DCD 2024

A week after DCD I find myself in a little cottage on a farm in Cornwall… I’ve got a couple of crates of (mostly unsolved) puzzles and Gill is stitching a festive panel at the kitchen table, and more importantly, I have some time to scribble something about DCD - mainly so that I’ll remember the best bits...

Ali, Steve and Lily had driven across on the Friday and Frank joined them early the next morning after spending an hour and a half in an immigration queue in the middle of the night. My journey is relatively uneventful, albeit I end up stuck on the motorway for almost an hour en route to the airport as a result of an accident just up ahead… I manage to scarf a croissant and down a double espresso before getting on the plane that I was having visions of missing.

My flight arrives a bit early and I manage to find Phil in the station concourse and we wend our way to the hotel where I check in and dump most of my baggage before we head to Delft to find the monkeys, Frank, Lily and Louis for some lunch… at one point we’re having a four-way chat on messenger and the feedback from the three of them standing next to each other is something awful!

We find a suitable spot for cheese toasties and burgers and it doesn’t take long for the puzzles to cover the table… somehow we manage to actually eat our lunch and head off to Rob’s place more or less on schedule.

Even more puzzles come out to play at Rob’s and I manage to offload some copies of Ken’s Fool’s cube after a good race between Stefan and Yaccine… the little gotcha moment in the middle of the solve never fails to amuse with several folks in the audience knowing exactly what to expect and not being disappointed.

Wil has a new symmetry puzzle to torture us with… a few of the guys manage to solve it that afternoon… I am not one of the them, and indeed a week later I am still not counted among the solvers… I’ve taken a few really slow clocks for him - he spotted a UK website that sells clocks that tell you what day of the week it is (who knew?!) and I managed to get them in time to bring across for him and he seems happy with them…

Rob’s collection of wotsits comes out to tease and there’s plenty of hilarity at some of the questions, and indeed some of the answers, with some odd implements remaining entirely unidentified during the course of the evening. (For some reason there is an extended discussion of shoving a beer can up a chicken’s R’s…)

Rob orders in the traditional spread of pizzas and we feast merrily before puzzling a little more… the crowds begin thinning out and somewhere around 9 we pile into Louis’ car and an uber and head off to our 10pm escape room - the lads and Lily having done a couple of the city’s excellent escapes room that morning.

We duly sign up for the public execution but things go a little awry when Louis ends up being the star attraction and the whole thing goes Pete Tong. We do manage to free Louis (I’m sure there’s a cracking movie title in there somewhere) and then set about escaping from the prison ourselves… the rooms are excellently themed and there’s a total lack of gratuitous combination locks on everything that opens… there’s a single key to be found and used and several keypad door locks and the rest is pure puzzling… it’s a great room and we manage to get out with a few minutes to spare without getting too many nudges along the way…

Another uber and a ride in the Louis-mobile see us safely back to the hotel where I crash unceremoniously - the others spend a couple of hours shuttling between the bar, the outside area and the lobby as they get moved on as things close down… I’m happily in the land of nod while all that’s going on.

Next morning we meet for breakfast and head off to the college where I’m pleased to say there are already a large number of tables positively groaning under the weight of the puzzles looking for new homes. I dump my rucksack and my jacket in the corner and then spend a while wandering around and chatting to folks I haven’t seen for a while… that’s the best part of these get togethers.

I get rid of a few boxes of English chocolates one of my mates enjoys and we catch up on the past six months. Wil gives me a rather large lump of brass that I suspect will puzzle me for quite a while to come… I do a circuit of the tables and come across a copy of Perfect Entrance that I’d somehow contrived to miss out from Mine’s last round of puzzles and I’m chuffed to be able to stumble across a copy for sale.

