Last weekend saw the latest
annual pilgrimage to the Dutch Cube Day with puzzlers from around the world
(including Hong Kong, Russia and a ton of folks from Europe) descending on a
school in The Hague for a day’s puzzling, bartering and buying. Of course it
wouldn’t be a proper DCD weekend without a couple of additional activities, so
we ended up adding a pair of RPP’s to DCD-proper and it turned into one helluva
weekend.
Steve and I flew over from the
UK on the Saturday morning and met up with Louis at Schipol. We grabbed the
train through to Rijswijk where we had a quick bite to eat before heading over
to Rob Hegge’s place for our now-traditional, pre-DCD, Rob’s Puzzle Party. Rob
had laid on piles of cake and snacks and cleared his dining room table for us
to play on… and soon after we arrived, we had some puzzles out and spread across
the table. Over the course of the afternoon our ranks swelled with puzzlers old
and new – it was great to actually meet Philipp from Germany after ‘meeting’
him online on puzzle forums and FaceBook.
Philipp had brought along a
number of his recent impossible bottle creations as well as his wonderfully
named REtrOMAZE handmade in wood. This puzzle is quite an achievement as it’s a
fully functioning dynamic puzzle where the dynamic bit operates perpendicularly
to the normal plane…very clever and beautifully made.[UPDATE: a mate of Philipp's made the core...]
I’d taken a couple of Yoshi
Kotani’s little acrylic cube packing puzzles along and several folks had a bash
at them with most people really enjoying the ones with a bit of a twist. One of
the puzzlers had a bit of misfortune when one of the more fragile pieces broke
while he was packing them into the box – something that Laurie immediately
picked up on and for the rest of the afternoon whenever anyone was having
trouble with a solve, Laurie would
helpfully ask if they’d considered the Hendrik-method yet?
I spent a while playing with
some of Rob’s vast collection of trick bolts… one of which had me particularly
flummoxed – Ethel duly picked it up after I’d given up on it and had it opened
in minutes.
At one point Wil plied me with a
couple of disentanglement puzzles by Jan Sturm – they all looked vaguely
similar to a standard set of bent nails that I bought from Sloyd a little while
back… but each had a small quirk or two that made the solutions rather
different. Somehow I managed to work my way through them all much to Wil’s (and
my!) surprise – although the next day he got his own back when he gave me one
of them to try again and I singularly failed to separate the nails, so I ended
up buying a set from him to torment myself further at home…and then duly solved
them in 10 minutes in the peace and quiet of my study!
Our ranks swelled progressively
during the afternoon until Rik arrived to take us all across to his place for
dinner and some more puzzling – at Rik’s Puzzle Party, which also happened to
be in Rijswijk. :-)
We ordered a massive pile of pizzas for dinner and while we waited
for the pizzas, Rik began by giving us the guided tour of his puzzle collection
spread across the three floors of his home. With glass cabinets full of puzzles
virtually everywhere you looked, the tour took quite a while.
Pride of place in a number of
the cabinets were Rik’s collection of food-related puzzles – from Karakuri
cakes and McDaniel Petit Fours downstairs to the colourful 3D assemblies and
sliding puzzles upstairs – all based on sweets or food items – definitely one
of the most unusual specialisms I’ve encountered.
The main puzzle room is an
absolute Aladdin’s Cave of goodies, with custom-made shelving (all perfectly
puzzle-sized) covering most of the walls. It’s staggering to see how many
puzzles fit into the shelves… and then there are the drawers below the shelves…
Rik’s given a lot of thought to the shelves and their configurability and the
result is an enviably efficient puzzle storage system that not only displays them
beautifully, but allows direct access to virtually all of the puzzles –
something that I had to sacrifice a while back with my somewhat less efficient
puzzle cabinets.
Dinner was gratefully
consumed by a bunch of hungry puzzlers before we all lapsed back into playing
with Rik’s collection, and one or two puzzles of our own that we’d brought
along.
The puzzling came to a natural
end at around 10pm when we headed back to our hotels/hostels for the night.
Once Louis and I had checked into the hotel we headed down to Wil’s room so
that I could collect a couple of puzzles I’d ordered. As luck would have it Wil
had a few unusual puzzles that required solving or needed playing with so we
ended up spending a couple of hours playing with some rather lovely puzzles –
some more successfully than others - before finally giving up at about midnight
and heading off to grab some sleep.
We woke up at about 8am in spite
of setting an alarm for 7:30 … my excuse was that I’d started the day in
England, lost an hour travelling to Holland, gained an hour overnight as the
clocks changed and somehow the iPhone had gotten confused with what the
time really was… we made it down to breakfast before everyone else had left and
then wandered across to St Maarten’s ,via an ATM, for DCD-proper.
After collecting our name badges
from last year (and spotting Nigel’s there and wondering if he might turn up
unexpectedly) and paying our entrance fees, we were all given a free gift of a
little acrylic board burr courtesy of Peter Knoppers – the NKC-guys always
manage to come up with something small to give to everyone who turns up as a
gift – a really nice touch.
