MPP12

The weekend starts for me on Friday evening when James Dalgety arrives for dinner armed with chocolates, wine and an orchid. We decide not to eat the orchid and instead go with Gill’s idea of Chicken Teriyaki – and that turns out to be a good choice, no that the orchid wouldn’t have been as delicious, I’m sure. I introduce James to my little collection and he makes some complimentary comments before suggesting that it’s clearly large enough and I should probably stop buying puzzles now. Realising this is clearly an early sign of withdrawal symptoms, I begin shoving some puzzles in his hand once I’ve established that there are one or two that he hasn’t yet played with … normal service resumes.

At about 9:30pm we adjourn to the airport to collect Louis and he walks into the arrivals hall about a minute after we get there – a personal record in timing it just right prompted by BHX’s exorbitant short term parking pricing past the first ten minutes. Back at Barnt Green we dose up on coffee and tea and end up in the cave puzzling until some of us give up at half past midnight, leaving Louis to conquer a few more before he called it a night.

Next morning we all have a leisurely breakfast before heading across to Nigel’s place in Warwick for the first few hours of MPP as our usual venue isn’t available until midday. Nigel’s in full-on host-mode offering everyone coffee and croissants and making sure that everyone’s having a superb time. I manage to get rid of pretty much all of the puzzles I’ve brought back from Japan for various people and folks seem chuffed with their pressies … my work here is done – now I too can become a puzzler for the rest of the day!

James has brought along an impressive collection of cylindrical hidden maze puzzles (including some he didn’t realise he had!) – all of them pre-dating Revomazes – the original impetus behind us starting up the MPP. He's also brought along a partially assembled Coffin-original called Iso-Prism (aka #101-A)  that he challenges us to reassemble properly. Despite a convincing sales pitch, he doesn't get any takers on the Iso-Prism - at least not for the first few hours, then some idiot has a go at it ... but more on that later.

We spend a couple of hours at Nigel's until he rounds us up and shoos us out so that we can walk (or drive!) the hundred-odd metres down the road to our usual hangout, The Gap. We all manage to get there without mishap, and soon enough have the hall strewn with chairs, and tables laden with puzzles - all is good in the land.

There follows many hours of happy puzzling... :-)

It was great to meet Stephen Miller that we'd "met" via FaceBook - he'd brought along a serious collection of Sonic Games/Sonic Warp/whatever-the-company-is-called-at-the-moment's puzzles on a very handsome self-made stand. Turns out Stephen is an absolute whizz at whipping things up and has had a hand in designing (OK, he designed!) some rather current, desirable puzzles! He also enjoys blowing up watermelons in his backyard - so what's not to like about the guy?! One thing I particularly enjoyed hearing about was some real-world adventure / puzzle trails he's run in the past, and hopefully will run again in the future...

 

Adin had brought along his Lego ternary puzzle and it received a lot of interest - and generated even more interest when it pitched up on FaceBook and Jez (come back, we miss you!) duly mocked up a set of instructions for building one, and a parts list for anyone wanting to build their own - nice one Adin!

I'd taken along every single puzzle I brought back from IPP33 with me and there was a steady trickle of folks taking one or two across to the puzzling tables to have a bash at them over the course of the afternoon...good to see them getting some more exercise! (The puzzlers, that is...)

One of the classic memories of the afternoon was seeing four grown men playing on the floor - with one of George Bell's exploding balls... they'd had a go at Chinny's big ball - Ze RD - and disassembled and reassembled that one and then wanted to get George's ball apart, but casual spinning on the floor just wasn't enough... so they formed a circle and took turns spinning the heck out of it! 

When they'd tried that for about ten minutes they decided that they couldn't get enough spin on exactly the right axis and decided they needed to resort to rolling it on the axis at high speed - from one end of the hall to the other... Oli played goalie at the one end  and Steve and Chris resorted to using a mattress to stop it at the other end... after many enthusiastic passes the ball finally let go and they were chuffed - especially to find the crystal dice hidden inside - everything survived the ordeal and it was soon reassembled and returned to the pile ... with a couple of grins that you might expect from a group of kids who've just had a great game on the playground.

