One Piece Packing Puzzle

Simon Nightingale likes to push boundaries… in all sorts of senses!

His One Piece Packing Puzzle certainly pushes a category of puzzles as far as it can possibly be pushed… surely!

Every now and then I engage in idle banter with puzzlists somewhere about what makes a good puzzle – invariably the second favourite response (after “A great A-Ha! moment”) is a low piece count… arguably this puzzle takes that to the absolute extreme: can you possibly make a packing puzzle with fewer pieces? It has a box/frame and a cube to be inserted… it’s hard to imagine dispensing with either of those two elements without ending up without an actual packing puzzle. [OK internet: there’s a challenge for you!]

Expertly crafted by Eric Fuller back in 2008, this little puzzle measures about an inch cubed. It consists of a simple-looking five-sided cubic box and a slightly smaller wooden cube designed to nestle neatly inside said box… sounds simple?

Trying said nestling action and you’re invariably going to be faced with a wooden cube that simply bounces out of the box… tap it down and it will bob up again – being supported as if on a little cloud of magic – or there are a pair of repelling magnets in there fighting for their own space – you choose whichever interpretation makes you happiest.

OK, take a step back and think(c) a little… the box seems pretty honest so there probably isn’t much going on in there… and the cube doesn’t appear to have any moving bits in it – certainly none that move around if you give it a good old shake… although there must be some magnets in there somewhere (unless of course my magic cloud theory still works for you).

Thankfully there’s a reasonably limited number of ways you can put said cube into said box, and if you had some way of demarcating which ones you’d tried, you could probably bash through them quite quickly… but where’s the fun in brute-forcing a solution on a lovely little puzzle like this?!

Step back further and think(c) a little more and you’ll work out a sensible strategy for divining exactly what to do… that’s a far more rewarding approach!

Rather chuffed to have finally stumbled across one of these little guys for sale – I think it’s a masterclass in paring back everything right back to the barest of bones without reducing the puzzle element to mere triviality.

[Sorry if this blog post feels a bit more whimsical than usual(?!) - I blame the weather: it’s been unseasonably warm in Blighty and it’s probably going to my head.]

MPP 17

MPP17 was finally planned for Valentine’s Day 2015 after an all-too-long gap since MPP16. (Personally, I blame the organiser!) Invitations were duly sent out on FaceBook and pretty quickly it became apparent that we’d have a goodly number of folks rocking up at Puzzling Times HQ … well I guess it serves me right for not getting another venue organised in time!

Our international visitors began arriving the night before, with the entire Coolen clan and a puzzle salesman from Venlo arriving on my doorstep at about 9 o’clock on the Friday evening, having left from Eindhoven earlier that afternoon. After a bit of a chat and a quick catch up, the kids were put to bed and the puzzlers ended up in the cave playing with new toys.(I know, I know - hard to believe, eh?)

Louis had brought over a prototype of a new puzzle that had me perplexed for quite a while – in the end I managed to fluke it open and closed again without understanding how it worked at all… when he subsequently talked me through it I was surprised at the elegance of it… now if we can find a way to reduce the chances of idiots like me fluking it, we’re definitely onto something!

A little gift from Wil

Wil had brought over a few little interesting goodies for me that he’d managed to find here and there and I was delighted to add a couple of beautiful objects to the little hoard in the cave… particularly a Tom Lensch copy of Oskar’s Wanderer and a lovely (rather larger than I’d imagined!) Coffin original. I left the two of them puzzling when I crashed for the night, and then we caught up again in the morning.

I collected Dave from the station at about 09:30 and over the next hour or so the house gradually filled as more and more puzzlers from various parts of the countryside descended. Wil set up shop on the dining room table and there was a steady stream of puzzlers poring over the treasures in his crates throughout the day.

By the time Simon Nightingale arrived, the dining room table was pretty much jam-packed with boxes and crates, so his boxes of swaps were relegated to the hallway, where several very happy puzzlers found many wondrous treasures including several original Coffin burr exchange puzzles that I was a little too slow off the mark to snag for myself. Once again Simon asked everyone who was taking stuff out of his boxes to donate whatever they thought was reasonable to charity – his son Joe is running the London marathon to raise money for St Mungo’s later this year – a really worthwhile cause if you’d like to add your support / encouragement.

Satomi managed to come for the best part of the morning and brought some new Japanese puzzles, including a great little pair of free-the-coin puzzles from Mine that had only just been released in Japan.

