Noodling Box

Eric fuller was a giant among men. Not only as a tall, imposing guy, but often as the bloke with the serious mohawk at our annual puzzle parties. Softly-spoken and an absolute gentleman, he had a rapier-sharp sense of humour and puzzle-chops like nobody’s business. He was a great solver of puzzles, but he had an absolute gift for both designing puzzlers’ puzzles and for selecting interesting designs from others… most people will know him best for the amazing craftmanship in the puzzles he’s been making and selling through Cubic Dissections for years.

The puzzling community lost one of the good guys when he passed away last year – I’m going to miss his larger-than-life personality at IPPs, and I know that there will be thousands of folks who have an Eric-shaped hole in their lives now. My heart goes out to his friends and family who must be missing him so much more than me – hugs to you all.

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Noodling Box was one of the last projects that Eric worked on – he’d spoken about it now and then and it sounded one of those projects that he’d dip back into every now and then, noodle around a bit, and then work on something else… until he thought it was ready to unleash.

The name, apparently comes from the act of catching catfish with one’s bare hands (not one’s bear hands, that’s another sport entirely!) by enticing them out of their underwater caves and then presumably grabbing them. I’m no expert, but I wonder if there’s potentially a more effective way of doing all that… either way, I’m sure that it’s at least partially relevant to the puzzle – or just another of Eric’s jokes on an unsuspecting puzzler.

My copy has an African Teak case with a Quilted Sycamore drawer – at least I assume it’s a drawer as it wiggles a bit, but resolutely won’t open. There are a few noticeable holes around the sides, some of which seem to have something lurking just below the surface (a catfish, of sorts?). The front of the drawer has a round knob with a little bit of a wiggle to it… but again, nothing that seems useful at all…

I end up spending quite a while making absolutely ZERO progress until I notice something worth exploring. One thing leads to another and I find myself in command of a small, but perfectly formed, tool.

At this stage I’m pretty chuffed and I reckon it’ll probably be plain sailing from here on in having finally cracked my way in… disappointment awaits… and I end up contemplating increasing dangerous things that I could do with my little tool, as I try things in turn, none of which seem to be of any use whatsoever…

There’s an obvious place for me to want to get to at this stage, only my tool won’t allow… I spend several days Think- (c)-ing to almost no avail.

Progress finally comes from trying something I hadn’t thought of yet – which is obvious really, until you think of it… only you don’t, and you won’t, because it’s Eric, and he knows exactly how puzzlers think… and then uses that against you, totally.

From there on I manage a bit more sustained progress and actually get the puzzle to where someone who hasn’t come across Eric yet might consider the puzzle to be solved… only you haven’t seen his hanko and there are some as-yet-unexplained noises going on inside the box, and there’s altogether too much space left…

Onwards, and sometimes upwards, until some further discoveries, including at least one that will literally blow your mind and then you’ll have not only the hanko, but also your prize – totally befitting a Noodling Box.

The puzzling journey is beautifully designed with definite stages of discovery along the way – there were two or three times that my head was blown on aspects of the solution. Everything is that precisely made it’s virtually impossible to guess what’s going to be happening until it actually happens

The gang at Cubic have really done Eric proud on this one – well done folks!

 

5L Bin

If you like n-ary puzzles, you’ll love fiddling with this one… I’d almost hesitate to call it a puzzle, once get the hang of its n-ary-ness it is very much a satisfying fidget toy.

Eric has done a fantastic job of bringing Goh Pit Khiam's design to life through a walnut bin and some well-machined aluminium L’s. (Yes, that is the correct number of i's in there.) The notching on the L’s enforces a strict set of sequential moves to either insert or remove a piece.

It’s a handy size for sittin’ and fiddlin’ and I’ve spent quite a while just going forwards and backwards through the gears, releasing the first piece and then getting everything back inside the bin again. (Once you release the first piece, they can all be removed…)

It makes for a great executive toy (we’re all executives in our own little worlds, right?) and really looks the part thanks to Eric’s awesome quality.

…and if you want an extra little twist, try a suggestion from the Discord folks: running through the sequence holding the bin with one hand and using only gravity to move the pieces – it’s interesting to compare the feel of doing that with the usual two-handed process of pushing the pieces around inside the bin – of course you’re effectively doing the same thing but you wouldn’t know it!

Another lovely little n-ary puzzle for the hoard! (...and as I write this they're still available over here!)

Pennytentiary

Not only a great play on words, it’s also an excellent puzzle!

This compact little sequential discovery puzzle from Eric Fuller packs a shed-load of puzzling into a tiny form factor – by my reckoning, several weeks’ worth of puzzling – ‘cos that’s how long it spent on my desk staring at me while I singularly failed to solve it. Several times I showed it to my mates on our weekly Zoom calls. Mostly to confirm that I had still made absolutely no progress. They didn’t mock me, much…

Right, so what have we got here?