Stefan has a table with copies of his stunning 3D printed versions of the Kosticks’ RDS Interlock puzzle - I pick up a copy in spite of already having one that he’d gifted back home because he’s done a very clever thing with the customised packaging - there’s a label sewn into the bag that shows the pieces and lists the various challenges - brilliantly done! [A few days later I find myself visiting James and gifting this copy to him and he’s delighted, not having seen Stefan’s stunning printing before… so I’ll need to grab another copy when Stefan comes across for MPP…]

Stefan is also giving away copies of his tiny Soma puzzles in a box… the prints are immaculate, and tiny… and I get to listen to Stefan explaining some of the intricacies of printing effectively at this scale… the bit that really stands out is Stefan using big hand gestures to describe all of the extraneous material around the tip of a 0.2mm printer nozzle and having to file down the tip so that there’s less heat mass at the tip itself, or it ruins the print! I grab a copy of both sizes and manage to use the included tweezers to pack the pieces into their boxes and seal them in place with their little dovetailed(!) lids.

Wil sells me a new box from JCC that we end up really enjoying at dinner later that day.

Later on in the day I spend a while at Jack’s table picking out a few of his latest creations that I don’t have yet, including a couple of new high level 18-piece burrs (Twinkle and Wink - we get the story behind them later in the afternoon at Jack’s lecture). Jack’s arithmetic is even worse than my own and he solidly refuses to take the right amount of money from me - thank you Jack.

Tony Fisher has a giant Golden Cube on his table - this year’s giant creation just for our amusement. Marcel and the Luxembourg contingent have a long row of tables piled high with puzzles from an early Isis puzzle still pristine in its wooden box through to a small crate full of Trevor Wood creations… it really is amazing what you can find available for sale at DCD.

Anneke Treep had a table full of crocheted tori and linked rings - part of her latest bit of research into crocheted mathematical structures - I couldn’t resist sending Gill a pic of the crocheted goodies at the puzzle gathering.

Lunch is the usual fare of soup, rolls and hotdogs… and there’s hot and cold drinks on tap all day long - you really can’t beat the value you get from the entry fee!

The afternoon lectures started with a really interesting lecture from Jack Krijnen on how he searches for interesting high level 18-piece burrs (his speciality!). He told us a lovely story about the most recent discovery coming just after he’d made up a batch of what he thought was going to be his best discovery of the year, only for it to be surpassed by Twinkle. There was an update on the World Puzzle Centre and a video of some naked puzzlers. Rob gave us his usual canter through some of the exchange puzzles with Diniar supplementing the descriptions with his insights.

After the lectures there was some more shopping and I managed to grab a few handfuls of cheap puzzles from Jack’s table to use as giveaways - I love giving new puzzlers a cop of “Build a House” where the aim is literally presented on the name card but it seems impossible to build. As per our earlier agreement, Jack let me pay sticker price for these, but then couldn’t help himself from throwing in a bunch of copies of Cruiser as well… thank you Jack, again!

The monkeys seemed to do a reasonable trade over the course of the day and hopefully the truck was a little lighter on the way back home.

With things winding down, we set about putting the hall back into the right format for school lunches and manage to move all the chairs and tables around without breaking any puzzle or indeed puzzlers in the process.

Louis lines up a table at the local Chinese restaurant for us and we duly wander down the road and take out some puzzles to play with - the alert reader may notice a theme here… Lily manages to launch a fork into Steve's drink without spilling a drop and we enjoy several rounds of the buffet (although Frank insists on having sweet and sour sauce on his banana fritters for some reason) and plenty of cold beverages before calling it a night and heading back to the hotel where we say goodbye to Louis who heads off to Eindhoven.

Back in the hotel bar there’s a nice chat about the weekend - with Frank admitting that this was just what he needed to top up his puzzling mojo again… DCD really is a great excuse for a weekend away with your puzzling mates from all around Europe.

Thanks to all of you for making it another great DCD!

