William’s Wonder

I picked up a lovely copy of William’s Wonder from Kayleb’s Corner earlier this year and I’ve been meaning to write about it for ages. This 4*4*4 cube was designed by William Waite and I’m pretty sure that this example was made by Pelikan. It looks like a nice honest cube, although some of the shapes around the outside suggest that it’s going to be at least a little unusual. 

Finding the first piece that moves is fairly easy – prodding and poking around randomly will eventually identify a piece that slides upwards (identifying the single void in the cube, in case you’re interested). From there, noting what’s moved you should be able to work out what should move next, right? After all, if this is a serially interlocking cube, then it must point you in the right direction ... except it doesn’t seem to! You can see where you’ve opened up a gap – you know the next move must then use that gap, but all the pieces around the gap don’t appear to move ... ratfink!

Sneaky chap that Waite guy – the way he’s designed the pieces, you’re virtually assured that for the first while you’re going to be tugging on either ends of the same piece, or trying to push two bits of the same piece toward one another ... and the crafty chaps who made this puzzle have added another layer to that by deliberately throwing you off the scent in the way that they’ve chosen to align (or not align!) various blocks that form the individual pieces.

Right, so once you manage to get over the not-so-obvious (to me, at any rate!) pitfalls and find the second move, you can expand the five bits of the cube until the fifth move allows you to remove your first piece. 

I know that I’m relatively new to these sorts of puzzles, but the designers’ ingenuity really amazes me – how they can come up with such unique, complicated interlocking schemes within the confines of a 4*4*4 cube is impressive. 

William’s Wonder is a delightful cube that draws you in by giving you a really simple, easy to find first move and then holds you hostage for ages while you try and find the second move ... highly recommended, if you can find one!

DIY Twisty mods...aka Rebuilding a Mosaic Cube

A couple of weeks ago I splurged a bit (I know, dear reader, you’re struggling to imagine that, but bear with me!) on some twisty puzzles from Kayleb’s Corner – there were quite a few twisties listed so I took the opportunity to add a couple of unusual twisty puzzles to my rather limited collection (I hadn’t really been a huge fan of twisty puzzles). 

One of them was a Mosaic cube designed by Oskar van Deventer (yip, him again!) and produced by Mefferts. It’s a corner turning cube with an interesting design that creates pretty patterns when you play with it (Yes, I’m very shallow!) While it looked great, playing with it left you with the distinct feeling that it was about to disintegrate in your hands – which isn’t so great. Turns out this is reasonably well-known and documented out there in internet-land: it stems from the design of the central frame that leaves quite a lot of space free inside the cube, so pieces can slide and shift a bit more than they should in the wrong places. 

While I was reading Rob Stegmann’s latest updates, I noticed that he’s just rebuilt a Mosaic cube on a new centre and reported that it is was much improved – intrigued, I  read a bit more about it and discovered that Oskar has designed a new centre-piece and made it available via his shop on Shapeways, so I ordered one (and a couple of other things while I was there) and soon enough I had a firm black ball with 8 holes in it sitting on my desk staring at me waiting for some spare time to rebuild the Mosaic cube...

Knowing I was going to have some time to rebuild it on Saturday morning, I started taking the cube apart on Friday evening – the hardest part is popping off the caps on the corner pieces – in the end I realised the easiest way was to prise them off bit-by-bit from each of their three corners using a flat bladed screwdriver ... most of them popped off fairly easily, some were real sods to lever off without stabbing yourself with a screwdriver (once too many in answer to your next question!).  

The corner caps are aligned with three little pegs mating into three holes on the corner pieces. Some of those pegs will break off during this process – but the caps need to be glued on anyway, so don’t worry if that happens.  Once the corner caps are popped off, a Philips screwdriver will unscrew the corner pieces and the puzzle effectively disassembles itself. 

Screwing the corners into the new centre is a piece of cake and everything fits absolutely perfectly. Once the corners are screwed in, you can assemble edge and centre pieces (I found it helpful to sort them into the right layout and then work from one face to the next, building up one edge at a time). The only slightly tricky bit in the assembly process is inserting the last edge piece, but I found that unscrewing the final corner allowed enough play to squeeze in the last edge piece without the rest of them falling out... from there you need to adjust the tension on the corners to taste and pop the corner caps back on again with a little glue. 

