Slow Waltz

I was really looking forward to getting my grubby paws on Eric Fuller’s version of Jeff Namkung’s Slow Waltz. I’d played around with a couple of Jeff’s designs courtesy of Richard Gain’s Shapeways versions and found the designs were excellent, so the prospect of getting my hands on a beautifully crafted wooden version was more than a bit tempting. 

My copy is made of sapele and macassar ebony and lives up to Eric’s normal exacting standards. The two woods give a bit of a clue to the shapes of the pieces – but don’t really make it too easy, after all this is a level 14.8 puzzle, so there’s quite a lot of business to be done before you can release any pieces at all – and it stays interesting pretty much all the way through to the end, with the last two pieces not exactly falling apart either. 

The puzzle starts with an almost complete 4*4*4 cube – there’s a cubie missing from one of the faces. From there you start by opening things up a bit and making some room so that you can get some of the more useful bits moving around – there are a couple of really unusual moves that might evade you for a while, depending on how you grip this puzzle. I discovered a couple of blind alleys during the disassembly (and several more on the assembly!). It’s a fun puzzle to sit and resolve as the movements do seem quite choreographed with things first going one way, and then the other. 

It may only have five pieces, but this is a really good design ... for ages I found myself stumped on working out how to introduce one particular piece because the “obvious” way to do it turns out to be less than useless. This is probably the cube that I’ve had to take apart and reassemble the most in order to get to know it – it’s a great little challenge.

...now if only I can get myself to stop counting 1-2-3 ...   

   1-2-3 ...                           

as I'm taking it apart...

[Kevin's written about his thoughts on the Slow Waltz in this post.] 

Richard Gain’s Superstrings

Richard entered his latest design, Superstrings, in last year’s NobYoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at IPP31 in Berlin and promptly won a Jury First Prize Award!

After he’d established that none of us at MPP3 were attending IPP31 (none of us move in those lofty circles yet!) he’d teased a couple of folks with a quick shot at one and it seemed to go down pretty well.. I was dashing around keeping people fed and watered so only saw one from a distance that day, and when it duly went and won a First Prize, I knew I’d have to get myself one at some point ... so back in December I got hold of Richard and as luck would have it he had a couple of pre-dyed copies available so I took one off him. 

It arrived in a rather snug clear acrylic box – that I suspect is a golf ball presentation box – but not having seen one of these before, it took me embarrassingly longer than it should have to even open the little box! Having successfully extracted the puzzle, playing commenced...

Superstrings consists of two intertwined pieces that each have four diagonally connected cubies on an open chain – those two bits then interlock so that you end up with a 2*2*2 cube with diagonally matching colours. [If that doesn’t make sense, just look at the pictures – all will become clear!]

Starting out it soon becomes apparent that even though it looks like there’s a huge amount of space in there – those pieces are shaped just the right way to stop you from doing most of the things you’d like to do ... despite that, there is a bit of movement to explore and from the first few moves it looks like this is going to be a nice, well-behaved orthogonal puzzle – a little way in you’ll find the pieces have opened up a bit and given you a bit more room to work with, but there’s no way out – until you notice that in some positions, there’s just enough room to twist one piece past another – UH OH... that’s not a good sign – and then thinking back to the other puzzles that Richard’s designed and produced, it was probably inevitable that there’d be twists and turns involved, wouldn’t there?

 

Right, so having passed that little test, more experimentation and fumbling along will part the two bits... 

But that’s the easy part – putting them back together again is quite a bit harder – you’ll find quite a few dead ends that seem to have been set up especially for the impatient puzzler wanting to get straight to the final position - you’ll realise the importance of starting in the right place (and the right orientation) and taking the whole path to the end ... you’ll notice that the design of the pieces only just stops you from doing quite a few of the things you’d really like to – cracking design, nicely executed in all the right choice of materials – the Shapeways material has enough give so that the pieces aren’t brittle and prone to breaking, but have more than enough rigidity to stop you from doing things Richard would rather you didn’t. 

Another great little pocket puzzle from Richard Gain. 

You can read Brian’s thoughts over here and  Kevin’s thoughts here – they both seemed to like it too! 

Switch Cube

Back in December I acquired a couple more of Richard Gain’s Microcubology puzzles. I’m a lazy sod so I bought them directly from him so that I could get them already coloured – Richard does a great job dying the pieces different colours and only charges a few quid extra for all his hard work. (I keep thinking that one day he’s going to realise that he’s under charging for all his time and he’s going to put the prices up...)

