MPP IIIL

There’s always an MPP on the weekend before Wimbledon starts, just in case Dick’s in town. It turns out he is, and he duly arrives in Brum at a sensible time on the Friday morning. We spend the morning catching up and sharing puzzles back and forth. He’s concocted a gift for everyone at MPP that he’s called Walker’s Worry and he gives me an early bash at a copy. When I manage to struggle my way through it, he decides I need a proper puzzle and he gives me what could only be described as Walker’s Worry on Steroid – there’s an extra “complication” in the centre that still has me confused a week later – disentanglements really aren’t my strong point – in fact I’m beginning to wonder if puzzles in general are!

He also shows me a puzzle he’s cooked up in Wil’s honour called “Easy off, Hard on” because it’s easy to remove the shuttle, and less easy to return it to the start position. I manage to confirm the first part of the name isn’t too way off base, however a week later I’m suspecting that the second part of the name may well be apt as well.

Somewhere around lunchtime George and Roxanne arrive having driven from Panicale (over a few days). We manage to enjoy lunch outside in the sun without the hounds stealing too much of the food, and then settle back into some more puzzling and banter.

Late in the afternoon Dick and I head off to the airport to collect Louis and Wil, and George and Rox head off to their hotel to check in and freshen up. By the time we all meet up back at the house Gill’s arrived home and we sit outside in the early evening sunshine (I know that’s the second time I’ve mentioned it already, but you need to remember that it’s pretty unusual in this part of the world!) enjoying a pile of pizzas while we catch up on everyone’s news.

Wil had brought along copies of the Duck Puzzle for everyone and there was much laughter and confusion as folks sought to clarify the rather direct translation from the original Japanese instructions. Wil had given Dick a copy to play with in the car on the way back from the airport so I heard all the backwards-and-forwards and Dick’s thinking out loud (including there’s not enough material to make the same size duck, so it must be a scaled down version – which wasn’t that helpful!). By the time I got home I had an idea for the solution and I was delighted that when Wil gave me a copy, I was able to verify the answer within a couple of minutes… and I love it – definitely worth getting a copy from Osho or making one up yourself – the details are clear(!) in the pics.

George and Rox told us all about their latest adventures and the travails of getting the world’s largest puzzle collection out of customs in Rotterdam – you can imagine the conversation, can’t you: “Yes, those containers are a personal collection of puzzles…” – “Puzzles?” – “Yes, mechanical puzzles, you know, like a Rubik’s cube” – “ALL of those containers are full of Rubik’s cubes…?” – Ah, fuggedaboutit!

We puzzled and chatted into the night until we felt the need to head up to bed / back to hotels. I dropped Louis and Wil at a local hotel as there was no place at the inn for them, and then crashed myself – until the hounds got me up first thing in the morning.

After breakfast Dick and I headed down to the village hall to start getting things set up while Gill collected the Dutch contingent and dropped them off at the hall… where a couple of puzzlers had already arrived so we were able to get set up pretty quickly – and by the official off at 10am, we were all good to go!

The Millers had had a good rest in their hotel and managed to navigate their way to the village. George set up shop at a corner desk and appeared to hold a number of surgeries with interested puzzlers over the course of the day… including setting BurrTools to solving Vesa’s Pythagoras Puzzle that Wil had sold to a bunch of us. You get two coloured sets of jigsaw pieces and your goal is to successively make up a 2*2, 3*3, 4*4 and a 5*5 square. (And a whole bunch of other challenges…) The first couple aren’t too challenging, but the final one is a monster – albeit one that BurrTools managed to crank through in about 5 minutes. (I’m not sure how much optimising went into George’s modelling for that one!)

It was great to spend some time chatting with Andrew Coles – he’d brought along a whole bunch of prototypes and experiments and was interested in getting some feedback so I spent a goodly while battling my way through a few of his latest creations – including a particularly epic one that probably won’t ever go into production because it is just plain bonkers – and all inside a standard padlock that looks literally untouched.