By the time we arrived things
were already pretty much in full swing with most tables already groaning under
the load of puzzles for sale. We found a spot to stow our suitcases and
set about saying hello to everyone – it’s always such a pleasure meeting up
with puzzling friends you haven’t seen for a few months or for the whole year.
My first port of call on the day
was Jack Krijnen who’d brought along a copy of Power Tower for me. Power Tower
was his joint design with Goh Pit Khiam that they’d entered in this year’s IPP
Design Competition. Since then they’ve tweaked the design a little … actually
they’ve tweaked the design A LOT! The competition version had two pairs of
interacting sliders, this version has up to three pairs, with enough sliders
to set up the puzzle as either binary, ternary, or ANY COMBINATION of the two!
There’s also a handy blocking piece that allows you to restrict the number of
sliders in the puzzle – so you can have a really confusing mixture of pieces
without having to commit to a massively high move number… ideal! I’m
well-impressed with that one and looking forward to getting some time to “experiment”
with it, i.e. play!
Next up was a quick visit to
Bernhard’s table to pick up some puzzles for a couple of my Midlands mates and
then across to Michel’s table to grab a copy of the plus-size Crown and Cross –
the super-sized version of Goetz’s exchange puzzle earlier this year that he
and Robrecht Louage had collaborated on.
With the pre-ordained stuff out
of the way I was free to spend the rest of the day wandering, chatting, playing
and even buying the occasional puzzle as well…
It was great to meet Splinter
(he of Burgh Lock and Swing Lock-fame) who had come along to his first DCD with
several examples of his puzzle locks and his Mazerolls for folks to play with
and purchase. Several times during the course of the day I came across Splinter
among a knot of puzzlers trying to solve one of his puzzles, and seeing the
rather large grin on his face while their confusion grew, I suspect that he’ll
be back again and we’ll be seeing more puzzles from him in the future.
Tony Fisher kindly autographed a
puzzle for me while I told him he was crazy for putting a Petaminx into a glass
bowl with a mouth that’s just way too small to allow it in. I didn’t ask how
long it took him, but given that just assembling and stickering those things
usually takes days, it must have required a significant investment in terms of
time. He also had a few copies if his wooden replica Rubik’s cube prototypes
for sale at a rather reasonable price and despite not being much of a twisty
puzzle fan I found it hard to resist the urge to buy one – and suspect I’m
going to have to drop him a note and ask if there are any left in due course.
His attention to detail on these replicas is simply stunning – right down to
the markings and stickers in the pictures of the prototypes. His huge handmade
4*4*4 cube drew many an admiring look and almost as many offers to scramble it
for him … all politely declined, thankfully.
Alfons Eyckmans had a table
piled with his wonderful burrs, all beautifully made with some rather lovely
exotic woods. He had a steady stream of folks chatting about his creations
throughout the day and I watched him effortlessly demonstrating a number of his
designs while chatting away – quite impressive!
Goetz was wandering around with
a rucksack full of goodies and spent a while demonstrating Namick Salakov’s
Design Competition entry from this year Complementary P-arity.
It just looks plain intimidating! Made up of several plates and sliders at
right angles to one another, they work in different bases, and keeping track of
where they go and how, is pretty challenging…although Goetz was doing a pretty
effortless job of demonstrating them to anyone who was interested. He is the
king of n-ary puzzles though…
Marcel had a huge table full of
goodies, including some rather desirable ones – and if I hadn’t already spent
more than I should have I may well have added an original Gillen bottle to my
collection…
Wil had probably the biggest spread
available for sale on the day with several tables covered in plastic crates
full of puzzles. His car must have provided a serious packing puzzle to enable
him and Chris to actually be able to get into it and drive more or less safely
between Venlo and Voorburg. I ended up spending quite a while at Wil’s table
idly fiddling with a number of puzzles while chatting with other punters.
Lunch was up to the usual
DCD-standard with piles of filled rolls and hot soup available in seemingly
endless quantities… along with the tea and coffee with tarts and biscuits that
were on offer the entire day. The NKC guys understand the need to keep puzzlers
well-fed!
The afternoon saw some great
talks from some interesting puzzlers. Rox gave us a talk on puzzling in China,
introducing us to a number of the faces behind the brand-names we all
recognised and talking about her regular “Boys and Toys” gatherings. Peter gave
a rather humorous talk about his quest to design a cubic board burr to use as
an exchange puzzle at IPP and G4G (also the DCD 2014 gift) – he really did a
great job of building up to his inevitable punchlines that hinged around things
being impossible. Tom introduced his open-source software for packing pieces
for 3D printing orders and amused us with some examples of just how whacky
Shapeways current pricing model is. Rob closed off the session with a canter
through this year’s IPP exchange puzzles.
After the talks there was time
to watch the final round of the speed-cubing contest (gawd those guys are
good!) and do a final lap around the various tables of goodies for sale…
Just before 5pm four of us
wandered briskly back toward the station to catch the train through to Schipol
where Steve and I grabbed a bite to eat before heading our separate ways back
home… another altogether brilliant DCD weekend.
[Sorry about the dearth of decent pics - my travel camera and I are having a disagreement!]
