Wavelinks

Back in 2018 Rod Bogart’s Wavelinks puzzle was a popular entry in the annual Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition – it was one of the 10 most popular puzzles among the assembled puzzlers. There was much discussion about the potential for the design to be cast in metal by a particular manufacturer, it seemed that was everyone’s first thought on playing with it… but sadly that would not happen as they felt some of the overhangs in the design wouldn’t suit their manufacturing process.

For a few years, the only way to get a copy was to grab a 3D-printed copy off Shapeways, and don’t get me wrong, they’re fabulous to play with in sintered nylon… but they could have been so much better.

Flash forward a couple of years and the good people of Craighill decided to collaborate with the Buck Bros of Art of Play to run a Kickstarter campaign to produce them in steel… and a lot of us joined the queue to order a copy.

My copy arrived toward the end of last year and it is fabulous – I opted for the ever-so-slightly psychedelic version over the black and silver copy so it looks a little trippy. The packaging is second to none so it presents almost as beautifully in an unassembled state as it does fully assembled.

The accuracy on the pieces is stellar, and they slide together wonderfully – but if things aren’t lined up, they will refuse point-blank to move.

Colour aside, you would normally have four identical pieces – given my colour choice, mine literally are identical! Any pair will slide together to form a torus (mathematicians’ doughnuts!) but what you’re really after is to assemble a pair of interlinked torii… something simpler said than done.

I find this design really messes with my head whenever I pick up a copy… and I’ve had a copy for years and solved it many times, but I still struggled when I picked up this copy for the first time. There’s a lovely heft to these pieces that invites fiddling and playing – so fiddle and play!

Finding the right combination, the right starting point and the right combination of movements produces a pair of interlinked torii – it does seem more than a little magical when they slide together.

A brilliant design that’s been perfectly rendered in solid steel…

Nested Cubes

Back in January, before the whole world went a little weird, I acquired a copy of Tom Lensch’s Nested Cubes from Ethel. Tom had entered it in the 2012 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition and I played with a copy back in DC, but got pretty much nowhere in solving it, so I was delighted to find a copy looking for a new home. 

The puzzle looks pretty innocuous at first glance in its disassembled form – come to think of it, it looks pretty innocuous in its solved form as well – it’s the little bit in between those two that might lead you to a little bit of madness though!

You’re give four cubic boxes with lids, and a little cubie to sit inside the smallest of the boxes… each of which have a series of holes drilled through them… and then the largest box has a brass rod sticking up in the centre of the base… or rather it should be in the centre of the base, only it isn’t – Tom’s drilled most of the holes in the “wrong” place too… so instead of merely piling them inside one another and closing the lids, you need to find just which orientation each one needs to go inside the next one so that the brass rod can pass sufficiently far inside the stack to allow the final lid to be closed. 

Thankfully the boxes are all cubes – thus making every possible orientation possible -he said, somewhat tautologically – I mean, you wouldn’t want the number of possible assemblies reduced in any way, now would you!? Although having said that, I have found myself solving this one on a few occasions swearing blindly that I have now literally tried every single combination and they will not work!

 

In spite of that, some clear thought and sightlines can help you plot a path through the morass and lead you ultimately to a single closed box with the others all neatly stacked inside. 

Fiendish, Mister Lensch, fiendish!

Peamaru

I love simple puzzles – so here’s a nice simple one for you that I rather enjoyed fiddling with at IPP earlier this year: Peamaru was designed by the rather prolific Volker Latussek… and while he’s usually renowned for his packing puzzles, this one’s also pretty awesome. 

You have four L-shaped pieces – two big L’s and 2 smaller ones. Each has a couple of red dots on them and your challenge is pretty straight forward: arrange the pieces so that all of the dots are paired face-to-face, and the structure is stable.

Nope! That's not it...

The nice thing is that just seeing the pieces, you know right away what you’re trying to do so you can dive right in. Pairing up most of the red dots is really easy – however getting the last pair to come anywhere close is pretty much impossible…

As is my usual process for “solving” these sorts of puzzles, I spent a long time doing the same thing over and over again, often while chatting amiably with another puzzler having much more success at another much harder puzzle on the table. I’d pretty much convinced myself that it was in fact impossible when I headed off in another direction, so to speak, and that turned out to be the break I needed. 

Neat little “A-Ha!” moment when everything really falls into place perfectly – all of the red dots are face-to-face – all in a neat little structure on the table. 

Four simple pieces. One serious puzzle. 

I was very chuffed when Pelikan made a number of copies available recently and I was able to add a copy to the hoard… they still have a few copies left if you’re tempted. 

IPP38 Part 2 ... of several...

Thursday

Breakfast was a rush-job to make it to my registration desk duties in time and we managed to get a bunch of excited puzzlers and their support crew duly registered in time for the day’s tours and stuff… 

Most of the action on Thursday was sight-seeing tours to Balboa park and things started out well, until we got news that the buses were going to have to change their pick-up point due to a private function in the area – problem was everyone on the first couple of buses had been told that they’d be picked up where they were dropped off that morning… except the new pick-up point would be out of sight of the old one… so how do you solve a puzzle like that?

