PMPP 2015

I won’t start with excuses this time…although I suspect I owe an explanation for the relative dearth of blog posts recently… (I blame The Book!)

James Dalgety has a bit of a tradition of hosting a puzzle gathering over the Easter weekend each year, so on Easter Saturday I found myself heading down the M5 to deepest darkest Devon for a day of puzzling and banter with puzzling mates. The roads were rather quiet so I found myself driving the last few miles at a rather sedate pace so that I wouldn’t arrive before the official start. As it was, I was one of the first to arrive so I took out some new toys for everyone to play with and settled down to a cup of coffee and a quick catch up with James.

It didn’t take long for a bunch of puzzlers to turn up and pretty soon everyone was puzzling, either directly or indirectly. [indirect puzzling: The gentle art of kibitzing and offering helpful suggestions (typically “Have you tried spinning it?”) to those puzzling nearby.]

Steve (M) had brought along a puzzle specially designed for the day – James’ invitation had suggested bringing things along that were puzzling, or flew or would blow up… so Steve brought us a sequential discovery puzzle resembling a small keg of gunpowder that he’d knocked up especially for the day. A couple of us had a squizz at it and quickly found a few bits that we could remove… so we removed some rivets and a brass strap discovering a little hex key along the way. The hex key enabled us to remove a screw in the top of the barrel, which in turn helped us to liberate an aluminium rod with a few matches in it... do you know where this is going yet?

Removing the second copper band revealed some odd looking string and a striker plate for the matches… at which point Steve suggests we grab our cameras and head outdoors…fuse in the top of the barrel, light the fuse and stand back – we nominated Big Steve for that bit and I made sure I was further back than Steve (M)’s camera… fuse ignites small amount of gunpowder in the barrel that blows the lid off with a rather satisfying POP! Cue many cheers and recovery of a congratulatory note inside the barrel… Steve (M) then promptly resets it for the next victim puzzler… Great fun and a bit out of the ordinary for those of us who don’t play with things that go bang on a daily basis – thanks Steve! [Steve has put up a write-up and some video of the “solve” on his website – over here.]

At one point James noticed I didn’t have a puzzle in my paws and dived into one of his drawers of treasure and produced a little puzzle from Lee Krasnow called Sequential Star – ignoring the name at first, my initial thoughts were that this was simply a standard diagonal burr made to Lee’s somewhat exacting standards… except it didn’t quite start coming apart as I had expected it should, and when I did manage to get some movement on one of the piece I spotted a routed track in one of the pieces… this thing’s different!

I then spent absolute ages playing with the binary mechanism and taking it almost apart and then putting it back together again… an absolute joy to play with – and a pretty rare treat given I think there were only ten copies made.

Lindsey provided a wonderful lunch yet again – providing a brief period of silence in the Dalgety house while the assembled puzzlers refuelled.

The afternoon saw a Berrocal race of sorts with Adin and Stephen disassembling a statue each, mixing up the bits and then having to reassemble the other’s statue… it’s one way to give them a bit of a polish.

Frank had brought along a copy of Cofanetto that Rox had picked up on an auction in the UK and I suspect the sight of two copies of Cofanetto next to one another is a pretty rare thing these days…

He'd also brought along a couple of his own new finds, including a pair of rather rare Journet  jigsaw puzzles... which I got conned into assembling so that James could get a photo of it. It took me a little while because some of the pieces don't exactly go where you'd expect them to go...

At one point Gerard was given an old stationery box of sorts to play with… as usual, all was not what it seemed and pretty soon he and Steve (M) were pushing and prodding and finding all manner of hidden compartments secreted around the rather unassuming-looking box.

Several people had brought along their spare puzzles for others to barter or buy and I ended up picking up a few copies of Kevin Holmes’ puzzles from Frank and a number of books from James’ shelves of duplicates – including a number of first editions of a few old puzzle texts that I’d only had in rather tatty paperback copies until then.

When I headed back up the road at about 7:30 there was still a large contingent of puzzlers furiously puzzling – from some of the stories of folks stopping for a kip on the way home, I suspect that some left considerably later than I did… another fantastic day’s puzzling at James’.