End result – a Mosaic cube that looks as good as new, but works a lot better!  

Thanks to Rob for writing this up and telling us about it – it’s transformed my Mosaic cube from a display-only piece into a nice working puzzle. If you have an unmodified one lying around, get the new centre and rebuild it – you won’t regret it!

The kindness of strangers

... or puzzlers are a great bunch!

I have a theory – one that I’ve shared with a number of people, and so far, it’s largely been proved correct ... 

Walker’s Posit: Puzzlers are all a great bunch of people. 

When I started testing my theory on a few of my fellow puzzlers, I was interested in their reactions – most of them stopped in their tracks and thought about it for a while and then generally agreed with the theory – although there were a couple of notable exceptions, but we managed to easily explain them away by noting that they weren’t what any of us would call puzzlers, they were merely shopkeepers who happened to sell widgets, some of which were puzzles – it was all about the shop-keeping for them and not about puzzling at all, so if we make that distinction, then I put it to you that all puzzlers are nice people ... but puzzlers who’re also shop-keepers run the risk of being dangerously nice people.

 

OK, so what made me say that in the first place? Well, selfishly, I suppose I want that to be true of myself and it’s certainly been true of the puzzling friends I’ve made over the last couple of years either on the internet forums or in person – you know who you are! Without fail, they’ve been helpful, encouraging and friendly – often to people they’ve never met or even heard of before. They’ll go out of their way to help others enjoy the things they find interesting – without spoiling their joy of discovery, of finding their solution. 

Let me give you an example, we won’t use his real name because I don’t want to embarrass him, so I’ll call him Stick-guy. I’d recently bought a lump of Stick-guy paraphernalia off a well-know auction site raising money for a puzzler caught up in the Australian natural disasters – all the lots on the auction had been donated by puzzlers and craftsmen around the world to raise money for their Australian mate (I could probably stop this story right there and my point would be well made, but I won’t...) – not only did they donate some really precious puzzles, but they also chipped in to pay for the international shipping on all of the lots they sold (again, if this isn’t making the point, you aren’t listening!). 

OK, so this pile of paraphernalia includes a set of pieces to make up a particular puzzle box – but I’m thick as two short planks when it comes to making puzzles, so in a couple of email exchanges with Stick-guy I ask him a number of stupid questions about this box and how it works and every time he’s patient, polite and really helpful – at one point explaining to me that that really thin light wood used between the pieces on the sides of the box is called maple veneer – not once does he call me a numpty although I give him plenty of reason to do so... now in case I didn’t make this clear at the outset, Stick-guy is really one of the top-class puzzle craftsmen out there (I realise you won’t be able to work out his real identity thanks to the cunningly disguised pseudonym!)  and yet he’s happy to shoot the breeze with an unknown chap from across the pond – and not only that, when I get the next package from Stick-guy, there are two sheets of maple veneer in there to let me finish off the box I got in bits ... nice bloke, this Stick-guy, wish I could tell you who he was, you’d like him. 

That auction really showed me a lot about the puzzling community and seriously cemented my theory about puzzlers... 

...and when puzzlers become purveyors who peddle puzzles to an unsuspecting public, it gets worse... they can’t help themselves – just take a look at the pics in this post – all of these puzzles have been thrown in with various recent purchases by the puzzlers who’ve sold them to me... I know that some cynics out there will point out that even drug dealers will give you the first hit free, but these are being thrown in after a purchase decision is made and they know I’ll be back whether they give me freebies or not... 

So, thanks to Robert Yarger for throwing in the two Karakuri small boxes with my last package, thanks to Wil Strijbos for the Three Card Burr and the modified Raketti [Wil’s modification makes for an excellent laugh with people ‘who know the secret’ of the Raketti], thanks to Sloyd of the Black and White and the Tappi puzzles and most recently, thanks to Georges at Kayleb’s Corner for the Broken Heart and Caesar’s knot.

Stewart Coffin Seven Block

One of the puzzles in the box from Kayleb’s Corner was a Stewart Coffin Seven Block puzzle. I hadn’t been able to find out anything about it in a brief search on the web before I ordered it and it’s always hard to tell what you’re in for when you get an unknown cube assembly / disassembly puzzle like this. I was hoping that I wouldn’t be disappointed, but the Coffin moniker should have been all the reassurance I needed...