Virtually everyone who was driving in from further afield ended up getting caught in some horrendous traffic jams on a number of motorways – with Oli and Kirsty taking the prize for the worst delay of the day – topping out at around 6 hours … such is the magnetism of the MPP! (or Cadbury World, which was where they were heading the following day…)

It was great to have a couple of new faces join us – I’ve already mentioned Dave who’d just been a name on FaceBook to most of us until this MPP, Angela that some of us met at IPP in London for the first time, Mike, one of the Camden regulars, and Ant and DecLee, the two guys behind NG Puzzles and Loki, their first design.

Wil was on top form during the day with a couple of magical effects presented in the form of a puzzle – with the aim of working out how the effect worked … he must have performed one of them at least ten times to a variety of groups of people – most of whom managed to distil the relevant critical details and deduce the principles behind the trick.

Donald brought a pile of gingerbread pentominoes

Lunch was a fairly relaxed affair of bread and cheese with cold meats and salad that seemed to go down reasonably well… and I think most people managed to find enough to eat – the quantity of cake and biscuits left over at the end of the day suggested that people had enough to eat.

One of the definite highlights of the afternoon was the group solve of Nick Baxter’s IPP17 Host Gift. Nick had been in touch a couple of weeks before MPP17 and suggested that it might be fun for the folks at MPP17 to play with the IPP17 Host Gift – I agreed rather readily and he shipped his rather precious puzzle across the pond for us to play with…

When I asked him whether he was supplying the solution he asked what on earth I’d want that for, and then told me there wasn’t one anyway! Thankfully it arrived a week or two before MPP17 so I had plenty of time to get it sorted in my own mind before trying it in a group… the host gift is in the shape of a San Francisco Cable Car with four shiny passengers secured in place. Your goal is to remove all four passengers… and along the way you will discover all manner of rather interesting tools and techniques to allow progress.

I herded all the interested puzzlists into the dining room and presented them with the cable car to many sounds of approval – a couple of them began to examine things a little and with a bit of encouragement they started postulating  a line of attack – with a little more encouragement they set off on the path toward the solution … while I kept an eye on things, they pretty much had it all sussed and didn’t need a lot of guidance at all, in fact the only guidance I really ended up giving them was suggesting that they delay some experiments until a better tool came along.

I had a great time watching their faces whenever a new part of the puzzle was opened and a set of new tools would emerge – sometimes it was obvious what the tools would be for although every now and then it was just the real lateral thinkers spotting the links… Gary Foshee did an amazing job of hiding a pile of useful tools around the puzzle with hardly any of them visible at the start of the solution. There are a couple of absolute gems in there in terms of tools – one I won’t mention and one I will: when have you ever found a DIY corkscrew in a puzzle that you needed to assemble and use in order to proceed?! Brilliant!

Chris took stacks of pictures all the way through the group-solve and then spent a while arranging all the respective bits and pieces for an appropriate shot of the solved puzzle at the end… of course reassembling is a simple matter of reversing your steps, carefully, so that you don’t find yourself without the tools you need to lock up the rest of the steps… a decidedly non-trivial problem given the sheer number of steps involved in the complete solution – there was a lot of discussion along the way but they actually managed to not have to back-track in their reassembly – which is more than I can say for my first attempt!

Thanks Nick – that was brilliant!

Rich Gain had brought a bunch of his printed puzzles along and at one point hosted a team challenge where two teams of three were each given a set of multi-coloured burrs to disassemble and then reassemble as three burrs each in a single colour… as you might expect they weren’t exactly trivial burrs to start with and there was a healthy rivalry between the two teams sitting across the table from one another all trying to learn as much from their own team and the others’ progress without giving anything away – Chris’ team finished first, but everyone seemed to enjoy the contest.

Simon had brought a shed-load of wooden cubies (and wedges) for Donald to play with and he ended up spending a while constructing a puzzle to taunt me with… it’s still in its solved configuration held together with rubber bands inside a Ziploc bag as I’ve been too afraid to let it loose yet…

 A fair number of folks began drifting homewards (avoiding the motorways!) at around 6pm, but a hardened core hung around for some fish suppers from the village chippy – I eventually managed to hoof the last ones out at around 10pm… a long day’s puzzling!

The next day gill and I took the visitors to Stratford for a wander around the town centre and a visit to the MAD Museum – we spent about an hour and a half in there and all of the kids (yes that includes, Wil, Louis and I!) had a thoroughly brilliant time! Well worth a visit if you’re every anywhere near Stratford!