Another Pilgrimage to Puzzle Heaven

Last Saturday morning I found myself driving around some dodgy back roads outside of Bristol in search of an international airport ... you’d think I’d know better than to blindly trust my sat-nav in this country by now – it assumes that all roads are equal and has no idea that you might not choose to drive at the maximum permissible speed on a particular road because it’s pretty narrow, surrounded by thick hedgerows and has several rather wide farm vehicles on it! Anyhow – it DID eventually manage to get me to Bristol International Airport at the right time so I was able to collect Louis fresh off his flight from Amsterdam on his latest puzzle pilgrimage ... we were heading to Devon – a day-trip to James Dalgety’s fabled Puzzle Museum. I chose to ignore the sat-nav’s directions for most of the way from the airport, much to Louis’ amusement ... “Nope, never been this way before, but I am not turning right up that little road.” The sat-nav did eventually pick up the “right” road and got us safely down to James’. 

 
On arriving at puzzle heaven, Percy gave us a rousing welcome (or a stern warning – it could have been either) – but he soon smelt Ben and Jerry on my jeans and we became the best of mates again. Inside I handed over Gill’s contribution – a tin of homemade doughnut muffins – to Lindsey and we made our way through to the grand puzzle room to find Joe and Rich already deeply puzzled – they’d arrived a bit earlier than we had, and had already had a quick tour and been presented with their first challenges – Rich was deeply engrossed in a wicked-looking six-piece burr (that he conquered soon after). 

Chris and his dad arrived a bit after us and then Simon arrived with James-the-younger in tow – it was great to see him in such good form after his health scare over the past few months... hopefully a little puzzling and some friendly banter will help the recovery process!

Revitalised from the journey south with a good cup of coffee, we soon fell among the puzzles, bringing out all of our recent purchases in the hopes of having something that James-the-elder hadn’t seen before (far harder than it may sound!).

In the centre of the table James had set up a Snail Ball run and during the course of the day almost everyone had a bash at releasing it and watching it race down the ramp to the bottom ... in about six and a half minutes! (It’s the simple things.... :-) )

Laurie arrived in full force and began dispensing puzzle challenges to all and sundry in between rousing bouts of banter interspersed with some truly dreadful puns – which I suspect are a source of pride (and rather amusing in spite of the groans we felt required to express :-) ). 

Chris had brought his copy of Mike Toulouzas’ latest creation (“Illusion Puzzle”) along – he’d snagged a copy on Puzzle Paradise within seconds of it being listed and was very chuffed with it ... he’d been telling us about it for a while – about how he’d been playing with it and had it come apart into six pieces with no hope in heck of being able to recognise where each piece had come from – and then spent days and days trying to put it back together again – most times finding an assembly that worked fine for the first five pieces, but wouldn’t allow the sixth piece in... he’d eventually managed to get it back together again in time to bring it down to James’  - so Louis did the obvious thing and promptly disassembled it over a cup of coffee, and then (relatively) calmly proceeded to put it all back together again. 

James brought several original Coffins out to play, from a “simple” four-piece puzzle to a set of very typical Coffin-shaped pieces that James challenged me to build a symmetrical shape with – with no idea of the eventual shape I didn’t manage to produce anything vaguely symmetrical (perhaps that’s one of my puzzle blind spots!) – Chris had a bit of a go at it and did only slightly better than I did, before we were both showered with abuse by our host for our feeble attempts ... so we did the obvious thing and gave it to Simon who promptly completed it in mere minutes and was then given several further challenges with the same pieces that he duly completed as well... next time I’ll surreptitiously pass it to Simon far earlier in the process – clearly he is way better at puzzles than I am! 

Lindsey supplied an absolutely terrific spread for lunch that saw virtually every single one of us going back for seconds ... and the mince pies and muffins afterwards went down a treat as well. Somehow we hadn’t managed to eat enough at lunchtime, so offered the choice of a fish supper from the local chippie or more of the same, we unanimously elected to have another go at Lindsey’s spread for dinner – and it was mighty fine the second time around as well!

