a cracking cube puzzle...


Late addendum: I had to smile when I noticed this... I'd used my favourite search engine when I was trying to find out about this puzzle, and turned up not a lot... so I had to smile when I noticed that one of the traffic sources for for my blog was in fact a Google search for "stewart coffin seven block" - and this is now the first page you get when you search for that... which just goes to show that not enough people have been writing about this puzzle on the web!

A very puzzling Easter...

Sometimes the planets align and deliver a really special treat – I kinda feel they did that to me over the past week ... I’d lined up a week’s holiday between Easter and the royal wedding and I’d been looking forward to it for some time. 

Now in the previous post, I’d mentioned that last Saturday I’d received two packages of puzzles – one contained a special TRIGO cube from Mike Toulouzas and the other had a few goodies from Mr Puzzle – that’s Louis on the right poring over the Siamese Locked Nest, Pinhole Grand Cross (needs some assembly), a Flying Puzzle and an All for One. 
 

On Tuesday I received a little package from Scott Peterson with a couple of Coffins (only on a puzzle blog would that be both socially acceptable and make sense!) – a Super Nova and a Rosebud ... you’ll be hearing a lot more about those!

Then on Thursday I got home from work to find four packages waiting for me... one from Stickman-central with a Moving Tile Box from the latest round on Paradise, one from Matt Dawson with a Pagoda #3, a package of little goodies (mainly IPP puzzles) from Kayleb’s Puzzle Corner that happened to include a Mr Puzzle Russian 13 limited edition from 2002, a couple of Coffin cubes and William’s Wonder and then another big box from Australia – this one had a Windmill Burr and an Opening Bat in it... 

...so my desk looks a bit of a mess at the moment... J

... The Opening Bat is almost in pieces (no, it’s in pieces, just not enough pieces yet...), the Windmill Burr’s looking rather odd-shaped, but still in one piece, the Moving Tile Box is open (and closed and open and closed and open...) and  a couple of the IPP puzzles have been out and about... and I still have so much more to play with...

I’m really looking forward to my week off...

MPP2

Saturday saw the second gathering of puzzlers under the Midlands Puzzle Party banner. Once again Louis took the prize for the furthest travelled (he flew in from Holland for the weekend, again!  Thanks for my Svetnashki Louis.)  Oli and Ali came from the other side of London somewhere and Karl joined us from the other end of Birmingham. We met at my place for an afternoon of puzzling (and caffeine) and then we all decamped to a pub near the NEC for the evening, where we were joined by the hard-working crowd from the Revomaze stand (for yet more puzzling). 

Everyone brought what they had in the afternoon and it was noticeable that quite a few folks had been spending a bit on puzzles since our last get together. As luck would have it I’d received a few nice bits from Mr Puzzle that morning, so I just left them out for everyone to play with – my new Stickmen were all out for everyone to have a go on and most people fiddled around a little, although I suspect that Oli was the only one who had any real success on them during the MPP – Louis made sure he polished off all of them during the weekend at my place, so he probably bagged the most Stick-scalps over the course of the weekend. 

Oli had brought along his Sandfield Salt and Pepper cellars for me to play with, but sadly I was too thick to do any more than play with the magnets a bit – essentially I got nowhere, but I got to see firsthand how brilliant these little guys look – Perry McDaniel really is a wizard at fine trick dovetails.

There was a lovely selection of Vinco’s on display with most folks taking a turn at opening and closing them and watching the mesmerising interplay of exploding bits and elegant co-ordinated motion. I spent a while fiddling with Roger’s Propeller (not much joy there either!) although I did have a wee bit more joy confirming that my solution for Roger’s R2D2 did in fact work ... although I failed miserably on Alles Roger. 

A couple of Wil Strijbos’ puzzle bottles kept a few folks quiet for a good while... and if I can work out how to get the chain locked inside the bottle again (without using a pencil, ahem!) I’ll be a happy man!

One of the puzzles I was keen to inflict on as many people as possible was Jerry McFarland’s (imminent) Burrcube#1 – I wanted to see how widely it was enjoyed and how long people took to solve it so that I could give Jerry some more feedback on his new design – most folks had a go at it and everyone seemed to think it was a nice little puzzle, so here’s hoping that he starts producing them and does a series of them...