Satomi and Scott joined us along with their son for the afternoon, and as usual she had a wonderful selection of interesting goodies, including a couple of rather neat looking burrs that I didn't bother even trying to resist. 

Several folks had a bash at Brian Young's Kumiki Airlines and pretty much all of them succeeded - WAY QUICKER than I had! Frank's collection of impossible bottles drew many admiring remarks and might just have spurred some folks on to trying their own hand at making one or two of them, with a little encouragement from Frank...

At some point during the afternoon, I decided that someone needed to have a bash at James' Iso-Prism, so I hauled it out. It was pretty easy taking it apart (after James had confirmed that he would happily take it home in bits) and James talked me through the high level strategy of reassembling it - I listened carefully and decided that I was seriously out of my depth here, but I'd better have a bash having taken the darn thing apart. 

I separated them into sets of pieces and then began trying to fit them all together - hitting dead ends several times and having to backtrack - and every now and then losing track of which pieces had come from which set and having to start all over again. After a while the pieces started to make sense and Ali leant over and made a really helpful suggestion - and from there on it was just a case of getting the assembly order right - it took a few more goes at trying different orders until I spotted a bit of symmetry that I'd been ignoring in the assembly process and then things literally fell into place - and it felt absolutely brilliant to put the final three key pieces into their allotted spots. [Oh yeah, and in case you're wondering, those stickers might have made sense to someone once, but I couldn't work out their meaning before, during or after solving it.]

One of the fun things we try and do every now and then is gather a bunch of puzzles together from our group for a family portrait - this time it was KCubes from Kim Klobucher - we managed eight ... not bad given how difficult they are to get hold of...

Louis and I headed back to my place sometime after eight and sat down to some more puzzling after having a couple of pizzas ... this time I didn't come close to staying awake until after midnight so I left Louis in the cave puzzling away - and the next morning there was a neat row of solved puzzles waiting as proof ... including a solved Ball in Cylinder II from Jerry Loo - which I still haven't been able to solve! [I haven't forgotten about it Jerry - promise - it's just still got me beaten - cue another blogger to tell me how thick I am!]

...a couple more hour's puzzling on Sunday morning before I dropped Louis at the airport for his trek back to Eindhoven - a great end to another weekend's puzzling. 

I can see clearly now...

I've written a couple of posts in the past about Revomazes ... I really enjoyed solving (most of) them and the buzz you get when you open one of the metal puzzles and see the beautifully machined core stays with you for a long time ... but you have to work pretty hard to solve them (even the simpler ones) so a lot of folks never get to see those mazes - and trying to explain what's happening inside there can be a bit of a mission...

Now one of the things that the folks on the Revomaze forum have been baying for for a while, has been a clear sleeve, so you can see the insides as you're going through the maze - for demonstration purposes after you've solved the puzzle, of course!

...after several years of promises, attempts and false starts by a number of earnest puzzlers, my fellow blogger and mate from the 'States has finally achieved the impossible - he has machined a clear acrylic Revomaze sleeve, and sold a couple to eager puzzlers wanting to show off their Revomazes... and they are simply stunning!

How clear are they? Well, here's a close-up showing the pin through the sleeve and the maze itself... I think they're clear enough!

Well Done Neil! (and Thanks!)


[For the record, no I don't consider any of these pictures to be spoilers.]

Hex Stairs ... and a bit

Before I went along to IPP32 I’d arranged to buy one of Neil’s latest creations, Hex Stairs, designed by his mate Derek Bosch. Neil’s written a series of terrific blog posts starting over here chronicling his build and finish process on these puzzles ... including the production of the first prototype that turns out a bit larger than he’s expecting – so large in fact that you can put a bottle of Guinness inside it ... although someone seeing that picture has lead to Neil being commissioned to build a super-sized version to fit around a wine bottle ... the mother of all Hex Stairs?

Neil brought out a couple of copies on the Wednesday evening in the bar and I chose a great looking copy in wenge, purpleheart and curly maple. Neil’s clearly spent a lot of time on the finishing and he’s brought out the life in the woods he’s used. I like the combination of the deep, dark wenge against the reasonably deep purpleheart, being totally offset by the maple in the middle band.  