I’d printed off a copy of a few two-piece TICs from Andrew Crowell and presented them to Dick on Friday as he thought they might be interesting, and then foisted them on a number of folks at MPP on as well – generally presenting folks with an unruly pile of pieces and inviting them to assemble them into cubes… everyone seemed to enjoy them so my conclusion was that they represented a really nice balance of interesting enough so as not to be trivial, but not brutal so you don’t end up not enjoying them… which makes them an excellent puzzle to hand around to folks, IMHO.

Shane also had a couple of prototypes that he wanted playing with, so I duly had a play, and then made some very encouraging noises and I’m hopeful that one or two of those will definitely see the light of day.

It was great to see Ed again after a bit of a break – we had a few Karakuri boxes there for him to try, but he ended up bashing through them really quickly. The man is a machine…

Speaking of machines, Rich spent what seemed like several hours attempting a particularly tricky assembly of a 1980’s toy consisting of multi-coloured plastic C-shaped pieces – Space Cubes. He’d get to the second or third layer quite consistently and then there’d be a familiar crash of pieces falling to the table… so familiar that it almost got to the point where we considered not laughing with (honest, gov!) him every time it happened.

At one point there was a really serious presentation from Frank – Jo had bought Steve a really thoughtful gift and Steve quite literally had a tear in his eye when he opened the box – a very touching moment. (There may be some debate as to whether Jo thinks she bought it for Steve, and where that tear in Steve’s eye really came from…)

Ali had brought along his collection of Lego puzzles for folks who’d missed the last gathering to have a bash at and they duly went down just as well as they had on the previous occasion.

Mikael had brought along his vlogging gear and proceeded to film a semi-impromptu round of “Are you a Puzzlemaster?” around the hall – I can’t speak for all the questions, but I suspect that we got slightly easier questions than he normally inflicts on his guests. I did have to laugh when he hit up Shane for one of the questions – I’m sure once all the colourful language is bleeped out there’ll be something left! (Maybe… actually, subtitles might be a good idea…)

Several of us were very pleased when we discovered that the deli was serving pig buns and having established this fact, and avoiding the queues, we told the rest of the gang in the hall that pig buns were available… and the rush ensued. Once again, the little room proved a great lunch venue with plenty of munching and banter taking place far away from the precious puzzles.

It was great to see Amy, especially as family responsibilities are probably going to make it trickier for her come along to our next few meetings.

James had made the trip up from Devon and brought a box full of things that needed re-assembly. I’m not sure what the final score was, but I think we managed to get more than a few of them properly assembled for him so his trip wasn’t entirely wasted. For a man who’s not collecting puzzles any longer (as he keeps telling me) he still keeps acquiring some really interesting puzzles, including some absolutely stunning old antique chests (with plenty of puzzling elements!).

Gill ferried Dick back to the train station while we packed up the hall and headed up to the house after the obligatory puppy safety briefing. Rolo’s definitely getting more used to having a big bunch of puzzlers around and settled down fairly quickly before taking herself up to her bed under the hall table upstairs… while the puzzlers spread themselves out around the house – with several puzzling outside until the rain arrived.

Peter’s Pan provided the usual excellent fish suppers, although I totally failed to remember to pick up something gluten-free for Fraser – must do better next time or he won’t come back!

The puzzling continued until somewhere around 22:30 when folks realised they still had a three-hour drive and should probably start heading back London-wards… so we wound up the party and deposited the Dutch contingent back at their hotel.

Next day was a lovely relaxed puzzling affair with Louis and Wil – I got the chance to talk about some puzzles that I’d been struggling with and got some valuable advice, and I got Louis to crack open my Lost Vault which wasn’t behaving itself properly. The combination lock element wasn’t working, so Louis managed to open it using the wrong numbers, then diagnosed the issue and duly fixed it with a little judicious sanding. (There was a spot of glue on one of the pins which meant it randomly dragged the next wheel when it shouldn’t have.) Lost Vault now works perfectly! Thanks Louis!