I reckon it’s about three inches square and about an inch deep… you can see the four screws that appear to be holding all those neat little layers of wood and acrylic together so I won’t describe them (oops!). There’s a keyhole shaped opening on one side and there’s what looks like a penny trapped inside… trapped by at least four sliding metal bars that gravity dictates will pretty much always block the little coin’s escape…

And this is where the fun begins… Eric knows that as soon as you see this little set up, you’re going to all do the same thing – so you might as well do it and get it over and done with, I mean, you never know – it might actually help… SPOILER ALERT – it doesn’t!

After that I tried wiggling things – anything I could find – and that got me literally nowhere as well… and that was pretty much the state of my progress for several weeks. (Yup, not the sharpest knife in the drawer!)

This past weekend I tried something I hadn’t tried before, and something happened that hadn’t happened before – and I thought to myself that that might actually be useful… and it was – not only did it give me a new sense of purpose, it also gave me something to work with…

Little did I realise that that was literally just the beginning, and this little guy held a whole lot more secrets to conquer – all the way through there were reminders that Eric was playing puppet-master – giving a little with one hand and then slapping you across the face with the other – sorry, that’s another blog altogether – but the man teases you and plays with your emotions – he makes you think you’re almost there, and then laughs in your face when you realise there’s something else to solve…

This one really does keep on challenging you and surprising you all the way through the solve – there are some “What the heck?!” moments and a few “You bastard!” moments… all crammed into three inches squared. And if you’re as bad at solving them as I am, you can look forward to several weeks of puzzling value!

If you didn’t get one from the last release, you really ought to try and grab one this time around!

Blah Box

by Eric Fuller,

is anything but!

It is excellent!

And yes, I know that the name came from his disappointment that he couldn’t use it the way he’d first intended, but boy am I glad he decided to release it in its own right – it’s an excellent puzzle…

Once again, Eric uses all he knows about how we solve puzzles, against us…

This one had me bashing my head against a literal brick wall for several weeks trying to find some way in. 

When you first get hold of this modest sized box, you’ll spot the obvious sliding lid and clock that it’s locked almost as quickly – it’ll move a little, but it’s very clearly currently locked. There are a couple of holes on the one end of the (obvious) lid, but you can’t really see much through them…

There’s something rolling around inside, and perhaps that's interesting…. Both of the short ends appear to be floating and one has a hole in the centre of it with something shiny peeking through – could be a magnet…

And that’s it. That’s literally all I had for several weeks. 

I’d pick it up, try a few things – try some more unusual things. I tried tapping and rapping it a few times, and sometimes I almost convinced myself that something somewhere had changed…

After a couple of weeks of polite exploration I finally managed to find some real progress – it was obvious I’d made some progress, only problem was that I’d come up against another virtually impervious brick wall… sometime later I spotted something interesting that I’d managed to overlook and that gave me something rather interesting to play with – MORE PROGRESS!

And with that progress, an even bigger brick wall – this one took quite a lot more thinking, and experimenting – and I ended up spending several more days caught here – before I finally tried something different, and found myself marvelling at that Fuller bloke’s serious skillz and subterfuge. He really does use your own mind against you on this one – you know certain things, only you don’t…

I’m a huge fan of this one – it has a few very distinct phases, each of which would be pretty good on its own – lump them together in a confusing little package and it’s a great puzzle box.

[There is a potential short-cut that Eric’s designed out with an after-sales modification that any muggle can fit for you if you want the full experience… alternatively, just treat this little beauty with some respect and you probably won’t be bothered by the short-cut at all!]

Box Rebellion

I’ve always maintained that Eric Fuller has a wonderful knack for selecting really interesting puzzles and then crafting them absolutely sublimely. He recently decided to make a run of Stewart Coffin’s Box Rebellion puzzles and I was delighted – I’d been trying to nab a copy of Walt Hoppe’s 2004 exchange version for a while and haven’t ever managed to come close enough to actually getting one up to now – so I made sure I didn’t miss out on one of Eric’s copies.

I was not disappointed: Eric has done his usual stellar job of producing a puzzle that not only looks wonderful, but the tolerances make it play absolutely beautifully too.

Four simple little L-shaped Padauk pieces need to be inserted into a lovely Canarywood box with a partial clear acrylic cover restricting entry to the box just a little. There’s a handy circular hole in one end that lets you get a finger inside the box in case you need to manoeuvre the little L’s inside the box, and that's about it… well, one other thing that you’ll notice right away is that the clear lid-piece slides back and forth a tiny bit – and knowing Eric’s attention to detail, you’ll realise that cannot be a mistake.

Solving this one was all about experimentation for me – you might as well start with the obvious, so I did… and quickly found that it’s easy to get a few of those L’s in there, but it quickly becomes impossible to get the last ones in there… and there’s only four of them to put in there!

Having a bit of a Think (c) is always a good idea, and if that’s not enough, then a far more serious examination of exactly what is possible, and what isn’t, will probably pay dividends.

I love how this puzzle leads you through all the dead-ends and then reveals little bits that might just be useful before finally allowing you to string all those things together into a sequence of events that see you dropping the final piece into place with all four L’s neatly below the clear lid.

An excellent design from one master, perfectly crafted by another master.