Derek’s design bears some similarities to Oskar’s Domino Tower – if you change the shapes of the tiles, and work in hexagonal structures rather than squares, and add a layer – so really it’s not like Oskar’s Domino Tower at all! 

Hex Stairs consists of 6 (hex!) winding pieces in alternating colours that interlock to form a stable hexagonal tube. Given the way the colours alternate, there are a few different ways to arrange the pieces – but you’ll always have the maple band around the middle. The shapes of the pieces are such that if you handle the assembled tube naturally, it will stay pretty resolutely together (the natural grip pushes opposite sides together, and as long as you’re spreading that pressure across more than one layer, it pushes together). If however, you start putting pressure across individual layers, you’re likely to find, as Jim did in the bar that night, that this sucker’ll come right apart on you! And once it starts coming apart, you’re better off letting it come all the way apart because putting it back together needs all of the pieces to be rather neatly aligned before you can slide them all together. 

 

That need for absolute alignment was my undoing when I was fiddling around with Neil’s mini-sized copy of Hex Stairs in the bar that night – his tolerances were unbelievable on that skinny little copy... thankfully mine's a little more forgiving so I can actually reassemble it without too much fiddling around looking like I haven’t a clue what I’m doing!

It’s a cute design from Derek – it definitely adds a bit more of a twist to things than Oskar’s Domino Tower and the extra pieces make it a bit more interesting to get things lined up neatly enough ... and terrific craftsmanship from The Juggler ... Thanks Neil for my second Juggler-crafted-puzzle!

______________________

... I also got a couple of walnut Revomaze stands that Neil offered to build after the guys at Revomaze stopped offering wooden stands before they stopped selling puzzles – resulting in a few of us having nice wooden stands for some of our puzzles and leaving the rest of them rolling around on a shelf. 

The stands are pretty similar to the original stands so they fit right in with all the others and provide snug support to a couple of rather nice little puzzles ... and came in handy recently to take some pics of the latest one being opened... Cheers for that too, Neil.

Eis puzzle

I was delighted a little while back when an opportunity to acquire a copy of Roger’s Eis puzzle fell into my lap. I’d first read about it on Rob Stegmann’s website – notably the fairly recent story of how this puzzle has remained unsolved in his collection for ages, until a friend miraculously opened it – and how even after studying it opened, he still struggled to repeat the solution back at home. Suffice it to say that this story filled me with no small amount of respect for this puzzle, and a fair amount of trepidation when I started playing with it.

The puzzle looks like a kids’ ice lolly – hence the name – with a brass stick protruding out of the end of an aluminium lolly. Close examination of the lolly bit shows that it’s made up of two parts that overlap and join in the centre. The brass stick bit can be rotated and sometimes pushed in and out of the lolly bit… and when it’s quite far out, the two bits of the lolly feel a little looser – suggesting that you’re trying to disassemble the puzzle.

I took my copy of Eis along to our last Midlands Puzzle Party and a few folks had an unsuccessful bash at solving it … and it was one of the Rogers being played with at James D’s Easter Saturday Puzzle Party down in Devon. At one point Oli was fiddling around with it and all of a sudden a flash of inspiration flew across his face and he said “this thing’s a Revomaze!” – and sadly that actually meant quite a lot to a few of us. He described something that he was feeling in the movements in Revo-speak and it made sense (walls, paths, traps and resets anyone?), and a couple of minutes later he had the thing open in bits on the table! [He was on a bit of a roll that day – and that wasn’t the only tough Roger puzzle he solved that afternoon!] Simply amazing …

I had a look at the bits and thought I’d recognised some of those Revo-like features (remember this puzzle pre-dates Revomazes by at least a decade!) before Oli reassembled it only for it to remain closed for the rest of the day.

Back at home I had a quick fiddle with my copy again and got absolutely nowhere before setting it aside until last Sunday, when I decided that I should approach it like it was a Revomaze, and try some rudimentary mapping of what was going on inside there … so armed with my trusty Sharpie pen, I started sketching out some paths on the brass shaft (it’s a Revo-puzzle now, not an ice lolly!) and soon enough found that I could explore some new areas and go where my little map suggested I shouldn’t be able to … which got me to the point where I could pull the shaft right out and open the two aluminium parts – job done!