Good grief, what a weekend…

It started on Thursday evening… we’ve got the painters in so we needed to turn a drop-sheet-strewn mess into a liveable space suitable for entertaining guests over the weekend -  that took Gill and I the best part of Thursday evening so we got to sleep in a bit on Friday morning (I’d taken the day off knowing that folks would be arriving). Laurie arrived at exactly the time that he’d predicted weeks earlier, with Dick Hess in tow. Dick played talisman en route, ensuring that there were no traffic jams, and Laurie navigated largely from memory despite having never been to my place before in his life. After a quick catch-up and a cup of coffee, Gill put on a great spread for lunch out on the deck in the glorious British sunshine. (Yes you did read that correctly!)

 

After lunch the puzzling began up in the cave and it didn’t take long for Laurie and Dick to find something that interested them and there was plenty happy puzzling grunts and the occasional intelligible (if not intelligent!) mumblings – and even the occasional “A-Ha!”.

Dick and I headed out to pick up Wil at the airport and found ourselves tied up in the some horrendous traffic (so much for the talisman!) although we still managed to arrive on time to find Nigel waiting to collect two other Dutch MPP guests. They all arrived on the same flight from Amsterdam and there was lots of happy greeting type sounds as puzzlers greeted new friends and old ones. Nigel took his charges back to Warwick, and Dick and I took Wil back to Barnt Green.

Plenty of good-natured banter followed as the three wise men have known one another for around 30 years and share a lot of history together – so there were many stories and a lot of joking with each of them giving as good as they were getting. Dinner was cottage pie and dessert was a fantastic homemade cheesecake – I may be biased, but it is awesome. After supper more puzzling ensued, with Dick bringing out the puzzles Wil and I had pre-ordered and then we managed to goad Wil into opening his oversized suitcase (which we duly dubbed “The Shop”) and bringing out all manner of new puzzles. In honour of Dick we concentrated on the entanglements (which I’m RUBBISH at) and we spent ages with Wil fishing out one design at a time, handing it to one of us who’d fiddle with it a bit, then say they’d take a copy, only for the rest of us to ask for one as well.

 

I’d bought a copy of You Two from Wil a couple of weeks earlier and I’d managed to get it apart (with the help of his solution) but I couldn’t for the life of me get it back together again (even trying to follow that solution in reverse!!), so I gave it to Laurie and Dick to un-solve… and then a while later I was a bit bemused when Laurie was fiddling with it and chatting to Wil and Dick about whether Wil had any more copies of it left. When Wil said he was out of stock of them, Laurie kindly donated my copy to Dick on the grounds that it would be easier for him to get another copy from Wil in the interim – there was a lot of hilarity when I pointed out just how generous he’d been with my puzzle … at which point he began negotiating with Dick over a few of my prize puzzle boxes!

Dick headed for bed, and Laurie and I ended up trawling through a few more of Wil’s boxes in search of treasure before we all called it a night at around midnight.

After breakfast the next morning we faced our sternest puzzling challenge yet over the weekend – packing everything into Gill’s car ('cos it has twice as many seats as mine!) for the trip through to Warwick. We had to ditch Wil’s suitcase, but we did manage to fit in all of the puzzles, including four huge crates of Laurie’s swaps. I couldn’t see out of the back window and every time I drove around a corner, my crate of puzzles slid ominously from one side to the other – and somehow it managed not to clout Laurie on the head…

When we got to The Gap we weren’t expecting many folks to be there as we were supposedly half an hour early … yet the coffee area was already jammed with noisy puzzlers. Laurie and Duncan set about trying to have a serious IPP planning meeting in the one corner while the rest of us amused ourselves with new puzzles and meeting new puzzlers. We’d been joined by Maarten and She-who-must-not-be-named-on-line-unless-you-refer-to-her-as-the-cats’-girlfriend, from Holland for the first time and they were busily getting to know new puzzlers while playing with puzzles.

We had a couple of hours to kill until we could get into the main hall so we just set up shop in the coffee area and proceeded to chat and puzzle and drink copious quantities of caffeine. Dick was wandering around dishing out a sheet of logic and maths puzzles to everyone who’d come along and presented everyone with a handmade Hess original entanglement puzzle. [So far I’ve managed to take it apart, but can’t get it back together again!]

Wil lost no time in producing his latest find – a shiny metal object that looked a bit like a rather downmarket version of Marcel Gillen’s rolling pin and invited people play with it. Some of the quicker-witted folks managed to find their way into it and extract the key that was jangling inside, although no-one managed to find out what to do with the key itself. Several tried manfully to find a way to use it in one of the ends of the little rolling pin, all to no avail. After a suitable struggle, Wil would then own up to the story behind this particular item and there would be raucous laughter from all involved and from the bystanders who’d been offering helpful advice on what the solution might just be… you had to be there… and no I won’t say more for fear of spoiling this party trick for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet!