Somewhere after lunchtime I dropped the boys off at the airport so they could head to AMS and I headed home to chill…

Another awesome MPP weekend in the books – thanks to everyone who came and made it memorable!

 

 

MPP XXXiii

This one was always going to be a little busier than usual… it started with what sounded like a good joke: you have a Scot and an Irish woman at home, and a Bulgarian, an American and a chap from The Netherlands in an airport coffee shop – that’s how my MPP XXXiii started… having safely collected Dick from his train, and Louis and Stefan from their flights, we headed home to where Ethel was already keeping Gill company…

Quick introductions to make sure everyone knew one another, sort out the sleeping arrangements and then we were all huddled around the dining room table feeding our faces… or refuelling for the inevitable puzzling that would follow. 

After dinner we dragged out some puzzles and forced ourselves to pretend we were enjoying ourselves… OK, that bit wasn’t really all that hard!

Ethel had brought several crates of puzzles she wanted to re-home and we spent a while helping her sort them into the more valuable and less valuable buckets to ease selling them. In the process I couldn’t help myself and ended up adding another four or five to the one lovely puzzle she’d brought through especially for me. (An old Telephone Box in case you’re interested.) 

After a couple of hours of chatting, rearranging Ethel’s crates of puzzles and even playing with the odd puzzle, we each took ourselves off to bed… I say we did, but actually I have no idea whether Louis and Stefan actually went to sleep that night or not… I’m sure they did at some point.

Next morning after a goodly number of croissant et pain au chocolat we headed down to the hall to get things set up – only to find a rather strange delivery leaning up against the door to the hall: addressed to Big-Steve was the largest tongue depressor I’ve seen, so far! We took a couple of pics of it and then put it back where we’d found it waiting for it’s addressee to arrive. 

Puzzlers from around the UK began arriving and I headed out to collect a couple of Danes from their nearby hostelry and then a Persian bloke who was arriving by train – I told you it was going to be a busy one!

By then most people had arrived and our merry little band settled into a routine of raking through Ethel’s crates in search of treasure, rummaging through other puzzlers’ latest finds in search of a new challenge, and refuelling on various caffeinated beverages and cakes and biscuits – these things are tough, let me tell you!

Dick had arrived with commemorative gifts for all – the ominously named “Satan’s Spiral” was duly gifted to everyone who showed up. It’s definitely a new variant for me, with a slanted Finnish trapeze holding both a ring and little spiral devil that gives the puzzle its name… I’d remarked on the fact that the trapeze has been bent all skew and reliably informed that was required in order for the puzzle to be solvable at all – that’s me told! :-) A little idle fiddling with it over the course of the weekend had me confirming to myself that its name has probably been well earned… and the lack of anyone seeming to solve it at MPP makes me believe it’s going to be a real test!

 

Dick had been working on a maths puzzle from David Singmaster over the previous couple of weeks and I’d found it fascinating considering the various interesting permutations of the Battersea Power Station problem – I’m sure that will be its name! On the Saturday Michael and Dick spent a while poring over Dick’s notes and seeking more enlightenment – it’s great to see someone keeping up with Dick… lord knows I struggle to! 

Big-Steve had announced on the inter-web a couple of days earlier that he’d received a massive tongue depressor in the post (or as Nora put it: “Your friends are being silly again!”) but as he hadn’t had time to unwrap it, he would bring it along to MPP for the grand unveiling… which he did, only to find that it had been seriously surpassed by the monster waiting patiently for him next to the door outside the hall… and yes, he did spot it, probably as he drove into the parking lot! 

We shared the Steve's unbridled joy as he unwrapped his “massive tongue depressor” which was instantly only about half the size of the newest one… Steve was somewhat bemused by this but did good-naturedly pose for a few pictures to demonstrate the scale of the thing… I reckon it stands about six-foot tall – Big-Steve’s a really tall fella (clue’s in the name, folks!) and he was only just peering over it. 