DCD 2023

I grabbed a train down to London on Friday afternoon and met up with Rich in the bar. Ali and Steve drove into town and then Ali carted us off to Cluequest for a couple of escape rooms before dinner. We manage to save the world from being mutated into sheep(!) in spite of some of us managing to ignore massive big clues along the way and then we disarmed a post box… excellent rooms at Cluequest - we’ve got one more to play there, but there’s news that they may be getting a new room sometime next year, so hopefully there’ll be a couple for us to play by the time DCD comes around again…

After putting the world to rights, we grabbed a pizza at a very trendy place (you could tell by the fact that the rest of the clientele was about half our age – and we had Rich with us remember!) where the pizza turned out much better than we’d been dreading it might be from the descriptions on the menu. After we’d refuelled we headed back to the hotel bar for a libation and some banter. Rich disappeared off upstairs to drop something off in his room and Steve and I spent about 15 minutes trying unsuccessfully to get served at the bar - mainly because it had closed about half an hour earlier - turns out Londoner’s don’t drink in hotels on a Friday evening - who knew?

Steve and I give up on waiting for Rich and head upstairs, only for the lift to decide it’s overloaded - really rude given there’s literally only four of us in the jolly thing!

We meet up in the lobby before the sparrows wake up and Rich amuses us by telling us he’d been locked out of his room the night before - Liz had gone to sleep and turned off her phone with the only key inside the room, and it seems she’s not a light sleeper so it took half an hour of bashing on the door to raise her…

At St Pancras there are a lot of people in Springbok rugby shirts heading off the Rugby World Cup final in Paris… there aren’t many springbok supporters on the train to Rotterdam. We amuse ourselves with some puzzles and briefly with a Professor Puzzle escape room in a box - we get an extra hour’s puzzling time because there’s a problem with a train ahead of us so we grind to a halt for a while… Rich has brought snacks and there’s plenty of coffee and puzzles so we don’t mind at all.

We navigate the Metro (a first for me) to find Louis in Voorburg and he takes us through to the school so we can dump Steve’s stock and considerably lighten his load. We swing via the hotel to collect Stefan and squash him into the back seat between Rich and I and head off to Delft to find Rob’s new house… we miss it on the first lap of Delft city centre but manage to spot it on the second lap… we blame Rob’s directions, which in fairness are excellent as long as you know what’s coming up next, e.g. turn before the building site… but you only know it’s a building site once you’ve driven past it…

A couple of the guys are already drowning their sorrows in caffeine so we join them… the puzzles come out, the helpful banter begins to flow and more puzzlers arrive until we’re more or less filling Rob’s new lounge with laughter and encouragement - and the odd bit of abuse.

We spend several hours playing with puzzles and catching up with folks we haven’t seen for a while - the customary pizzas arrive and there’s a bit of a lull in the noise levels as we feast, and then we’re back into full tilt puzzling again.

Rob brings out  a shopping bag full of what looks like bits of a dinosaur skeleton and in a fabulous bit of misjudgement, he entrusts the assembly to Steve and Rich – who proceed to build a franken-beetle-saurus which Steve then proudly displays on top of Rob’s puzzle cabinet.

I decide to embarrass myself and have another go at solving Ali’s exchange puzzle from Jerusalem -YES - I’ve been trying to solve it for three months now… and finally get the inspiration to do the right thing and it turns out I am an eedjit and Ali has beaten me thoroughly! Given that I’m already getting so much grief for the fact that I’m spending literally three months longer solving these puzzles than the rest of the assembled rabble, I pick up Rob’s copy of Picolock expecting to add another few hours to my unsuccessful solving time… but some helpful comments on some of the things that I’m randomly verbalizing while I’m not solving it lead me to reassess a few assumptions I hadn’t realized I’d made and soon I’m actually making some progress on that one… and about ten minutes later it’s also solved and I’m ready to sing Boaz’s praises for a long time…

I go three for three by picking up Peter’s exchange puzzle and literally solving it in seconds… well, OK, three months and some seconds…

Somewhere around midnight we figure we better head back to Voorburg and check into our hotel - we find the night manager and get our rooms and collapse until the next morning…

Breakfast is excellent and Louis takes a car-full of puzzlers back to the school for the main event.

There are already piles of puzzlers there so Steve sets out his stall while the rest of us set about chatting to friends and shopping furiously, or indeed some combination of the two.

