1 € Labyrinth Puzzle

Robrecht Louage entered his 1 € Labyrinth Puzzle in this year’s Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition and my first encounter with it was in the Design Competition room – where it kicked my behind rather soundly.  I had a couple of attempts at it there and failed miserably each time, so when I got back home I made sure I ordered a copy from Wil Strijbos.

The 1 € Labyrinth looks like a classic hidden maze puzzle – there’s a little keyhole-shaped window allowing you a tantalizing peek into a maze milled into the base sheet of wood. The clear sheet of acrylic has a hole drilled in it that carries the one Euro coin ... so you can see it riding in and out and even touch it through the window, but until you find your way out of the maze, that coin is well and truly trapped. The maze is effectively created by the interaction between the horizontal slots milled into the wooden base and a vertical channel milled into the clear slider as a ball bearing trapped between the slider and the base moves between those channels. 

Tilting the ball bearing up and down while moving the acrylic sheet left and right should enable you to navigate through the internal maze ... through to some point where presumably the trapped one Euro coin will match up to the right hand edge of the keyhole, releasing the coin...

Well, that was my theory...

The peep hole shows you three or four lines of the internal maze – enough to give you a fairly good idea of the workings and get you started. You’ll find a couple of areas to explore soon enough and pretty soon you’ll be drawing a mental map of the likely layout inside the invisible sections of the maze. I managed to get a fairly decent mental picture of virtually the whole of the maze, yet I couldn’t find a suitable exit...

And that was where it caught me for quite a while... I was pretty certain I’d narrowed it down to two potential areas that should be interesting, but it wouldn’t open for me ... until I thought a little about the designer, and some of his earlier designs ... and then it opened in seconds – with a great little “A-Ha!” moment.

Robrecht came along to the Dutch Cube Day and had a table set up selling most of his designs at very reasonable prices, and it was great to be able to chat to him briefly (via his son's interpreting skills!) about his designs (Four Steps Visible Lock is still my favourite!) and to tell him how 1 € Labyrinth had totally fooled me until I thought about who’d designed it... :-)

A plan comes together and an unexpected find

Back in Washington DC in August Marcel Gillen introduced me to a collector who’d recently come into a spare copy of a Gillen Knight and we’d chatted about the possibility of my buying it from him and decided the best route would be to arrange to meet up at the Dutch Cube Day and exchange some cash for a rather collectible puzzle. 

Our plan didn’t quite work out in the end as his arrangements unravelled at the last minute but we did get to talk and make an alternative arrangement which subsequently saw some Paypal head in one direction and the postie bringing me a beautifully wrapped puzzle a few days later...

...and as a result I’m now the rather proud owner of an original Marcel Gillen Knight. I’ve had a soft spot for the Knight for quite a while – it stands out among the other chess pieces due to its more sculpted shape and it’s a really handsome piece. 

If you’ve played with any of Marcel’s other chess pieces it won’t take you very long to open the Knight – you might spend a while looking for a little tell-tale clue before heading out in a particular direction, where you’ll find something interesting and a little experimentation will yield the solution. 

Now, anyone know where I can find a Pawn and a Bishop to complete my set?

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I wrote about Oskar’s Maze Medal some time back and George Bell had commented that he really liked George Miller’s acrylic version, called 4D, that Oskar had used as his Exchange Puzzle at IPP23 in Chicago. At the time I made a mental note to keep an eye out for one and didn’t think much more about it...

Then at the Dutch Cube Day I was combing through a table full of puzzles and chanced upon a copy of 4D in perfect condition, so I snapped it up... and then went and did the fan-boy thing and asked Oskar if he’d mind autographing it for me – on the inner half so that it won’t get rubbed out when folks play with it. 

...and George is right, it is silky smooth and an absolute joy to play with – it’s a bit larger and quite a lot lighter than the Hanayama version. It looks absolutely smashing – George Miller clearly did a superb job making these back in 2003. 

Symmetrick

Tomas Lindén’s IPP32 exchange was a devilish little puzzle designed by Vesa Timonen. Consisting of only two flat pieces of wood, the goal is to make a single, symmetric shape... Tomas kindly gave me a copy of his exchange puzzle and it has taunted me for the last few months – it is evil! Be warned!!

 

I had a quick bash at it while I was at IPP, and got nowhere...

Then I tried it while I was on holiday in NYC, and got nowhere...

Back at home, I put it on the vast shelf-of-puzzles-to-be-solved, and every now and then I’d take it down and fiddle around with it, and get nowhere...

During MPP7 several folks played around with it, and solved it, and I gave it another bash, and got nowhere... 

(Let me know if you aren’t sure where this one’s heading!)

OK, how hard can it be? You have two flat pieces that are virtually identical, and you’re told that they both need to be flat on the table and you have to make a symmetric shape.