Switch Cube is one of Richard’s own designs and was one of the first puzzles that he made available in a new, slightly larger, cube structure. The individual little cubies making up the pieces are slightly larger than on his earlier puzzles, as are the holes on the faces – and the net result is that he’s managed to produce a larger puzzle without much extra material – which is important because Shapeways, who produce the pieces, charge by the amount of material used in the manufacturing process – so you end up with a larger puzzle for a similar price. Result! 

The larger pieces feel just as sturdy as the previous smaller ones, but they’re definitely easier to handle at this size – and indeed there’s one little move on this one that is infinitely less fiddly at this size. [Richard’s taken this even further now with his “Open” structures that have even larger holes on the faces, reducing the price even further.]

Right, back to the puzzle at hand – Switch Cube is a 5*5*5 interlocking cube, with a twist! 

Yip, Burr Tools won’t help you here – it might show you where the pieces could fit, but it won’t show you how to get them there! :-)

Starting out with the cube, it’s fairly straightforward to find the first couple of moves – a quick inspection of the faces will tell you what might move in which direction and soon enough you’re off and running – only then you hit a brick wall and there’s a sneaky little move – not unrelated to the name of the puzzle, that you need to apply before proceeding. Having done that, the cube continues to expand in all directions until the first couple of pieces come adrift – and from there on out, the rest will come apart fairly simply.

Putting it back together, or indeed starting from a pile of pieces, is a much larger challenge. Sure, there are a couple of fairly large pieces that narrow down your options for you, and then you can probably work out how the other bits need to be positioned in the final solution, but working out how to get them in there is more than a little tricky – remember there were 11 moves (by my count) before the first sub-assemblies came apart ... and there’s that sneaky little one in the middle that you’re apt to forget about.

Not sure if I prefer the larger size in general or not, but on this particular puzzle, the extra size means that normal-sized people can do everything they might need to without resorting to a tool of some sort, or a passing small child – and anyway, people tend to frown on that sort of thing, don’t they?

Microcubology

Pocket-sized puzzling

It was great having Richard Gain (the Microcubology-guy) join us at the last MPP – not just because he’s a thoroughly nice bloke who likes talking and playing puzzles, but also because he designs and makes puzzles – and he brought a pile of his wares along for everyone to have a bash at them and potentially buy a couple – I bought 5 of them and Richard rather kindly tossed in a tiny 3-piece 3*3*3 cube for nothing. 

Richard sells his puzzles on the web through two shops – the Shapeways shop  will sell you the puzzles directly in a single colour, or you can buy them from Richard’s Etsy shop (for a little more) all ready dyed in multiple colours – IMHO that little bit more is well worth it – you’ll save yourself several hours as well as the cost of the dyes etc. 

Most of the puzzles in his shop are 4*4*4 cubes with 3cm sides – they’re manufactured using the standard Shapeways laser-sintering process and the pieces are pretty rugged (which turns out to be a rather good thing!). Given their compact size and relative strength, I reckon they make excellent puzzles for just tossing in your pocket on the off-chance that you might a puzzle to play with while you’re out or if you want something to tease / annoy / entertain (delete as appropriate) co-workers with. 

Having had the small pile of micro-cubes staring at me from my desk for a couple of weeks, I spent some time last weekend playing with them properly, and really enjoyed myself – bang-for-buck-wise or smile-per-size-wise they are simply tremendous. 

Richard has collected a couple of really interesting little cubes here – there are some by Jos Bergmans and a couple of Richard’s own designs. It’s pretty clear from his selection and his designs that he has a rather twisted mind (and you’ll see that I mean that purely in a ‘rotations required’ sort of way!).

Three tiny pieces is the cute little 3*3*3 cube that Richard was handing out for free to anyone buying his wares at MPP – it’s literally only about 15 mm on a side and requires a little precise manoeuvring - especially when trying to take the last two pieces apart: one move removes the first bit and then another four moves are required to separate the last two from one another. Given its size, it’s not likely to become the most prized puzzle in any collection – but it does demonstrate just how good 3D printing has become – the individual cube building blocks are all hollow and the walls are incredibly thin, yet the pieces are quite solid enough to produce a perfectly serviceable puzzle.

Pivot is an interesting Jos Bergmans design where the name gives a clue as to the movements involved in the solution – yip, Burr Tools may be useful for working out how the pieces might form a cube, but it won’t tell you how to assemble the pieces due to the rotations required in the solution. 