I spend a while chatting to Jan Willem and spot some Rocky Chiaro puzzles on his table and end up purchasing a few of the ornate “things” that Jan Willem has decided to let go - I promise to give them a good home. Wil has his usual long array of crates of treasure - where else are you going to find most of the Roger D puzzles stacked up next to some collectible Karakuri boxes and a Pachinko box for sale? Marcel had a huge selection of stuff from the latest Hanayamas through to several of his own original chess pieces and some Sandfield and Trevor Wood treasures… 

Tony Fisher has brought a few throughly bonkers creations over for our enjoyment - I have never seen a skewb that large or indeed dinosaur eggs like that...(fact!). 

The usual excellent spread at lunchtime filled us all up.

Jack had a huge selection of petite puzzles and I held back from his table until much later in the day, before I hoovered up a bunch of his tray puzzles and a few other little bits and pieces that make excellent puzzling gifts.

Leo was auctioning off some rather collectible items in an actual real-world silent auction which was really amusing to watch. Grown men scribbling on post-it notes and then watching everyone else like a hawk… and the real-life sniping at the end of the auction that was almost entirely undone when Leo began closing out the auction three minutes before the appointed time, much to the consternation of the snipers in the audience. Peace did prevail and Steve bought an expensive jam jar with some sand and a few marbles in it and I bought an expensive pair of scissors with some string attached - and we were both delighted.

The afternoon lectures included some insights into 2*2 Rubik’s cubing at world championship level from someone who does (that was way more fascinating than I thought I’d find it!), an update from George and Rox on the World Puzzle Centre (I suspect they’ve spelt it wrong!) and Rob gave us a canter through a selection of the exchange puzzles from Jerusalem this year… well, the ones he won’t be covering in the upcoming CFF article anyway…

After we’d reset the hall for the school lunch, a bunch of us headed off to a nearby Chinese joint where we duly caused havoc - there were fourteen of us… we had fun, and the buffet survived the onslaught, just…

After dinner Louis ferried Chris to the station and our baggage back to the hotel where Steve and I found him about twenty minutes later… some of the others who were walking back with us took a more scenic route and got to the hotel about half an hour later…

Four of us ended up in the bar playing with puzzles - I know, weird, eh?

Next morning Steve and I ended up having a leisurely breakfast while Rich topped up his beauty sleep (and I’m not going to comment on whether or not he needed it) before Steve headed off on a bit of a wander and I headed off to the room to type up my thoughts before I forgot the more important stories of the weekend.

...fashionable gentlemen meet-up

We checked out at the bell and then navigated the public transport system back to Rotterdam to find some lunch and our Eurostar back to St Pancras… we found a great burger joint just outside the station and then headed across at the appointed time, where we found a slightly tetchy crowd of folks outside the Eurostar check-in area – it seems that the high-speed trains weren’t running through Rotterdam, as such, there was no Eurostar to catch. The advice was to make our way to Brussels where the staff would put us on a train, promise! The next three hours turned into a mini-Race-Around-The-World as we took four trains to get ourselves to Brussels, where the friendly staff did indeed put us on a train from Brussels to London as there was still no service north of Brussels…

We ended up with a table to play with our puzzles and made our way through the Exit the Game Lord of the Rings adventure… to the occasional amusement of a rather serious fellow traveller on our table.

We may have gotten into St Pancras about three hours later than anticipated, but it was still an awesome puzzling weekend!

 

 

 

DCD 2022

I didn’t make it to last year’s DCD, but I was damned if I was going to miss this year’s event… and it turned out to be one heck of a weekend!