I’d taken along a lovely little puzzle that I’d discovered consisting of four black dodecahedrons that sit in a bright green acrylic tray… turning the tray over you’re asked to created a truncated octahedron that fits in that side of the tray… it’s a bit tricky as the shapes you have don’t really combine easily to form said truncated octahedron… I’d been merrily showing it to everyone who was there all day with most people discovering its secrets and merrily building a truncated octahedron when Michael told me it had been designed by his friend Robert Reid and was called “Martingar” – hopefully I’ve spelt that right – in honour of the great man himself… probably manufactured by George Miller some time ago - brilliant to find out about the origins of my latest neat little find.

Speaking of Michael, he’d brought along a new design called “T’s, Q’s & P’s” that kept several people amused during the course of the day. It consists of three triangles which are used to created a long list of shapes including several types of triangles, quadrilaterals and pentagons… all from three little triangles! Lovely little puzzle to fiddle with when the mood takes… and I’m rather chuffed to say that I got given a copy for my collection – thanks Michael!

Oli had celebrated his birthday earlier in the week and arrived with Kirsty, Oscar and Jack in tow and bearing a large birthday cake – complete with a twisty cake topping… it was carved at an appropriated hour and everyone pronounced it a triumph for Kirsty – looked brilliant inside too! :-)

Stefan had asked me to bring along a copy of Stumbling Blocks as he’d missed out on getting a copy from Eric recently… let’s just say that he made remarkably short work of it – in fact I think he solved it faster than I did when I received this copy and I’d already solved a copy of the same puzzle made by Tom Lensch! He is a pretty impressive puzzle solver! He then proceeded to spend the rest of the day powering through a vast number of puzzles he’d never seen before…

Louis had brought along a couple of copies of his latest Tricklock design for 2018 to roadtest it on a bunch of unruly puzzlers - it survived with flying colours  and Louis was unable to elicit any improvements from the assembled masses... so it will be committed to production in time for the next major puzzle get-together... Thanks for my copy, Louis! :-)

Ed continued to power through pretty much all of the Karakuri boxes we managed to throw at him (figuratively!!!) – including a new copy of Cassiopeia and an old Kamei Parcel box that I’ve had on the shelf to be solved for a few months now… I’d been unable to open it – he solved it in a couple of minutes and then showed me how to open it… I’m beginning to think that most other puzzlers are better at solving these things than I am!

Somewhere in the middle we wandered into the village proper for pig rolls, kebabs and fish suppers – amusingly the local vendors have now learnt to spot the familiar blue polo shirts and stock up in time for the incoming hordes… they seem happy. 

Somewhere around five-thirty-ish we all decamp up to our place for some decidedly lower key puzzling and a serious fish supper. The weather has been gloriously un-British so a bunch of us end up chatting outside in the sunshine over some cold beverages…

At one point there’s some tongue depressor silliness and I risk being caught with the largest of Big-Steve’s tongue depressors hidden somewhere in my house… we manage to find them in time for Big-Steve not to have to leave them behind – he’d have been gutted, I’m sure!

Despite several puzzlers going home with a number of puzzles from Ethel’s crates, she reckons it’s hardly put a dent in them – I think she means that as a challenge, folks! Come prepared next time…

As I’d done the night before, I left Louis and Stefan puzzling furiously when I crashed – they seemed vaguely happy though so I didn’t feel too bad!

Next morning saw a feast of bacon rolls for breakfast before taking Louis and Stefan to the airport for their flight to Schiphol and putting Dick on a train back toward Wimbledon… another jolly fine MPP comes to an end – thank you all for a brilliant weekend! 

MPP XXvii

Over the last couple of years, I’ve developed into a bit of a rut: on the last Friday before Wimbledon, I take the day off work and meet Dick Hess at the station and then spend a couple of days getting puzzled by his riddles, maths and stats problems and squeezing in an MPP over the weekend… it’s a brilliant recipe for a fine weekend, let me tell you!

Pretty soon after Dick had arrived he was already taunting me with stats puzzles that I really should know the answers to, and all too often Dick would respond with a wonderfully tactful “Well, you know, 80% of people would answer that way, but…” and then a “Let me walk you through it…”. 

