Edelweiss Puzzlebox (aka Stickman #28)

I feel very guilty about not writing about this box yet… I’ve had it for months, played with, solved it, enjoyed it, but not yet blogged about it… I am sorry.

Let me rectify that now…

Just before I left sunny UK for a cruise up Alaska and a trip to Canada, with some puzzling thrown in for good measure, I received an email from Robert Yarger offering me a copy of his latest Puzzlebox – a collaboration with William Waite. You’ll know me well enough by now to know that I don’t turn down invitations like that, so I winged some Paypal across to Rob and then had to do something really hard: I asked him not to sip it for three weeks so that there would be no chance of the package rocking up while I was out of the country enjoying beavertails. 

Rob duly shipped it over just after I got back from IPP35 and it didn’t take long to arrive.

Quite a few of Rob’s previous puzzlebox designs have incorporated a nod to another genus of puzzle, like his Lighthouse incorporating elements from Hoffmann threaded puzzles, kumiki puzzles in The Little Game Hunter, automata in his Checkmate Box and sliding tile puzzles in the aptly-named Sliding Tile Box.

The Edelweiss Puzzlebox incorporates a neat tray-packing puzzle designed by William Waite to provide the locking mechanism. At the start of the puzzle you have the pieces neatly packed in their place on one side of the box… with the box very securely locked. On the opposite side there are some similarly shaped bits forming a trivial tray-packing puzzle – unfortunately those bits won’t unlock the puzzle!

Your goal now is to pack the first set of pieces into the two trays, one on either side of the box – get it right and you’ll release one side of the box and gain access to its secret compartment… as long as you open them in the right order – else you get nowhere at all!

Find the right assembly and you’re presented with either a patchwork of little Swiss flowers (hence the puzzle’s name) or a blanket of snowflakes – slot them into place in the appropriate tray and you’ll hear a set of satisfying little clicks as the magnetic locks all slide into place and allow their compartment to open.

Open it all up and you have to admire the elegance of the implementation of this locking mechanism – the tray packing puzzle needs to be properly solved and the two trays need to be solved in the right order – and the mechanics behind enforcing those rules is wonderfully simple - a really clever design.

My favourite thing about the Edelweiss Puzzlebox? It arrives in a solved position but you’re forced to scramble it and re-solve it before you can open the first compartment! … and opening the second compartment can be done with a flourish if you’re so inclined.

William’s Wonder

I picked up a lovely copy of William’s Wonder from Kayleb’s Corner earlier this year and I’ve been meaning to write about it for ages. This 4*4*4 cube was designed by William Waite and I’m pretty sure that this example was made by Pelikan. It looks like a nice honest cube, although some of the shapes around the outside suggest that it’s going to be at least a little unusual. 

Finding the first piece that moves is fairly easy – prodding and poking around randomly will eventually identify a piece that slides upwards (identifying the single void in the cube, in case you’re interested). From there, noting what’s moved you should be able to work out what should move next, right? After all, if this is a serially interlocking cube, then it must point you in the right direction ... except it doesn’t seem to! You can see where you’ve opened up a gap – you know the next move must then use that gap, but all the pieces around the gap don’t appear to move ... ratfink!

Sneaky chap that Waite guy – the way he’s designed the pieces, you’re virtually assured that for the first while you’re going to be tugging on either ends of the same piece, or trying to push two bits of the same piece toward one another ... and the crafty chaps who made this puzzle have added another layer to that by deliberately throwing you off the scent in the way that they’ve chosen to align (or not align!) various blocks that form the individual pieces.

Right, so once you manage to get over the not-so-obvious (to me, at any rate!) pitfalls and find the second move, you can expand the five bits of the cube until the fifth move allows you to remove your first piece. 

I know that I’m relatively new to these sorts of puzzles, but the designers’ ingenuity really amazes me – how they can come up with such unique, complicated interlocking schemes within the confines of a 4*4*4 cube is impressive. 

William’s Wonder is a delightful cube that draws you in by giving you a really simple, easy to find first move and then holds you hostage for ages while you try and find the second move ... highly recommended, if you can find one!