It started on Friday afternoon when Ali, Steve, Rich and I met up in London for a couple of escape rooms to get us in the mood for a puzzling weekend. We’d congregated at the hotel we were all staying at before heading up toward Camden for a quick bite to eat (fab burgers!) before our first escape room: Codebreakers at Mission Breakout. Housed in the basement of a tube station, it is very atmospheric. We ended up spending quite a long time on the first section, and then managed to somehow rush through the second bit, albeit we made a bit of a meal of the transfer between the two sections… Steve took a while to recover from that. The puzzles were really well-implemented and fitted the theming very well, and if there was a complaint to be had, it would be that things were very linear, but without a lot of signposting of what came next, so we often found ourselves wondering where to go next. We were happy to complete it and our gamemaster told us that we were one of the fastest teams she’d ever seen at rifling through the desk drawers – so there’s that…

Fresh from our victory we headed up to Cluequest where Steve had thoughtfully booked us into their hardest room, cQ Origenes. We made a quick pit stop at a convenience store for some chocolate and soft drinks and then plunged into our next adventure, having agreed that when our gamesmaster asked us if we’d done any escape rooms before, the honest answer would be “Not in the last 45 minutes.” This room was excellent – our only possible slight grumble was a difficulty reading some markings under a blacklight where they’d been rubbed off by previous players – nothing a little magic marker won’t fix… there was a lot to do in that room and the theming was really excellent – definitely recommended!

After we’d finished the second room we wandered back to the hotel and took up station at the bar for a couple of libations before I headed off to bed - leaving the lads at the bar, until that closed and they headed off to a nearby night club… I got a good night's sleep.

Next morning bright and (very) early we walked down to St Pancras to grab the Eurostar across to Amsterdam – with the monkeys lugging some incredibly heavy looking suitcases filled with brassware. Sod’s law dictated that my luggage was pulled for examination – it turns out that big shiny antique locks from Morocco look quite suspicious. (You’re welcome, Frans!) If that wasn’t sufficiently ironic, Steve’s big case of brass went through fine but his hand luggage needed searching as he had a single brass Gobstopper in there – presumably it resembles a nuclear detonator or something.

Once we were on the train, the puzzles came out and we played pass-the-puzzle. Steve gave each of us a copy of a new design he doesn’t plan on making again, having christened it something that cannot possibly appear in a family friendly blog. When Rich took his apart and then tried to reassemble it, it was very clear where the name came from – it’s another 6-piece co-ordinate motion puzzle with extra protuberances inside that make alignment absolutely critical – the name is a direct quote from every single person who ever has the misfortune of having to assemble one. (Yes, when I was reassembling mine this afternoon, I said exactly that…)

During the course of the journey I had a little play with Ali’s copy of Bruns’ Bomb Destroyer Puzzle – which went through security without so much as a second glance – and got absolutely nowhere – and I made a mental note to give it some respect when my copy arrived.

At some point we had a chat about the fact that if we got off the train in Rotterdam, we’d get to The Hague about an hour earlier, and much as we were enjoying the train ride, we decided that would be sensible, so we got off at Rotterdam and navigated our way more or less successfully to the right station in The Hague – close to our hotel for the weekend.

Louis met us at the station and took Ali, Steve and a couple of metric tons of brass over to the DCD venue so they could set up their stall while Rich and I headed to the hotel to check-in. The lovely folks at NH Den Haag let us both check in early so we got to sort out our shirt(s) and freshen up a bit before meeting the others and heading off to Rob’s place for the traditional pre-DCD-bash.

For someone who’s just about to move out of his flat, Rob still has a shed-load of puzzles in cabinets, although in fairness, there were many piles of puzzles neatly packed in banana boxes and his main puzzle cabinets had already been dismantled. We spread ourselves out around the dining room table and duly brought out the puzzles for everyone’s amusement (or torture, depending on the puzzles in question). I’d taken along a few of the tray packing puzzles I’d been unable to solve (it’s a strategy of mine to get my tougher puzzles solved – don’t knock it!). There were also a few of the new Kickstarter Clueboxes. Rich spent a while working through Box of Celts and Yaccine manfully attacked Rob’s Cricket Bat. As usual there was a LOT of laughter, interspersed with the occasional triumph over a puzzle or two… and there was a lot of food, thanks to Rob’s most excellent of catering.

Somewhere around a vaguely reasonable hour we headed back to the hotel in the snug Coolen-mobile – Rich, Ali and I got to know one another quite well while Steve stretched out in the front seat.

