This post looks at a few locks that have recently been
perplexing me.
First up is a pair of Marcel Gillen-doctored locks that came
courtesy of a friend who was down-sizing his collection. For all intents and
purposes they look like a pair of standard ABUS locks. They show no outward
signs of tampering, yet inserting a key and turning doesn’t generally have the
desired effect… and shaking them results in at least a little rattling, which
is a bit non-standard for such devices.
Each lock comes with a pair of identical (yes, I checked –
and FWIW that’s a good idea!) keys, neither of which appears to unlock its
padlock.
These locks have been well-and-truly doctored and need some careful
attention, more than a little trialling-and-erring, and it may help to try and
picture what could be going on inside there.
Find how one of them works and you might think you’re onto
something for getting the second one open, and you’ll be wrong!
Their respective modifications are somewhat different, and
while one of them offers a fairly short solution the other requires several
more steps and can be a little fussy… but both will behave predictably in a
practiced pairs of hands.
A really nice little piece of puzzling history – with no
hint of anything untoward on the outside of the locks.
Next up is a Hales-special – Padlock SH-AW. Shane loves his
locks and a little while back I managed to put him in touch with a pair of
those Gillen locks – and I think he rather enjoyed them, to the extent that he
promptly went out and bought some unadulterated padlocks with a view to
adulterating them.
Having approached Marcel for permission to have a bash at
making his own versions (and getting the blessing) he set about milling dirty
great chunks of brass out of the locks and then playing around with the innards
– to produce his take on one of Marcel’s locks – with a twist – because, well,
why not take the opportunity to make it even harder (and in the process make
picking the lock well-nigh impossible!)?
It arrived in the post, and even though I thought I knew the
basics of what he’d done, I still struggle with it – a lot!
Shaking this lock produces quite a lot of rattling inside
there – a lot more than the Gillen lock it’s modelled after in fact… is that a
clue?
This one’s tough! In fact after more than a month with it, I
still don’t feel I have it beaten – it sits on the desk where I can pick it up
in between bits of work on the PC and try variations on the “moves” – but I
still haven’t found the killer combo that opens it every time…
At our last MPP Shane brought along a series of photos of
the modification process and it is quite incredible to see just how butchered
the lock gets during its modification, and yet after being rebuilt, it could
easily pass as being new-in-box … if not for the stamped personalisation on the
side (SH-AW) it would still look like a pretty unassuming lock – albeit one
that won’t open unless you treat it just right!
Thanks Shane! It means a lot to have a personalised
thoroughly-Hales-adulterated lock in my collection.
The third in this post is another little piece of IPP memorabilia - Frank Chambers' IPP20 exchange puzzle called Mikslok (with not a trace of Corian in sight!).
Another doctored lock, this one also rattles a bit when shook...
Insert the key and turn - nothing... in fact it won't turn! You'll need to summon your wits and experiment, but it shouldn't take too long to find your way in... interestingly I've managed to find two distinct ways to unlock this one. :-)
As you'd expect, even though you KNOW that he's had to doctor the insides somehow, there's absolutely no trace of any form of mistreatment.
Another doctored lock, this one also rattles a bit when shook...Insert the key and turn - nothing... in fact it won't turn! You'll need to summon your wits and experiment, but it shouldn't take too long to find your way in... interestingly I've managed to find two distinct ways to unlock this one. :-)
As you'd expect, even though you KNOW that he's had to doctor the insides somehow, there's absolutely no trace of any form of mistreatment.
Next up is a rather unusual-looking handmade lock from
India. It all looks pretty standard if you overlook the rather odd angles on
the key and the keyhole.
Simply inserting the key and turning results in you
discovering that the key gets blocked just before it might do something useful
… ah well, perhaps the key turns the other way? Nope! Same result…
Turns out it employs a reasonably standard trick that
shouldn’t take a hardened puzzlist too long to deduce.
Not the prettiest lock in the collection (that would have to
be one of Rainer’s beauties!) but it came from a dear friend with a nice back
story behind it… which makes it special.
Last up is an altogether different lock! Designed and
manufactured by Louis Coolen (with a little help from Shapeways) this is a
little sequential discovery puzzle in the shape of a lock. Louis had been
working on this design for a while and had pretty much perfected it in time for
IPP35 – so he took a bunch of them to Ottawa and I suspect that he didn’t go
home with many of them.
It’s a cute little padlock in white strong and flexible
selective laser sintered nylon – one the front there’s a series of H-shaped
cuts … there’s something where you might expect to see a keyhole and you can
feel that the shackle will probably come out at some point, but at the moment
it’s well and truly trapped.
It’s important to note that every little detail of the
design (and implementation) has been deliberate – nothing has happened by
chance, so if you spot something, or think that doing something unusual as a
result of the materials used might help, then either it’s part of the solution,
or it’s a red-herring – but it’s not there by chance… Louis spent literally
months and months refining every aspect of the design and nothing had been left
to chance in there…
Great design Louis! A really fun little puzzle to work
through…