Examining the innards of this puzzle has given me a huge amount of respect for Roger’s eye for engineering design. He’s used several elegantly simple ideas in a very restricted space to make a rather interesting little maze – one that you cannot navigate by luck. The symmetry in the pieces is beguiling and in fact a careful analysis of the outside of the puzzle will actually help you understand the insides – although you may not realise that until it’s too late! 

The implementation of the “springy bits” is one of the most sublimely elegant solutions imaginable … except I wouldn’t have imagined it in a million years! … and the kicker – you could show someone a picture of the bits and they will still struggle to open this puzzle – witness the fact that Rob has a picture of the bits on his website, I looked at them when Oli opened it and it still defeated me until I took out my trusty Sharpie pen – well that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

Revomaze Extreme Orange

Way back in the mists of time there was a competition to design a new Revomaze puzzle. The competition was open to pretty much anyone who’d solved at least one of the puzzles in the range (so that you know how they work, essentially) and quite a few folks took up the challenge and submitted a design or two.

I think it’s fair to say that not all folks who are able to solve puzzles would necessarily make half-decent puzzle designers – and in fact a couple of the entries were delightful in their total disregard for any need to actually be capable of being manufactured, dismissing their little impossibilities with a casual remark intended to pass across any responsibility for implementing these features to Chris Pitt, the originator of the puzzles and runner-of-the-competition – “Place anti-matter device here facing left/right” – not quite, but you get the general idea.

Chris gave feedback on the entries he was receiving from time to time and at one stage let it be known that there was a definite favourite in the pile. The eventual winner was judged by a bunch of Revomaze-junkies, or serious puzzlers as I expect they’d prefer to be known, and the result was totally unanimous, albeit not the entry that Chris had thought was the front-runner.

Having selected the winner there was the inevitable delay while the design was ‘improved’ (read: made even harder!) and the manufacturing logistics were sorted out and then about a year after we’d all signed up for one, the Orange Revomazes began arriving through the mail.

Designed by Mark (mark76 on the forums) who’s previously been noted in dispatches for making mini and micro Revomaze puzzles and even giving some of them to arbitrary puzzle bloggers [Thanks mate], the Orange design seriously shows off not only his incredible skills with some fairly simple (his words) PC design software, but also his creativity in coming up with a puzzle that actually tells a story along the way as it winds through six or seven distinct phases of the solution. Having opened mine and reading some of he back-story that Mark’s published on the forum, I can see why it was the unanimous choice of the puzzlers choosing the winner.

My Orange puzzle arrived during December at just about the same time as the family descended for Christmas and I took some time off work to spend with them – so it took a week or so before I had even taken it out the box, and then several more weeks until I had actually found much time to work on it – and I have to say that I rather enjoyed getting back into the old routine of measuring and mapping and trialling and erroring. This is a genuine old-school Revomaze – and a good mechanical puzzle – everything is there in your hands and lovers of the earlier Revomazes will definitely enjoy this one as well.

On the outside, it looks just like any other Revomaze, with the colour of the sleeve being the only nod to what’s inside. Once you drop into the maze for the first time, you’ll know it’s different – there are traps everywhere, and negotiating a path around them is quite a tricky task, with several spots that will stop any agricultural attempts at solving it, futile. Wind your way through the first two parts (the village and the forest) and you find yourself confronted by “the guard” – and getting past him can take quite a while, especially since Chris tweaked something in there to make it’s behaviour rather unusual, until you work out how to control it properly – then it behaves rather well (and seeing that little piece of evil for the first time is a real eye-opener!).

Past the guard and you eventually get to storm the castle, only to find yourself locked in there in a little feature that makes the Bronze swimming pool seem like a child’s inflatable paddling pool by comparison. Once you’re out of the castle and have negotiated the moat, there’s another chat with the less than friendly guard (and if anything he’s even grumpier now!) before winding your way to the exit and freedom – and an open maze with the chance to look at what the heck’s going on in there…

Mark has used the space incredibly well and re-uses bits in an almost impossible fashion. The guard is a masterpiece of evil and I’m not surprised that it manages to keep people at bay for hours / days at a time. I suspect that given the opportunity to test the puzzle a bit more before they wound up production and unleashed it on the public desperate for another Revomaze, a couple of potential short-cuts (including one that I made use of) could have been designed out, creating an even more phenomenal puzzle – as it stands it’s a great puzzle though and probably has been rightly characterised as somewhere between the Bronze and the Silver Revomaze in terms of complexity.