During the course of the afternoon Joe and Louis asked to see James’ collection of impossible objects and impossible folding cards as they’d both developed a bit of a liking for them and had been doing quite a bit of their own experimentation – some of which made it to IPP32, just in case you missed that! 

After a brief root around they returned to puzzle central with a copy of Allen Rolfs’ legendary tome on the topic and several examples that James had played around with himself ... followed shortly after by the production of a 12-card burr from one of his cabinets ... we’d all seen (heck, made!) the classic three-card burr, but this one had four parallel cards in each plane – someone has incredible skill and a lot of patience to get that all right. 

James plied Rich with several burrs – most of which were returned fully solved, before he asked if he could have a go on James’ Borg Box. This legendary Stickman box is a decent challenge as a puzzle box to start with, but when you realise that Rob’s made it entirely without any glue, screws or nails, and each of the panels on the box can be removed and entirely dismantled – it instantly becomes pretty darn epic!

It didn’t take Rich very long to work out how to make progress (he’s a bit of a whizz!) and soon enough he had one side open, then the other, and then he removed one of the panels altogether – to gasps from the assembled puzzlers – we’d been talking about the fact that Rob made it clear that if anyone fully disassembled their Borg Box and couldn’t put it back together again he would reassemble it for them at a fee because it was such a tough challenge, even when you know what you’re doing! With just a little bit of goading from us (although in fairness he probably didn’t need that!) Rich promptly disassembled the top of the box into many, many pieces... and it has to be said that at this point, not even James tried mixing up the pieces as he is wont to do on occasion. 

A few minutes later he’d rebuilt the top of the box, replaced the lid and closed it all up again ... I had a go at it and managed to work out the main elements of the locking mechanism and get it about half open before I retreated and closed it all up again. It really is an epic puzzle box and I think we’re all rather fortunate to have someone like James who’s so happy to share all his puzzles with anyone who’s interested.

 

Speaking of things Stickman, Chris hauled out James’ Fulcrum Box which he’s always had a bit of a soft spot for to show his dad ... and Phil duly fiddled around and opened both compartments – with a large smile on his face – I think he likes it as well.

Inevitably Rich asked for a Berrocal to play with and Romeo and Juliet was brought out for a round of puzzling – he had a great time pulling it to bits only to have someone mix up the bits in front of him (hey, it’s only fair – James did exactly the same to me!) and then reassemble it with the compulsory cotton gloves to give it a bit of a clean in the process. Reassembly may have had a couple of false starts where Rich got all the way to the end to find one or two pieces still outside that needed to be inside, but he still put it back together again way faster than I had!

James-the-younger worked his way through a number of the more unusual Karakuri boxes and Chris hauled out Eric Fuller’s Tier Box again ... and this time I stayed away from it having been thoroughly humbled by it on a previous visit.

One of the other puzzles that almost everyone tried at some point was Goh Pit Khiam’s Arrow Blocks from this year’s Design Competition – several sort-of (read: WRONG!) solutions were appealed, but nobody even got close to solving this rather tricky little beast ... even with a rough description of the high level steps involved in solving it! (And that should have been the tricky part!)

Toward the end of the afternoon Chris asked if we could have a go at Ned Kelly, one of Brian Young's impressive sequential discovery puzzles. Between the few of us playing around with it we managed to find a few things that were useful but hit a pretty massive brick wall ... so we're going to need to try that one next time...

As always James was indecently generous, not only having provided us with as many puzzles during the course of the day as we could manage, feeding and watering us all day, but he also gave each of us a puzzle or two from his pile of swaps to take home – Thank you James, for another incredible day – you sir, are an absolute gentleman!

Gillen Bolts

Marcel Gillen has been a prolific puzzle designer and manufacturer for quite a while now. Possibly best-known these days for his good-looking aluminium chess pieces – every collection needs at least one of them – he’s been making handsome brass and aluminium puzzles for years. With the advent of the Bits & Pieces versions of the chess pieces, there are certainly a lot more of them around – but I suspect that the quality of the originals can’t be beaten – although 'can’t be found for love nor money' might also be appropriate in that sentence!