We puzzled a bit – Osho’s Flying Tetra II was a big hit with Dick - and riddled a lot – and Dick shared the occasional bit of humour in between anecdotes of puzzlers and puzzling… 

One of Dick’s habits is to bring along a little gift for everyone attending the puzzle parties he goes to… and this time he’d made up a copy of a seriously diabolical little disentanglement puzzle… not content with that, he’d also brought along a couple of copies of some “helpful” intermediate stages to ease you into the main challenge… and during the course of the afternoon he duly introduced me to the trivial baby brother, which didn’t take me too long to solve… so we progressed onto the middle brother – which I made a bit of a meal of, managing to find a number of things that almost worked, vindicating Dick’s design several times along the solve – and giving Dick no small measure of happiness, no doubt… when I finally got through the second one, he told me I was ready for the final challenge, but I dodged that one and got my copy of that along with everyone else the next morning… and probably just as well, because the real deal bore about as much resemblance to the introductory numbers as the Wright Flyer bore to Concorde! 

That evening we collected Louis from the airport and puzzled some more, until a couple of us crashed for the night leaving a Dutchman in the puzzle cave a puzzling. I had a great Friday.

Next morning, we loaded up the puzzles and biccies and went down to the village to set up the hall before everyone arrived – and we just about managed to get it all sorted before the puzzlers descended… 

Angela and Peter arrived pretty early on and proceeded to bring out several crates of books and puzzles… I started trawling through the books and found a number of wonderful volumes to add to my collection, including a first edition Sam Lloyd and a signed Martin Gardener first edition… very chuffed! 

James also arrived with several crates-full, as did Tim T who was holding a two-for-one sale on his vintage and highly collectible puzzles. Dale also had a crate or two for sale or swap so there were plenty of opportunities for the odd cheeky little purchase. 

I’d been keeping my eye open for a Spanish visitor from Vienna – I recognised David from our meeting in The Hague last year and it was great to welcome him to his first MPP… he’d duly brought puzzling keyrings and a puzzle joke for all comers – and chocolates and cake from Vienna for everyone! He will be warmly welcomed back if he chooses to trek back over the channel again in the future. 

Several people had a go at my copy of Intrism – Louis probably got the furthest on it, but the general consensus was that it looked stunning but it was a pretty unforgiving dexterity puzzle! (There’s a single entry-point, so you’re always going back to the very beginning if you fall off…) 

During the course of the morning Dick did his rounds giving everyone there a copy of his Devil’s Coil entanglement… a serious franken-puzzle of note with multiple levels of challenge. Let me refer you simply to the comments above, say that the puzzle is well-named, and let us leave it at that! (Thanks Dick!) He was also dishing out booklets of bridge problems and entertaining all comers with his usual riddles and maths puzzles…

Big Steve had been printing stuff again and kept a few of us amused for quite a while sorting bits between puzzles and then trying to assemble a copy of one of Derek’s newest designs called, I think, Sphere 90… which is a bit of a step up from Sphere 30 – an assembly of 30 pieces to form a ball. He’d produced a couple of sets of pieces and wanted to give me a set…

Now, Sphere 90 consists of two sorts of pieces with 90 bits all told… Steve pointed out the two types of pieces and we duly started sorting the colours and the shapes accordingly, only to find there were a few different pieces in there for good measure. So we separated those and pulled together a full Sphere 90 set with a few spare pieces (just in case – things are under a bit of tension during the assembly) … we then had a bit of a bash at assembling the Sphere… and I wasn’t doing particularly well and duly left Ali and Chris working on it… and a short while later they had duly assembled “my set” of pieces… which then immediately became “Steve’s set” and I was given the bags of bits we’d previously put on one side… all’s fair in puzzling and all that…

[Now, on a bit of a side note, I then spent several hours over the next few evenings trying to unsuccessfully assemble those bits into a nice Sphere… but stuff kept not quite working out right or even in one case I found myself running out of bits! Which is really weird given that I knew there were spares in there… and then I realised that there weren’t just two types of pieces in there – I’d picked up “Steve’s set” with all the extra pieces from Sphere 30 and I’d been trying to mash them all into a single ball – that no work! Paying more careful attention, and sorting the bits properly, I got a nice 90-piece ball assembled quite rapidly…pity about the first couple of evenings wasted! :-) Thanks Derek and Steve!!]