At one point on my journey with this puzzle I found myself trading emails with Tomas, and making sure that he really meant both pieces literally flat on the table (yip!) and that it wasn’t some sneaky answer that relied on negative space (nope!) – this time (!) it really was a straight forward solution (hard to picture given this was the same guy that bought us the Black or White!)

Straight-forward it might be – simple it is not!

At one point I resorted to a feeble attempt at using some arithmetic, and measured the edges and played around with various sums and differences, trying to work out which bits needed to be combined or aligned to result in symmetric remainders ... and failed miserably. 

Some helpful soul mentioned that he’d eventually found the solution and then realised that he’d seen that shape a few times before, and not recognised the symmetry in the shape – GREAT! Now I know I’m going to kick myself when I eventually find the solution!

Months later, I found myself out and about having dinner with a bunch of puzzlers in The Hague, and this puzzle’s been doing the rounds and I’m literally the only one left who hasn’t solved it yet, so they give it to me and I try (yet) again! 

AND I GET NOWHERE!

...and eventually one of them takes pity on me and shows me the answer, and my first reaction is “That’s NOT symmetrical!” – only it IS ... but until you ‘see’ it, you’ll be convinced it isn’t, and merrily move on to the next experiment.

For me, this has to be one of the best little bits of puzzling value for money (even if I HAD paid for it!) around at the moment ... I’ve heard stories of one or two gifted puzzlers finding the solution in mere seconds, but most folks take a decent amount of time to work it out ... and some of us took forever! 

Be warned – it is evil. But if you really do want one, I'm sure Tomas will sell you one over here...

Thanks Wil!

When I saw Wil Strijbos at the Dutch Cube Day, he gave me a couple of rather nice goodies to add to my little puzzle collection...

The first was a wooden copy of a Four Axis Folding Star that David Bruce brought along to the 14th Annual Puzzle Collector’s Party (now IPP) in Seattle in 1994.  David had come across some of John Kostick’s bronze stars at a craft market in Portland in 1991 and then done some research to find John’s 1970 patent on the construction of “Symmetrical Non-Cartesian Multiple Axis Joining of Beams”. (U.S. Patent # 3546049 in case you’re interested.)

He presented his wooden version constructed of bamboo meat skewers with wooden beads on their tips along with the challenge to come up with a simple jig for manufacturing them...

The wooden star functions exactly like its bigger bronze brethren... and still looks great after almost 20 years ... thanks Wil – it looks good next to the rest of the family. 

 

The other little item he gave me was my first ever puzzle jug ... a Strijbos take on a puzzle jug, or should that be puzzle jugs? (or should I have left the reader to make that little joke themselves? We’ll never know!) 

Hand-blown in glass, Wil assures me they were originally available in both Adam and Eve models ... and I’m secretly pleased that I got an Eve...

There are strategically placed holes around the edge that will ensure that just drinking from it normally will produce an embarrassing dribble, and the handle is hollow enabling it to be used as a straw of sorts ... although it’s not quite that simple as there are a couple of holes in it and not pinching one of them closed will produce a neat little fountain of whatever-it-is that you’re trying to sip... 

Thanks Wil – it’s really cute, and it’ll always be the first puzzle jug(s) in my collection!

Quintet in ‘F’ by Stewart Coffin

Quintet in ‘F’ is number Stewart Coffin’s design #253 ... two hundred and fifty three! 

And some of them didn’t get numbers! 

And he’s still going!

OK, back to the puzzle in hand - Coffin #253 served as Rosemary Howbrigg’s Exchange Puzzle at IPP31 in Berlin and as you might expect from the name it employs five ‘f’-shaped pentominoes in the tray packing puzzle. 

Mercifully this time (unlike Lean 2) the tray is symmetrical, in fact it’s a rhombus so it’s very symmetrical ... however the pieces aren’t – and there are five of them, which makes building a shape that’s symmetrical a little tricky... 

My copy came from Puzzle Paradise where John Devost has recently picked up his woodworking tools after a couple of successful restorations. I tend to keep an eye on Paradise just in case anything interesting turns up... John’s pretty good about warning folks when he’s put a bunch of new things up for sale on Paradise, but every now and then one or two new things will sneak on before he’s had a chance to wing an email around to warn anyone... 

So  one day I happened to spot this particular puzzle appear out of the blue – just a single copy available with a zebrawood tray and spalted myrtle pieces and I thought it looked terrific so I snagged it. It arrived less than a week later in perfect condition having made the journey across from Canada in a padded envelope.

 

John’s done a super job on this puzzle – the tray has a floating zebrawood base , the corners are finished off with wenge slipfeathers (one of his trademark features) and he’s signed and dated the back of the tray. 

It’s an excellent little puzzle and the combination of an odd number of non-symmetrical pieces being fitted into a perfectly symmetrical tray provides plenty of blind allies to be explored. I got fairly lucky and managed to stumble upon a solution quite quickly, but I’ve heard of some pretty mean puzzlers being stumped for quite a while ... but then it IS a Stewart Coffin design, and you wouldn’t expect any less ... would you?