Don't Shout Box

Family Portrait

A while back (yikes!...in 2011…) I really enjoyed playing with Phil Tomlinson’s Always Empty Box which I’d acquired via Puzzle Paradise. Previously I’d seen pics of Phil’s rather awesome puzzle cabinets – where the entire display cabinet is one big puzzle box with some pretty well-hidden tricks and locks that need to be defeated in order to get into your puzzle stash.

The Always Empty Box was delightful and a real departure from anything I’d seen before in a puzzle box. The mechanism was pretty unusual and a couple of the moves really took me by surprise.

…so when Phil posted a pic on FaceBook of a new design he was calling the Don’t Shout Box, I paid careful attention. A few copies were listed for auction on Puzzle Paradise a few days later and I piled in to make sure that I managed to snag one of the first few copies available. There was plenty of interest in them and I was well-chuffed a couple of nights ago when I came home to find my Don’t Shout Box waiting for me to play with.

There’s a very clear family resemblance to the Always Empty Box - they look almost identical, they're made from the same woods (mainly curly maple and black walnut) and they’re both decorated with a pair of red inlaid curves on the top. the only difference is that Don't Shout has an additional inlaid maple stripe between the red curves. They look great next to one another.

On my initial casual fiddling I spotted a few rather curious extra lines on the sides that I hadn’t expected – although, in fairness, there were some pretty similar lines on the Always Empty Box - memory is not my strongest point. My next couple of discoveries were a bit more along the lines of what you might expect from this sort of a puzzle box, although they weren’t really where I was expecting them… 

…and the next couple of moves are pretty darned unusual – I definitely didn’t see those coming! 

And even the final act of opening the box has a lovely little twist to it that might just hold up the unwary a little longer than necessary.

Having opened the box, you should understand where the box gets its name from – it’s a lovely little tip of the hat and a cute little hint that was there all along, only you wouldn’t have recognised it as such until it was too late to be useful. Clever. 

Phil has followed up a terrific first puzzle box with another great design. I think his latest creation throws in some neat new ideas and a couple of twists on some older ones. I really hope that Phil can be convinced to keep channelling his clearly excellent skills at crafting wood into new little puzzle boxes for us addicts, err, collectors – because he clearly has some fantastic ideas judging from the first two boxes he’s given us.

If it’s not thoroughly obvious, I reckon the Don’t Shout Box is a great puzzle box. Phil still has some available for sale, so if you’re interested in bagging one, get in touch with him via FaceBook, or if you’re allergic to that, drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch with him.

MPP3 - That was fun!

Sunday saw the third in our incredibly informal Midlands Puzzle Parties at our place... yet again we had ideas of having someone present a talk (heck, we even had a volunteer for that!), doing a round-the-table chat about puzzles (what was your first puzzle, favourite puzzle, most expensive puzzle etc.) – having a bit of a competition (for REAL prizes!) and all of that came to nought as we just descended into chatting and puzzling – all day! ...and it was good!

 

I collected Louis from the airport hotel first thing in the morning – 09:30 – it was a Sunday after all and Nigel and Chris arrived soon after we got back to the house and helped set up. The rest of the gang duly started arriving and by about 11am we had 13 hardened puzzlers gathered around a couple of tables outside on the deck – unpacking their respective boxes / carrier bags of treasure – much to my dogs’ delight – although I don’t think we actually lost any puzzles to a canine all day... 

  

All the regulars managed to come along (Oli, Ali, Chris, Nigel, Karl & Louis) and it was great to have Helen (Chris’ far better half!) there as well as some new faces (but well known names) off the Revomaze forum (Kevin, Graham, Bruce & Shaun) and Richard Gain –aka Microcubology Man. 

Mark76 donated a pile of Revomaze goodies (mouse mats, mugs and coasters) featuring his incredible graphic design skills – most were snapped up rather quickly and Chris won himself a magic Revomaze mug for posting the second-fastest Revomaze Blue opening time at 20 seconds ... Nigel had done it in 17 seconds and we’d more or less abandoned the competition shortly after I failed to open it at all (the meat was burning!). When Nigel dashed out the door in the afternoon on his way to a concert he disqualified himself and we crowned Chris the fastest hands in the Midlands (or something like that!). 

Mark had also shipped 4 mini Revomazes down for a bit of a show and tell – he’d made up mini Revo’s each of which has a nod to its namesakes’ features – and sent us a Blue, Green, Bronze and Silver to try out and give him some feedback... several hours into the day, not a single person had managed to open one yet – which I think gives Mark one part of his answer: “They’re non-trivial!” to use a mathematical understatement. During the latter part of the afternoon there was a more concerted effort that saw three of the four being opened – Bronze is still holding its secrets ... but I’m hoping to have a play with them before they get shipped northwards once more ... I have to add one little bit in here – anyone who’s played with a Silver Revomaze knows about the “not-a-canyon” ... well Mark has engineered one into his tiny scale Revo-silver – masterful Mark, masterful! 