Somewhere around midday the hall became ours and we moved in with a vengeance, with several more crates of puzzles being collected from cars outside and tables rapidly spread around the hall and piled with toys.  Nigel produced the usual spread of cupcakes, biscuits and crisps that kept some of us going all day, while most folks bailed out to the chippie across the road for something more substantial.

About a week before MPP Laurie had asked if he should bring his Katie Koala along so I suggested it might be fun to take a group photo of a few of them, and sent out an email to the others that I knew happened to have one too… on the day we had five of them – which given how few of them have been released into the wild is rather impressive. 

We started out with a simple group photo of them all in a semi-circle and then someone heard Laurie’s innocent suggestion that we should have two of them holding hands with the others lurking behind and suggest that one of them must have been a Kevin and they’d procreated… unfortunately it all went downhill from there and we ended up with a shot of Katies clustered around the telly (reasonably wholesome) and then another group shot that is probably best left sans caption. 

There was a lot of laughter around that table for quite a while though. (And for anyone who was worried that we might not be able to recognise our own Katie afterwards, Brian had branded their bottoms with scribbled serial numbers.)

Satomi did a fair amount of business with several of us stocking up on goodies from Japan that either aren’t available via mail order or where the postage costs would make them too expensive. I managed to pick up a couple of Mine’s hidden picture puzzles and a few Minoru Abe sliding puzzles that I’d been after.

Several of us had a bash at Simon’s copy of Kagen Sound’s Pattern Box – I failed miserably, even though the target pattern is shown on the ends. Nigel managed to get one of the compartments open, but the second one eluded pretty much everybody.

One of the prime attractions seemed to be a fancy new bicycle lock that kept a few puzzlers wondering how the heck to open it for ages…not intended as a puzzle, it’s meant to be an unpickable bike lock where the mechanism is deep inside an outer casing and the key is inserted and then manipulated through the casing. [The internet being the wonderful thing it is has already shown the lock’s claims of being unpickable to be a bit over-stated.]

Steve (M) took delivery of his new Threedy printer from Simon and within a few minutes (literally!) they had it set up and printing off a couple of MPP logos while a huddle of amused puzzlers looked on. During the course of the afternoon various bits and pieces were cranked out with Simon and (big) Steve providing Steve M with tons of advice on using his newest toy and getting a good finish on the pieces. That’s service!

Somewhere around 6pm I rounded up my bus-load and we headed back to my place to get things sorted for the BBQ. I’d hoped to have about half an hour free to get everything sorted, but things didn’t quite work out that way so I ended up having to draft various puzzlers into helping so Chris became the official doorman, Dick was honorary barman and Laurie ended up helping me lug stuff around and set up the gazebo to protect us from the English summer weather (clue: not the sun!). Most of the gang had arrived before I managed to get the meat on the grill, but they somehow managed to amuse themselves for a couple of hours before the grub was ready. Gill did an awesome job of getting all the ancillary stuff organised and made sure that there was salad and potatoes to go with the meat (my only responsibility!). Dick kept everyone well-watered…or at least pointed them in the direction of the drinks fridge. A while after we’d all eaten, we dished up ice cream and chocolate sauce that seemed to go down rather well …22 hungry puzzlers fed – tick!

I’m sure there was a lot of puzzling going on during all of that but I found myself outside burning the meat during most of it, however I have noticed from Chris’ pics that Laurie spent a while on the Stickman Checkmate Box, managing to open one side but the second one stubbornly refused to let him in.

Judging by the pile on the coffee table after dinner, my Roger puzzles and Popp locks definitely found favour among my guests … I saw several folks having a bash at Eric’s latest cigar box, but don’t think anyone managed to solve it during the day… although Phil did helpfully tell me there was nothing wrong with mine so I must deduce that I’m simply incompetent – no great surprise there!

Folks began drifting off around 10pm, with the die-hards leaving somewhere around midnight… and I think they had a few hours driving ahead of them still…!

Laurie had to leave fairly sharpish the next morning so we found ourselves having an early breakfast before he had to dash off. He managed to sign the guest book over breakfast – no mean feat if you know how Laurie generally signs guest books! After Laurie had left we had an extended breakfast before retreating to the cave for a couple of hours of final puzzling before I dropped Wil off at the airport and Dick at the train station so he could head down to Wimbledon for some tennis…that afternoon Gill and I crashed and had a few hours sleep to try and catch-up – it may have been a bit hectic, but it was a really awesome weekend!