 

The puzzle came in a cute little decorative box with no particular markings on it, and the puzzle itself is a reasonably non-descript 4*4*4 cube made of maple. There’s a little white sticker with the words ”Stewart Coffin Seven Block “ on one side, but other than that, it looks just like a simple cube construction. So you take it out of the box carefully, just so that it doesn’t fall apart (Yeah, right! Little did I know...) and start looking at the cube – no obvious easy ways in, no pieces trying to make a bid for freedom yet – looks nice. 

OK, so it didn’t fall apart – good start ... so let’s find a way in – start pushing and pulling at the most likely candidates, hmm, not much give at all ... OK let’s try some of the edges – nope, nothing there. Corners? Nope. Opposite corners? Nope ... Hmmm ... Ah!! I know, friction along the faces in many directions – maybe it’s one of those co-ordinated motion cubes ... 6 faces later, nope, not that either ... Retreats to think while placing the puzzle back in the box...

Thinks ... for a while ... comes back to it a while later (not quite so careful about taking it out the box this time!) and tries a few new theories – none of which do anything at all ... 

Hmmm, maybe it’s one of those in-jokes, you know the ones where the pieces are all actually glued together? Given how little movement there is between the pieces, this could actually be feasible! Puts it away to think some more ... and laugh at the fact that I was worried about it falling apart or not presenting much of a challenge!

 

A couple of sessions later I finally manage to work out how the key piece works, and it’s brilliant! 

It keeps its secrets incredibly well hidden, and even once released, the rest of the cube is slow to give up its secrets – it’s like peeling and onion until you eventually have the seven pieces apart – ah, so that’s where it gets its name from. [Yes dear eagle-eyed reader, there is a piece missing from that picture - the key-piece, just to make it a little more interesting for you...]

While I was writing up this post I got hold of Georges to ask him about the puzzle and it turns out it came from Bernhard Schweitzer and there’s a short write-up in Bernhard’s Puzzlewood Gallery.

It’s a cracking cube puzzle...


Late addendum: I had to smile when I noticed this... I'd used my favourite search engine when I was trying to find out about this puzzle, and turned up not a lot... so I had to smile when I noticed that one of the traffic sources for for my blog was in fact a Google search for "stewart coffin seven block" - and this is now the first page you get when you search for that... which just goes to show that not enough people have been writing about this puzzle on the web!

A very puzzling Easter...

Sometimes the planets align and deliver a really special treat – I kinda feel they did that to me over the past week ... I’d lined up a week’s holiday between Easter and the royal wedding and I’d been looking forward to it for some time. 

Now in the previous post, I’d mentioned that last Saturday I’d received two packages of puzzles – one contained a special TRIGO cube from Mike Toulouzas and the other had a few goodies from Mr Puzzle – that’s Louis on the right poring over the Siamese Locked Nest, Pinhole Grand Cross (needs some assembly), a Flying Puzzle and an All for One. 
 

On Tuesday I received a little package from Scott Peterson with a couple of Coffins (only on a puzzle blog would that be both socially acceptable and make sense!) – a Super Nova and a Rosebud ... you’ll be hearing a lot more about those!

Then on Thursday I got home from work to find four packages waiting for me... one from Stickman-central with a Moving Tile Box from the latest round on Paradise, one from Matt Dawson with a Pagoda #3, a package of little goodies (mainly IPP puzzles) from Kayleb’s Puzzle Corner that happened to include a Mr Puzzle Russian 13 limited edition from 2002, a couple of Coffin cubes and William’s Wonder and then another big box from Australia – this one had a Windmill Burr and an Opening Bat in it... 

...so my desk looks a bit of a mess at the moment... J

... The Opening Bat is almost in pieces (no, it’s in pieces, just not enough pieces yet...), the Windmill Burr’s looking rather odd-shaped, but still in one piece, the Moving Tile Box is open (and closed and open and closed and open...) and  a couple of the IPP puzzles have been out and about... and I still have so much more to play with...

I’m really looking forward to my week off...