Before we decamped to the pub to meet the rest of our number, Oli very kindly gave me a set of his Oli-original Soma Dice as a thank you for hosting the day. [He doesn’t realise that I offer to host it so that I don’t have to travel miles cross-country!] I got my own back by handily having a set of Robert Yarger’s sci-fi books autographed for the guys who were attending the MPP, and they seemed to like the fact that they got a Stickman book along with the chance to play with some Stickman boxes. (Thanks Gilly, that was a cool idea!) 

Decamping to the pub was deemed a good idea because this MPP happened to coincide with the Gadget Show Live where Chris Pitt had a Revomaze stand that most of us spent a while at over the course of the weekend... Louis and I met up there on Friday and spent a few hours chatting to folks about puzzles in general and Revomazes in particular, while Nigel and Chris (not-the-Pitt) spent several whole days helping out on the stand... how they coped I don’t know – I was just about hoarse after a couple of hours ... 

Anyway, by meeting up at the pub, we could see the guys from the stand without them having to go too far out of their way from the NEC – unfortunately I hadn’t checked out the pub properly beforehand and booked a table, as a result we could sit outside with drinks (thankfully the weather was rather kind!) but we couldn’t get anything to eat. (Sorry guys!) A couple of times during the evening, someone would ask if we were going to get some food somewhere else, but there were too many puzzles around for them to be taken seriously and we ended up staying there for the evening.

We ended up with a pretty different set of puzzles at the pub, mainly due to the new influx of GSL-types, so there were a bunch of Constantin puzzles and a couple of rather interesting packing puzzles ... I’d taken my copy of Coffin’s Four Fit and Oskar’s Two Piece Packing puzzle along – everybody loved the latter and everybody hated the former. (Because they couldn’t solve it, not because it’s not a nice puzzle, he hastened to add!)

One of the highlights for me was being asked by Mark (he of Mark76 fame on the Revomaze forums) to hand Chris Pitt a small gift at the MPP. Mark has been enjoying his Revomazes so much, that he decided he needed to make a key ring-sized version (he collects key ring puzzles) ... so he got himself set up with a lathe and a mill, learnt some new skills and proceeded to produce the tiniest Revomazes known to man – when he posted his pics on the Revomaze forums there was quite a lot of excitement (and more than a couple of offers to buy them!) – so when Mark got in touch the week before MPP2 and asked if I’d mind handing them to Chris as a gift from him, I jumped at the chance... long story short:  Royal Mail got them safely down to my place – I put them in the light tent and took a couple of nice pics of them (and couldn’t resist having a little bit of a play with them – you should have seen the smile on my face when it went click as I fell into a trap!) before boxing them up and eventually handing them to Chris at the pub that evening ... I think he was impressed by what Mark has done, and his face was an absolute picture when he started playing with the larger one and promptly found the first trap ... gotcha! Payback time! Plenty of folks managed to have a go on them and without fail, they were impressed by what a bloke with a lathe and a mill has taught himself to do on such a tiny scale – nice work Mark! (and thanks for making me a part of it all ...)

While we were at the pub (before we realised that we wouldn’t be able to get any food!) Nigel gave me a Pentangle Vertigo burr as a thank you ... thank you, mate. 

One of the other great little features of the MPP was the Box o’ Bounty, donated by a puzzling friend who couldn’t even be with us, but wanted some of his old puzzles to go to a good home... at the first MPP, folks were a bit shy and we had quite a few things left over in BoB, this time they got into the spirit of things and there was a healthy redistribution of puzzles, making sure that they generated even more enjoyment! Thank you mystery donor of the Box o’ Bounty – it went down well! (... and in the interests of full disclosure - I liberated a couple of twisty puzzles and have added them to my sparse collection of twisty puzzles...) 

I suspect that a couple of take-out joints between Barston and Warwick / London saw a couple of ragged, smiling puzzlers seeking out some food late that evening... Louis and I discovered that at that hour of the night, the only place near my house still open for business was the local Chinese take-out. [Duck and crispy shredded beef, respectively, before another puzzling session at the dining room table ended a great day...]

(Thanks Louis for the pics.)