Jeremy had brought along a bunch of interesting burrs, including a copy of his own design perfectly resembling a Tardis! He had a copy of Yavuz’ mosaic assembly that several people had fun rearranging and then brought out his Mac with some software he’d put together to illustrate symmetric patterns that could be created using the blocks… very clever that man…

Somewhere around lunchtime we wandered up the road in search of pig buns, only to find that our favourite hog-roastery wasn’t doing pig buns that day so we had to settle for burgers or chicken wraps (some weird sort of chicken and salad thingy wrapped in an old pancake – don’t see the attraction!). I shouldn’t grumble, the burger was nice and the company exceptional!

Adin and Sophie arrived a little while later, much to James’ delight. Adin had asked James if he had any Sorrento boxes available for sale and James had duly brought along an entire crate full of them for Adin to choose among… history records that Adin left with more than one Sorrento Box and James’ load was considerably lightened. 

James had brought along his copy of Ned Kelly for us to try a group solve, having previously failed on one of our visits to deepest darkest Luppitt. We then passed Ned around from puzzler to puzzler, each doing one step in the solve (puzzle away, find something useful, do it and then pass it onto the next puzzler). Ali started us off quite rapidly and Oli duly found something to move before handing it to Louis… who obliged and gave it to Chris who puzzled for a goodly time before giving up and passing it to me where I luckily managed to find something interesting to move us on… sadly there we got stuck for quite a while, circulating dear Ned with his chest opened to the elements, baring his soul, but no more of his secrets… much later in the afternoon he was rather rapidly disassembled when someone gave a hint on the next thing worth investigating… and Ned succumbed to the MPP group solve. 

Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon I dropped Dick off at the station so that he could grab a train into London for the start of his Wimbledon pilgrimage.

Steve has been bringing a set of hex sticks and rods along for a few meetings now, each time goading Chris into trying to assemble it and each time Chris spends ages trying to win Steve’s approval (or just conquer the damn puzzle!) by assembling the thing – each time to no avail… and thus it came to pass that the Travelling Dutchman did sit down with the bits, derive what the shape must be, examined the pieces and determined an assembly strategy and verily he did assemble the thing, using only Big Steve’s to support its truculent pieces at one point in the process… he is a puzzle solving machine!

My all-time classic moment of the day was when we were talking to Steve about his wheel construction of straight, identical sticks under-quite-a-lot-of-tension. He and Ali had assembled it and from the sounds of it, getting the last bits in were an absolute nightmare… whereupon Louis says, wouldn’t it be easier to just slide this up here and loosen that, demonstrating that it all comes apart rather deftly with virtually no tension whatsoever… the look on Ali and Steve’s face was true Mastercard Magic moment stuff: priceless! 

When things began to slow down at the hall, we decided to decamp back to my place for the traditional fish supper and more puzzling…

We played “How many puzzlers can you fit in Puzzle Cave v2?” – Answer: “More!” and David played hunt-the-interesting-puzzle among all the other stuff in the cabinets.

I managed to line a few of the guys up with Dick’s “introduction” to his giveaway – which should probably more accurately be described as a misleadance rather than an introduction!

At one point later that evening there was a lot of “interest” when David was being goaded into trying Shane’s Viper… I videoed his rather hesitant initial attempts and then got the full-throated Spanish equivalent of something vaguely similar to, but possibly more colourful than “Gosh, that stung a little bit, I wonder what’s inside there?” – now if only there was some sort of means of sharing videos on this world wide web thingy…

The party broke up reasonably early which allowed us to see that David safely caught a train back into Brum for the night and get a decent night’s sleep… 

27 turns out to be another goodie!