I’d at least seen some pictures of some of the original chess pieces in photos of various esteemed collections around the world, but when Wil Strijbos offered me a few Gillen Bolt puzzles, I drew a blank … I hadn’t heard of them and couldn’t remember ever seeing mention of them, so I did what anyone else in my position would do, and asked Google.

Turns out Google knew – and directed me to an early lot in Nick Baxter’s puzzle auction – where a couple of Gillen Bolts #6 had been sold a while back – and Jerry Slocum’s collection which has pics listed of Gillen Bolts #1 and 2.

Wil had come across a set of three Gillen Bolts (#’s 1, 5 & 6) and after my brief bout of Googling, I eagerly agreed to take all of them. Wil reckoned he hadn’t seen these puzzles around in absolute ages and Nick Baxter’s auction site lists them as “pre-dating 1994”.

When they arrived, the first thing that struck me was the sheer weight of them – these aren’t little bolts that have had a trick mechanism inserted into them – these are chunky hand-turned brass puzzles loosely in the shape of a bolt – a very large bolt – picture the sort of bolt you might use to keep a bridge together!

I started fiddling around with them and managed to sort out #1 fairly quickly – it’s a reasonably straight-forward mechanism and depending on how you handle it, you may get lucky as I did and not be too bothered by the locking mechanism … one down, two to go…

…and this point in the story coincides with our Midlands Puzzle Party #6 – so I took them all along for the world to have a bash at them – a few folks opened #1, but nobody got anywhere on the others, which made me feel a little bit better about not having opened them yet. At MPP6, Wil had brought another copy of Bolt #5 (or was it 6?) along and Ali snapped that one up – and then duly went and solved it that evening, proving he’s way better at this than I am!

The Bolts then stared at me from my shelf-of-puzzles-to-be-solved for a couple of weeks and then two Sundays ago I decided I needed to clear some things off the shelf, so had a more serious go at #’s 5 and 6…

This time I applied a more methodical approach, and a Sharpie pen in the quest to open these puzzles – and the method paid off as I was able to understand first #5 – “seeing” where I could and could not go, and making some Sharpie marks on the bolt – and then working out how to get around the “obstacles” – great feeling when the nut lifted clear of the bolt.

Flushed with success, I threw myself at #6 and spotted some similarities in the way that the nut behaved – but got a bit confused when “coming” and “going” didn’t seem to work the same way – a little more brain was engaged, a theory concocted and duly tested, to provide a great little moral boost when it actually worked.

As puzzles, they’re really interesting – having seen #’s 1,5 and 6 – there is a definite progression in terms of complexity – and a change of gear somewhere in between. Filling in the blanks a bit, I’d guess that the set from 1 through 6 would provide a lovely set if increasing challenges to a puzzler. The craftsmanship on these puzzles is excellent – some of the parts have an amazing array of moving bits and pieces that all work absolutely perfectly – twenty years on. Testament not only to the design, but also to their crafting … they may look similar on the outside, but they’re anything but! And the relative simplicity of #1 belies the trickiness of #’s 5 and 6, whose elegant design makes some very clever use of some aspects that hide the true goings-on in there beautifully.

Very chuffed to have been able to add these rather rare puzzles to the little hoard – thanks Wil!


Postscript: Last weekend I got to spend some time at James Dalgety's Puzzle Museum and I asked him if he happened to have any of the other Gillen Bolts?

Hey, I thought it was worth a try!

Anyway, he points me at a drawer and I dive in to find piles of the things! So not only did I get to have a play with numbers 2,3 and 4 (and solve them all), but I also got to fiddle with number 7 (and I had a pretty good idea of how to get that one open but I didn't want to draw on it!) and play with a couple of unnumbered prototypes... Thanks James!