Next morning after breakfast the Coolen-mobile dropped us off at the school for DCD-proper which was reassuringly familiar, in spite of the fact that we didn’t have the speed-cubers in tow this year as they were holding their competition on a different weekend to allow for some social distancing… their space was instead taken up by a couple of tables running the length of the hall with copies of all the 2022 Nob Yoshigahara Design Competition entries… available for all to play with – I mean we’ll miss the speed-cubers, but give me design competition entries any day!

The first order of duty was to say hello to my friends I haven’t seen in person for a few years – and then on to browsing through the various stall already set up and ready for business… the lads had mentioned that Marcel had a bunch of good stuff worth raking through and he was keen to show me a few special things at remarkably reasonable prices – I did end up picking up a few small items from him. 

Jan Willem had several lovely things on his table, and truth be told I could probably have blown all of my allowance on his table in the first ten minutes, but I summoned some restraint, from where, I know not. Wil had a stupendous selection of goodies and I came and went several times during the course of the day, finding new treasures each time… I managed to pick up a copy of CUBI from around 1985 and a copy of the Anchor puzzle box that I’d played with at Frank’s place – purely to stop anyone else from having to buy and solve it… I’m nice that way.

It was great to see Michel had been able to make it even though he wasn’t on top form. George and Roxanne were their usual whirlwind-selves. Given the pictures of their fully-loaded car afterwards, I suspect they took the prize for largest DCD-spree. 

Tony Fisher's table was sublime as always - showcasing his twisty puzzle chess set where each piece is a unique individual twisty puzzle - if you haven't seen his Youtube videos on them yet, go here!

The afternoon saw a lecture on Uwe Meffert and then Rox and George did a double act showing us their Puzzle Castle and adjoining hotel in Panicale and telling us about their wonderfully ambitious plans for the complex.

After the lecture I spent a while playing with a few of the Design Competition entries and generally hurling encouragement / abuse at the others trying to do the same… I’m nice that way.

When things began to wind down, we pitched in and helped pack up the hall and return it to canteen style for the kids on their return. Louis carted all the luggage (brass remains and puzzle purchases) back to the hotel and we navigated our way reasonably successfully back to the hotel – although Steve and I failed miserably in our attempt to get the others to do a 540 around one of the roundabouts on the way.

By the time we got back to the hotel we realised that we’d acquired quite a few folks joining us for dinner, and the restaurant we’d planned to head off to was closed… so we gathered everyone at our hotel and headed up the hotel restaurant where they were looking forward to a quiet evening until 16 of us rocked up unannounced… they did well in the end, even if they needed to ask us to please restrict our menu choices to something that the single chef on duty might be able to bash out in a sensible time. The grub was good and the chat was better… with Nick showing up Amy and solving the puzzle that had eluded everyone but Ali up to that point (he’s a machine is Ali!).

After dinner a few of us spent a while in the bar with something cold with the US Grand Prix on the telly in the background – thankfully given the number of Dutch fans in the bar, Max took it in the end.

Next day I dragged the lads into The Hague city centre in search of a Longchamps bag for Gill – only to find it wasn’t in stock, so we headed off to a toy shop and bought some puzzles before doing a lightning tour of the Escher Museum…

We collected our bags from the hotel and headed back into town for a train to Amsterdam (we didn’t fancy our chances of being allowed onto the train at the wrong station on the way back). Some rail disruptions gave us a leisurely trip up to Amsterdam where we had plenty of time for a burger before grabbing the Eurostar back to London…

…which brought more puzzling, both on our respective purchases from the day before and on an envelope full of challenges <The Corporation from Puzzaroo, if you're interested> that I’d bought a while back and hadn’t found an excuse to bring out yet - that passed a couple of hours quite well – and we managed to solve it with very few hints… definitely a good hive-mind in operation – I shouted encouragement from the side lines.

When we hit London we said our goodbyes and I sprinted to Euston to grab a train on the ever-decreasing West-Coast service back to Brum where Gill was waiting to take me home… what a weekend. 

Thanks a stack to all who made it such a grand puzzling weekend!