Richard Gain kindly bought along a little stock from his Shapeways / Etsy shops and spent quite a while demonstrating various puzzles to interested onlookers – Helen seemed to be doing quite well on a few on them. Quite a few of us came away with some of his little Microcube puzzles – at one point he was even dishing out samples of a three-piece 4*4 cube puzzle that was only 15mm cubed – and its cube-lets are all hollow with the skinniest walls you’ve seen, yet it’s easily strong enough to be a perfectly serviceable puzzle – this 3D printing stuff is phenomenal...

Ali gave everyone a wood and rope puzzle he’d knocked together on Thursday evening (!) – One solver so far...? (Nope, not me!) 

Another great aspect of this meeting was that some of our number are now bringing along their own creations and getting plenty of encouragement form the others - keep it up guys!

 There seemed to be plenty of new high-end puzzles around – quite a few new Japanese puzzle boxes, there were four of Kagen  Schaefer’s new Maze Burrs there and a Tom Lensch version being played with,  a couple of folks had a (figurative!) bash at the Opening Bat and there were plenty of folks drooling over Scott Peterson’s Coffins. Phil Tomlinson’s Always Empty Box stumped a few seasoned puzzle box veterans for a while, but the one that stumped most of the people most of the time was the Karakuri Box with a tree... (and yes I count myself in there). Excellent mechanism...  Eric Fuller’s Wonder Bars were a big hit as well...

We started out with a table full of help-yourself-stuff courtesy of several attendees (you know who you are – thank you!), and although folks did help themselves, we somehow ended up with more than we started with... so we’ve a healthy start for next meeting’s Box o’ Bounty...

As always, there was one special moment this time around that will go down in the legend of MPP – thanks to Shaun for this gem: he’d been fiddling with a pair of YOTs and not having a lot of success when “all of a sudden” it literally exploded showering pins, rings, a coin and ball bearings everywhere – Shaun gets this “What did I do wrong?” look on his face and Oli peers across and remarks “I’ve never seen a YOT taken apart quite like that before...” – vintage! 

Thanks for the chocolates, flowers, wine and puzzles – Gill and I are still negotiating over who gets what!

All in all, we had a great day – good company, lots of puzzles and (even though I say so myself) good grub! It was great expanding the circle a bit this time and meeting new puzzlers – hopefully they’ll come back again next time, and maybe even bring a friend...Thanks to all of you that made MPP3 such a great day - allard

Half full, or half empty? Nope, Always Empty!

I predict a riot...

Several better bloggers than me have already written up their thoughts on Phil Tomlinson’s Always Empty Box – Brian over here, Jeff over here and Neil’s over here – so I’ll try not to cover too much of the same ground...

Like all the other guys, I bought mine off Puzzle Paradise on a Buy Out offer after seeing one of them offered on the Australian Relief Puzzle Auction.  Phil’s done a really nice job of packaging up his puzzle boxes and I’m certain that opening the lid on the packaging to find a “Care and Feeding” booklet has put a smile on the face of many a hardened puzzler!

The Always Empty Box is a nice size, and the finishing is top-notch – the inlaid arcs on the top of the box make a beautiful feature and show off some of Phil’s clearly well-honed skills. 

As a puzzle, I was expecting something reasonably straight-forward given the description on the auction site, where it was billed as a 3 move puzzle-box ... starting to play with it, the first move almost made itself, with one panel being fairly loose ... but from there progress slowed for a little while – the next obvious move isn’t – you’re going to focus on trying to move something that won’t ... I like it when puzzles send you in the wrong direction like that! 

A bit more exploring leads you to the second move that is a lovely little surprise – now that I know it’s there I can spot the signs, but I’ll be darned if I could see them before that... (which is a bit of a compliment to Phil, I suspect) ...it reminds me a bit of one of my favourite burrs (work that one out!). 

 

From there the box has one last little secret – not so much a move as a ‘reveal’ – it’s cute. 

Right, so what do we think?

Simple. We like it.

... and we hope that we can encourage Phil Tomlinson to do more of the same in the future – as a first puzzle box it’s excellent – I really hope he’ll be sufficiently encouraged to go on and develop more of them – cheers Phil!

[Today’s slightly cryptic sub-title courtesy of some song lyrics as we’re heading for Greece while some of the locals are rioting in the streets in protest at the government’s handling of their financial crisis...]