Propeller puzzle

When my fellow obsessed-blogger recently decided to offload some of his slightly less-cherished puzzles, I jumped at the opportunity to relieve him of a couple of Rogers – I’ve already written about the Alles Roger over here and the other Roger I relieved him of was the Propeller puzzle.

It’s pretty obvious where it gets its name from and a quick fiddle with it confirms that the mechanism appears to be jammed with something – stopping the propeller from spinning … so it merely rocks backwards and forwards a bit … and it appears that the aim is to get the propeller to spin freely.

While I was fiddling around randomly with the puzzle I actually managed to release the mechanism once or twice, although the randomness of my fiddling left me wondering what exactly it was that I’d done to release the darned thing.

Over the course of a month or so I’d keep fiddling with it and not getting particularly far on solving it … and then on our last trip down to the Devon Puzzle Heaven there were quite a few folks having a bash at a copy of Propeller as well – with one particular expert suggesting that the solution involved flicking the puzzle in a rather specific manner and then spinning the blade – so back at home I spent a while trying various orientations of flicks and spins, in the process launching the little puzzle across the study several times, and only just avoided having to replace several glass cabinet doors and a keyboard, in my enthusiastic attempts to ‘solve’ this puzzle…

A week or two later I tried a different tack altogether – not wanting to believe that the solution relied on a combination of very specific rapid movements in quick succession while hoping for the best – and found a somewhat tidier, far more repeatable solution, that doesn’t risk destroying my puzzle cabinets in the process – now I’m happy.

Easter Saturday Mini Puzzle Party

James Dalgety invited me along to one of his customary Mini Puzzle Parties over the past Easter weekend, and as luck would have it, we didn’t have a house full of guests so I was allowed to make the trip down to deepest darkest Devon. 

[James’ directions include warnings against following your sat-nav slavishly and advise drivers of low-slung racing cars not to try driving down to the house]

I ended up going down on my own and made the best of an uneventful drive (those are the best type!) by listening to some CDs I haven’t heard in a while ... I paid careful attention to where I parked as James had warned me that there’d be quite a few folks coming and it often ended up in a game of Tokyo Parking Lot to get everyone back out again...

I arrived to find Lily and Percy (the pups) entertaining Lindsey outdoors with one of their tennis balls. I dropped off some of Gill’s puzzle cake in the kitchen on my way through to the puzzle suite (the puzzle is to work out what the flavour in the cake is ... and it took the ladies quite a while, several samples and even some Googling to eventually find the right answer!) where I found Oli and James already puzzling away. I gave my homework back to James (some unusual burrs needed assembling – and I managed all bar one of them ... and I still reckon there are too many pieces there, although I wasn’t convinced when James suggested it was probably a couple of puzzles!) and unpacked my offerings for the day. 

If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know that it’s customary to take along something for the others to take away and puzzle on – and a couple of folks had a go at them during the course of the day, but the Easter eggs I’d taken along as a prize for the first person to find the two boxers, remained unclaimed... Sam dished out a puzzle about retrieving things from behind a radiator (that I still haven’t worked out!), John gave us all a twist on a Sam Loyd puzzle courtesy of his brother Angus, Simon Nightingale gave us a copy of his latest contribution to the Gathering for Gardner. James’ contribution was a Lewis Carroll-ish Snark riddle and Duncan (I think) gave us a copy of an old Bovril puzzle requiring you to make up a bull from a number of bull-ish-shaped pieces that don’t quite work the way you expect them to... and then Tim gave us each one of his little Gathering for Gardner goodie bags – that contained a neat little copy of Angus Lavery’s Elusive ‘E’ puzzle – it definitely seems to be a very firm favourite among puzzlers everywhere... 

Most folks had been along to James’ place a few times already and pretty much settled in with a cup of tea or coffee and picked up a puzzle to start playing with. James had asked me to bring along my Judges Gavel and a few folks had a bash at it – literally! Although some were a bit hesitant and needed some encouragement and I needed to point out that it was a gavel after all, and using it as such isn’t likely to do any harm – every now and then you’d hear a familiar “THWACK!” and you’d know that someone was having a go on it – and every time I heard that I was reminded of Brian Pletcher’s description of the competition puzzle room at IPP31 where the usual silence would be shattered every now and then as someone picked up Mike’s gavel ... it always puts a smile on my face. 