Definitely not a puzzle for the faint-hearted or the casually interested puzzler – you either get totally sucked-in and respect this puzzle, or you fail miserably – your choice!

Fantastic design Mark! You definitely hit the sweet-spot of a puzzle that demands concentration without making one that requires months of slogging. Thanks mate – and by the way, my hands still hurt!

MPP4

The fourth Midlands Puzzle Party took place yesterday and I managed to con the gang into using our place as a venue yet again so that I wouldn’t have to travel anywhere or pack up any of my puzzles. 
 

Louis, our regular visitor from Eindhoven (and now four time winner of the furthest travelled prize!), arrived on the Friday evening and the puzzling began pretty much as soon as we got back to my place. Next morning the rest of the bunch started arriving thick and fast from about 10 o’clock onwards, and by about 11 virtually everyone was gathered around the dining room table playing with someone else’s puzzle over a cup of tea or coffee. A damn fine start to a good day’s puzzling!

It was great to see a few new faces – Russ and Adin off the Revomaze forum and Jez who’d met Ali and Oli at the 100^th Camden Lock Puzzle Party earlier this month. Jez brought his son Charlie along for the day (which included a 5-hour round trip drive - RESPECT!) – hopefully we didn’t scare any of them off! Speaking of scaring people off, it was great to have the return visit of Paul after his first and only appearance at our very first MPP. 

Most people brought a box-load of puzzles along for the day – most people that is, except for Russ, who brought along a set of lock picks and a practice lock or two – in his defence they are all purely for recreational use, and knowing someone with those sort of skills is bound to come in handy one day  ... Several folks had a go at picking the locks on offer and learning a new skill – although it was a bit worrying when Chris Pitt, the designer of those Revomaze puzzles, was found trying to pick a Revomaze – apparently it was only research and he can open them, properly, anytime he wants (and he didn’t inhale)!

When Oli had arrived he produced the Alles Roger that’s been taunting him for a while and placed it in the middle of the table, inviting everyone to have a (figurative) bash at it along with the warning that if anyone solved it, he would be forced to kill them – game on! Several folks had a bash at it over the course of the day and there were several discussions about Brian’s recent blog post on the same puzzle announcing that he’d finally found a really satisfying and elegant solution that didn’t rely on random bashing and shaking. 
Many tried and I’d like to say that everyone failed, if only to avoid getting blood on the carpets when Oli lost it, however over the course of the day, the puzzle appeared to miraculously solve itself ... I think I was the first one to notice it when I picked it up around lunch time – it was facing away from me as I picked it up and as I turned it around, my brain registered that the ball was in the lower channel and then I watched helplessly as it rolled right back to the start as my brain was too slow in telling my hand to stop picking it up that way ... curious ... I told a couple of unbelievers what had happened and asked who’d solved it to be greeted by a Great Wall of silence – presumably Oli’s promise of blood was too much of a deterrent. 

A couple more times that afternoon others noticed the same thing though, and in the end it turned up solved three times, mysteriously, among a crowd of people who all professed not to be able to solve it. (Not quite true – Ali had solved it, but promised he hadn’t been party to the miraculous auto-solving Alles Roger phenomenon of MPP4.) I wonder if we’ll ever know what really happened that day ... No puzzlers were harmed in the making of this story, although we believe the threats were real. 

During the course of the day, Oli separated himself from the mad(dening?) crowd and had a go on Eric Fuller’s Triple Locked Box - and he actually solved the thing! There was virtually no nudging or hinting, he found the doo-hickey on his own (serious achievement!!) and then opened it – tremendous effort Oli!

Most of the Popplocks got trotted out for a play and they all managed to raise a smile as usual – and I expect that Russ is off to scour the inter-web to try and track down a T4 for himself, so if anyone knows of one looking for a new home... 