Pivot has one unusually large piece that runs almost the entire length of the edges of the assembled cube, making it an interesting ‘feature’ of the solution – and in some senses, placing it to one side and working only with the remaining pieces to solve the eventual placement does simplify things. Once you’ve done that, there should be an obvious last step (if you’re assembling – first step if you’re taking it apart) and a reasonably clear first step – that leaves you a little experimentation to work out how the jiggle the innards sufficiently to allow each piece in and then get it into the right position. Disassembly is a non-trivial exercise given the jiggery-pokery required to moves the bits about to release each successive piece. 

Twist the Night Away is a six-piece 4*4*4 cube by Tom Jolly. Again there’s a single piece that sort of stands out as the one that going to cause the trouble – it’s a complete ring that will make up most of an entire layer of the assembled cube … so once again, setting that aside and building the rest of the cube and making sure that it has a suitable waist for that ring, seems like a reasonable place to start to work out the positions in the final solution. You can eliminate a couple of bits as being fairly straightforward, but that still leaves you with the toughest part of this little puzzle – putting the second piece into the puzzle literally takes a colossal 12 moves – including a very healthy number of rotations! 

I used to be a bit wary of puzzles like this requiring rotations, because some of them are invariably “a bit tight” – so I’m not sure whether I’m forcing it to do something unnatural, or whether it really just needs a bit of encouragement. Having spent some time playing with these little puzzles, I’m happy to confirm that the ‘right way’ generally requires very little encouragement of the agricultural sort and rather more finesse – so if you find yourself needing to squeeze things a bit harder than you feel you should – stop and find the better way. Once again, disassembly in decidedly non-trivial – in fact, it’s not a long way off being as hard as assembling from scratch. Nice design, nicely executed. 

Elevator is another of Jos Bergmans’ designs for a 4*4*4 cube with a twist. Once again, this puzzle has a large awkward piece (a cranked loop) that’s certain to be the major constraint – no surprises there! 

The name also gives a pretty good description of the likely movements during the important stages – in fact you’ll have a decent combination of pivots, rotations and elevator moves all going on at the same time when you get to releasing the last few pieces while disassembling. I found myself chasing my own tail a few times even though I thought I had a pretty clear picture of where I was trying to get to – once again, even though the moves are ‘unusual’, none of them is particularly tight.

The last two micro-cubes in this post were both designed by Richard. “Roll Up! Roll Up!” has some references to not only some of the movements involved in the solution (you’re starting to notice a pattern here, aren’t you?) but also to the Big Top, inasmuch as the pieces alternate in colouring when assembling or disassembling. 

Richard’s description of the puzzle points to the two troublesome parts on this puzzle (an ‘H’-shaped piece and a cranked loop) and suggest that you start by combining those two pieces, helpfully noting that it’s “not as easy as you might think!” – Indeed, without any other encumbrances, getting those two bits together properly takes five less-than-obvious moves – again including rotations that Burr Tools won’t help with. The next two bits take a few moves each, but aren’t too troublesome before the final two pieces lock everything together rather securely. Excellent little puzzle that Richard is quite rightly rather proud of. 

Last but not least is the interestingly named Angle-C – not for its shapes or moves this time (see, I was lulling you into a false sense of complacency!) but because it was designed while on holiday on Anglesey. Geddit?! This one had me scratching my head for ages while trying to disassemble it the first time – I’d found the first piece to remove quite quickly, but then couldn’t for the life of me find the next bit to move … time and again I’d take out that piece, fiddle around fruitlessly, only to replace that first bit and put it back on the desk to stare at me for a while longer … then last weekend I had a real go at it and realised what I was missing – effectively the fit on these little Shapeways puzzles is that good that I’d missed something large right in front of my face – something that Richard’s colour scheme does a good job of disguising nicely, by the way.   

That takes care of the next couple of pieces, and the following one isn’t that tough, but it leaves you with a pair of oddly shaped almost-complete loops – and getting them to part company is rather fiddly – you’ll probably recognise the similarities to a standard bent nail puzzle, but the shapes make it a bit more complicated to execute – providing a neat little four-move sting-in-tail for this disassembly … so starting from a set of pieces and assembling it without any ideas of orientation or final position in the solution is a significant challenge. Great puzzle Richard!

POSTSCRIPT: I wrote this blog post last week and since then Richard has entered one of his latest designs (Superstrings - now available from his Shapeways store) in this year's Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition at IPP 31 in Berlin, and WON a Jury First Prize Award for his trouble! Well Done Richard!!

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