I’d also taken one of Jane Kostick’s wooden & magnetic sculptures along and a couple of folks experimented with taking them apart and reassembling them, although I found it hard to convince people that it really was easy to reassemble – I guess it just looks a bit too much like one of Stewart Coffin’s diabolical puzzles for them to believe that it’s actually quite simple to put back together and even fun to play with. 

I managed to spend some time with John Lavery – chief organiser of the monthly Camden Puzzle meetings - and he’d brought along a book containing some examples of brother Angus’ incredible card-folding ... I’d only ever seen a couple of pictures of impossible playing card folding on the web, but seeing Angus’ designs close-up and personal was pretty mind-blowing – they ranged from designs that looked fairly straight-forward through to one that was literally staggering – five interlinked Olympic rings on a standard playing card – when John showed us that one he smiled and said Angus says this one takes quite a while and doesn’t always work out properly on the first attempt – no kidding!

 

He also had a couple of pictures on his iPad of linked rolls of sticky tape – they look like they’re fresh off the shelf at WH Smith, except they’re inter-linked ... there’s just something wrong with seeing that, but then the same can be said of Angus’ card-folding – quite simply it all defies belief!

Mr Baker, the butcher, supplied yet another fabulous lunch – with several of us going back for seconds before hitting the wonderful desserts...

During the afternoon Tim Rowett gave us a short talk on his recent trip to Gathering for Gardner in Atlanta and shared some of the little gems he’d picked up there, before the Simons (Bexfield and Nightingale) chipped in with more stories and recollections of what sounded like a fabulous time – which may have included some alcohol according to one or two of the allegations being bandied about. 

Over the course of the day several folks had a bash at one of Geoff Wyvill’s Nova Plexus that James had left on the table hoping it would be assembled – many tried only to see it collapse in a jangly heap of steel rods to the collective groans of all who’d been looking on willing them to succeed – until Oli eventually had a go at it and succeeded where no-one else had managed – and there was much rejoicing and even some posing for a victory photograph!

I’d spent quite a while trying to put a little Japanese burr house structure back together and managed to come reasonably close before I put it to one side with several strategically placed rubber bands holding things together – only to realise on my way home that evening that my approach was flawed and it couldn’t work the way I was trying it and that transposing two pieces would literally have had it together in a matter of minutes ... hopefully James’ll have better luck at it than I did. 

Several Roger’s did the rounds and proved extremely popular with all comers – with everyone seeming to enjoy working out Schleussel (the lock) and then spending ages analysing it and trying to guess exactly what the innards looked like. Oli had a storming day on the Rogers, solving both Eis and Geburt in quick succession before taking over the Stickman #4 Box that I’d totally failed to open – and between him and James they made short-shrift of it. 

I met few more relatively local puzzlers (Yeah, I travelled down to Devon to meet some guys who live less than an hour from me :-)  ) who’ll definitely find themselves being invited along to our little puzzle parties in the Midlands in future – it was nice to meet yet more legendary puzzle designers and see them playing with puzzles they haven’t seen before and seeing the same glint in their eyes when they have that little A-Ha! moment. 

Before I left that evening, I rummaged through a few of James’ box of swaps / spares and managed to lighten my wallet a little and come away with a few really neat little IPP puzzles (including one that he gave me as I arrived; just for coming along, apparently) – I was very chuffed to be able to get a couple of books in wonderful condition to add to the pile to be read at some point – and a large pile of Cubism For Fun back issues ... they’re going to keep me occupied and amused for ages... 

The two and a half hour drive home flew by as I recalled little snatches of conversations and jokes about puzzles while I listened to Robert Miles and U2 – another absolutely wonderful day, thanks to James and Lindsey’s legendary hospitality and generosity. 

Thank you James – you are a scholar and a gentleman! (and I’ll keep buying my lottery tickets!)