The puzzling slowed down a little bit over pizzas at lunchtime, although Chris Pitt was chatting animatedly about his puzzles while people passed around his tiny handmade version of a blue Revomaze – that little puzzle is a fully functional version of its significantly bigger brother, machined by hand in brass – phenomenal. If he’d had a spring assembly available I know several people who’d have taken that puppy for a test-drive ... and several people did have a go on his first prototype Revomaze in all its shiny, raw, handmade goodness. 

Later on in the day, Jez hauled out his iPad and showed us a great little puzzle app he’d found called Cross Fingers – a few of us had a go and quite liked the puzzles and found the gameplay to be pretty slick – I downloaded a copy this morning ... just to fill the time while we all wait for the next episodes of Cut the Rope and Angry Birds, you understand. 

One or two people were brave enough to have a go at Gregory Benedetti’s Stand Py Me  - with Chris spending quite a while coming up with a number of solutions that had spare pieces left over or a not-quite-symmetrical assembly in the frame – he got it in the end though...

Roger’s Gartenschlauch and Feuerzueg defeated all comers however ... the former being totally undefeated among our number and the latter falling to only two puzzlers in our merry little band so far – I think... 

The Kosticks’ Sixteen Axis magnetic artwork seemed to put a smile on everyone’s face that played with it, while Shaun’s Karakuri Little Tree box caused plenty of amusement as several hardened puzzlers “solved” it rather agriculturally without realising what they had really done or how the mechanism worked – although in fairness it was a bit loose. Chris’ Confetto and Mini Cubi’s were really big hits as well... 

The 4-Steps Visible Lock was a reasonably popular puzzle on the day with just one grumpy old so-and-so reckoning he was a bit disappointed with it – chiefly because it only has 4 steps – after all, we all know that really good puzzles have at least 320 steps more than that ... :-)

 

Several people managed to go home with some shiny new puzzles – half our order of Makishi boxes had arrived a couple of weeks ago so I was able to dish out a few of those as well as pass on some rather more collectible pieces to Chris and Ali - I got a HUGE kick out of being able to source a couple of Stickman boxes for them – not sure I’ll ever be able to do that for someone again, but that was pretty cool! Big thank you to Chris who delivered my rather handsome Daedalus courtesy of Gregory “rotations are required” Benedetti ... after spending the best part of an hour and a half on it this afternoon, I know exactly how he earned that middle name! 

Despite my best attempts, the Box o’ Bounty actually seems to have grown this meeting – even though several people did help themselves to something from the box, more people tossed puzzles into the box – hey, ho – I’ll try harder next time...

Thanks to everyone who came along and made the day so much fun – thanks Ali for bringing some grub and thanks guys for the wine and choccies. 

In the words of that great philosopher Wallace, “That were a cracking day out, Gromit!”

Revomaze Red Extreme

[Disclaimer: don’t read this post if you haven’t solved your Red Obsession or Extreme yet and if you don’t want it spoilt for you … this post will kill it for you, totally, I’m not kidding – you cannot read this post and not have it spoilt – capiche?]

Revomaze Obsessions

Revomaze Obsessions are available in Blue, Green and Black flavours. They’re machined in tough plastic to similar tolerances as their Extreme cousins, but they’re significantly cheaper (and lighter). For me, the only downside is that when they’re opened, the core is never fully exposed, so you can’t ever see the actual maze cut into the core, which is a pity.[The pic shows one fully open.]

 

When they were first launched, a couple of different coloured sleeves were available, with the colour of the maze core being represented by the colour of the ‘R’ logo on the end of each core…these days all of the cores (in this style) are black – so pay attention to the colour of the sticker or you won’t know which maze you’re working on.

Some people prefer the Obsessions over the Extremes – I suspect that it’s a matter of taste. They do feel different when navigating through the mazes, but the mechanics of the solution are pretty much identical between them. They are a lot less intimidating to folks trying them out for the first time, and I guess that folks are far more likely to take a punt on a £20 puzzle that they don’t know than they are on a £85(+) puzzle they’ve never played with before. [I also find it a lot easier to part with an Obsession for months on end to let a mate have a bash at solving them than I would parting with one of my Extremes!]

Commercially it makes a lot of sense to have the cheaper versions available – and having Extremes available for more serious puzzlers (or hoarders like myself) covers both ends of the market.