Turns out that when you challenge a few puzzlers like that, it brings out the very best MacGyver in them – resulting in a couple of dayglo yellow signs pointing our puzzlers to their new pick-up point – we didn’t lose many of them and we shall speak of this no more. 

Jen, Neil, Gill and I Ubered off to the Gaslamp District to go back to a shop that the girls had spotted the day before. We spent a while in the Chuck Jones Gallery looking at some brilliant Snoopy art and a bunch of original Marvin art… Gill and I ended up thinking about a Snoopy print but Neil may have gone a step further… 

Lunch was an awesome Alehouse Cheeseburger [highly recommended!] before we went off in search of some good Scotch for our host the following weekend. My Scots scotch adviser recommended a nice Bunnahabhain… [bin-AR-bin apparently, in case you’re wondering…]

Back at the hotel I managed to grab a couple of hours in the Design Competition, before manning one end of the registration table again. When that closed down we rounded up a gang of about 20 and headed out in search of some dinner. Paulette had recommended Seasons 52 off the back of having a nice lunch there so we wandered off up the road. When we rock up totally unannounced at the restaurant they ask us how many are in our party – Jim is the numbers guy and tells them we have 20 (only some of us have actually got there at this point and they aren’t quite sure if we’re telling porkies – we reassure them) – Jim adds that we’d really like to sit together, not really expecting that to be vaguely possible! They ask us to give them a few minutes and then literally usher us into a private room where a couple of waitresses have set up a pair of tables back to back for twenty of us… dinner turns out to be some fabulous seafood topped off by exceptional desserts – Kudos to Seasons 52 Seaport District! 

 

We have a fun walk back to the hotel talking about tongue depressors and I get pressed for the whole back story on the tongue depressor meme that has enveloped MPP-folk from around the world and is now threatening to infect even the International Puzzle Party…

I get a couple more hours in the Design Competition room and have a lot of fun, albeit largely unsuccessful on the puzzle-solving front. 

Friday

Friday morning sees some more registration activity and bus wrangling – this time taking people to the zoo… drop-offs and pick-ups all work as planned this time and we don’t have the excitement of the day before. 

A bunch of us head out to tour Craig Thibodeau’s workshop on the outskirts of San Diego. Robert -Stickman- Yarger and Craig have collaborated on a couple of items of puzzle furniture recently and Rob has arranged for a couple of busloads of eager puzzlers to nose around Craig’s workshop and play with a couple of his recent pieces – including one rather special piece commissioned by George and Roxanne for their new Florida puzzle museum (and home). 

It was an absolute treat to watch Craig’s son nimbly demonstrating all of the nooks and crannies and puzzles and tricks on a huge rotating puzzle cabinet – seeing drawers opening and closing of their own accord while the entire cabinet spins effortlessly on a central axis was truly unforgettable. 

Craig also gave us a quick demonstration of how he does most of his marquetry – and if I hadn’t seen him do it in front of me, I wouldn’t have believed how quickly he was able to do it… the man has serious skills, and more than a little experience! 

I grab a quick bite to eat back at the hotel before wrangling people and tickets for a tour of the USS Midway – there’s no bus as it’s only a 10-minute walk from the hotel and somehow it never gets old telling people “Big grey boat over there, you can’t miss it…” when you could literally see it from the doorstep. After a while I hand that duty over to Marti so we can meet with the hotel folks to check on the arrangements for the evening’s reception out in the courtyard. We tweak a couple of small things but leave things largely as they’ve got them planned out, sure that things will go well.

I head back to the registration desk via the Design Competition room again (again with virtually no luck on solving things!) – I’m getting used to the whole registration malarkey and enjoying seeing everyone and greeting old friends … and actually managing to get almost enough people to sign up for all the volunteer slots that I know I need to get covered.

The Founder’s Reception marks the official start of IPP38-proper, with Jerry welcoming everyone to San Diego and wishing us all a happy puzzle party. We follow the new tradition of asking the first-time attendees to introduce themselves and tell us what sorts of puzzles they’re most interested in… several puzzlers then descend on them to shake their hands and make them feel welcome after the speeches – it’s a great community to be a part of. The hotel does a great job serving plenty of hot food and cold drinks and the lines for service never seem too long – we seem to have struck a good balance between the number of serving stations and the number of guests… it bodes well. 

After the formalities there’s a lot of reacquainting and chatting and after a while I follow Eric and Dom into the parking garage next door where Eric’s single wheel motorised skateboard comes out to play… Eric patiently coaching Dom in the finer skills and getting him to successfully complete several loops around the garage, before hopping on himself and effortlessly whizzing around the area at high speed himself – definitely still a kid at heart. [Rumour has it that the night before the one-wheel had been out in the hotel lobby and some big puzzling characters had tried, slightly less successfully to whizz around… but I wasn’t there so I can’t tell you that story, sorry.]