Angel Box

[It feels like ages since I actually wrote a blog post about a new puzzle... time to set that right!] 

Wil Strijbos has been talking about his latest puzzling epic, the Angel Box, for some months now… he started by telling a rather roundabout tale about a trip to a strange building in Helsinki. He followed that up with a 3D drawing of the box itself, along with a classic Strijbos throwaway comment about the fact that the drawing gave absolutely nothing away – a fact I can now attest to!

A while later a picture or two of a prototype found their way to me, along with complaints about the difficulty of getting his manufacturers to make all of the changes he’d asked for – and a short while later he was jetting off to China to sit down with them to go through all of the details in person. That trip seemed to have been successful, as a little while later I’d heard that Louis had been introduced to the latest prototype and had pronounced himself impressed, but not before suggesting one or two little tweaks…

Wil mentioned the impending release of the Angel Box many times during the course of IPP 33 and soon after getting home from IPP I got a series of emails covering the background to the Angel Box and some instructions / warnings with a request for some advice on how best to phrase things, so I had a bash at making sure that he’d got his message across properly (that’s fine for the background stuff, but how do you write instructions for a puzzle you haven’t even seen yet?!).

A few days later I got an excited email from Wil to let me know that he'd shipped my Angel Box and later that week it duly arrived - just in time for a self-imposed long weekend - how's that for timing! Knowing I had a 4-day weekend ahead, and remembering Wil's advice ("There's no rush! Take your time...") I decided to explore slowly and ended up spending around two and a half hours puzzling on and off during the course of the Friday before I managed to solve it - and it immediately became one of the favourites - it is a terrific sequential discovery puzzle...

The first impression is that this is a serious piece of heavy metal - it weighs around 2 kilos and you REALLY don't want to drop this on anything precious, like a toe. The box appears to be made up of a series of aluminium panels, some of which have different sized holes in them, one of the sides has a little porthole through which the angel (your goal) can be seen.

At the start there is nothing to be done aside from trying to remove the digital padlock attached to a sprung rod - the lock seems to be holding the rod in place so it sort of makes sense to start there...

Helpfully the padlock has a code plate attached to the shackle and a little bit of fiddling gives you the code number - which you punch into the lock with an air of hopefulness, only to find it doesn't open... perhaps the buttons need to be the other way round, so try that - nope! OK, so this is Wil we're dealing with, it was never going to be that easy... so we need to pick the lock - easy enough, it's binary with 8 buttons - so there are around 256 combinations... but a bit of thinking will help you reduce that quite a bit, and you're off and picking and eventually you'll get the lock open...

Right, we're off... only that sprung rod doesn't actually seem to do anything but bounce in and out when you prod it... Oh, and it turns, rather freely. Not useful either...now what?

At this stage the real voyage of discovery starts when you find some interesting "tools" - even though they don't look like things you might find in your toolbox... closer examination of the sides of the box and those holes in particular shows that some of the tools might fit in those holes, so we start playing a bit. At first three of the holes are "interesting" so I concentrate on those and fiddle around trying to work out how they interact with one another and at some point the fourth hole becomes rather interesting as well... once you work out what to with those, you're rewarded with the top plate opening and just as you get your hopes up, it stops...giving you a tantalising view inside the box, looking down at what appears to be a jail cell of the cute little angel.

There's a few more locking mechanisms to understand and defeat before you can get the top of the box out of the way only to find that the angle is now locked up inside that little cell in the bottom corner of the box... and in order to release the angel you're going to have to dismantle the box a lot further.

There are several more discoveries along the way and some neat little mechanisms that are beautifully disguised. This puzzle keeps on letting you think you're getting somewhere, only to laugh at you and make you realise you've just peeled off one more layer of the onion.

Wil's paid a lot of attention to the details on this puzzle and in spite of the warnings, you probably won't lose any of your tools, unless you're very silly indeed... it's beautifully made and it keeps on giving and giving - even the final step to release the angel still isn't quite the end of the puzzle ... in the bottom of the angel's cell there's a personalised note with a further quest - but I'm not going to spoil that one for you - you'll have to follow that one yourself.

I really love this puzzle - there are multiple interrelated layers and it rewards and teases you all the way through. There are plenty of tools to discover and some wonderful "A-Ha's!" when you find something useful to do with them... it's a good, solid puzzle that you won't be afraid of passing around at a puzzle party.

Wil's first batch of around 30 sold out in a couple of days and the next batch is on its way, but he will be limiting production to 99 Angel Boxes - if you like sequential discovery puzzles you will kick yourself if you don't play with one of them.

Post IPP tour to Ishikawa

I have a fairly sedate start to Monday morning as the bus is only leaving mid-morning and I'm all packed from the night before. I enjoy breakfast with Pat, Brian and John before grabbing a few emails in the lobby and sorting out my small wheelie bag and a rucksack for the trip to Ishikawa. 

I checked out of the room and stowed my two big bags filled with puzzles and the odd t-shirt, in the bag room before sitting down in the lobby to scribble some notes of the day before's adventures... but I kept having to get up and say goodbye to someone or chat to someone else so I decide the notes can wait, and they do until I'm on the bus to Haneda airport. 

In spite of a pretty serious traffic jam, we get to the airport in time to collect our boarding passes, check our baggage and get through security ... and about 15 minutes later our flight is called and we're off to Komatsu airport. While we were waiting for the flight I was lurking around the gate area when a kindly gentleman offered me a seat and pointed at my IPP badge - "Ah, IPP" he said, "me too" and pulled out his badge - and then introduced himself as Takayuki Yoshigahara, Nob's brother... :-) 

We're met at Komatsu airport by our friendly guide and driven to our hotel where we have the rest of the day to ourselves. I duly wander off into town with my camera and find the Rothstein brothers photographing and recording the sights and sounds of a wonderfully peaceful shrine in the middle of the bustling city. We wander up to the castle complex on the hill and while we're exploring and taking pictures I manage to stumble and tweak both of my feet, instantly turning me in a hobbling freak! 

Gritting my teeth on the way back down the hill I decide I'm going to need some pain-killers so we head for a convenience store but have no luck there, so Mark offers me a bottle of Ibuprofen and some dosage advice (I'm well beyond being polite and refusing at that stage!) and a short while later the three of us head out in search of some food. 

Although we failed to find the restaurant we thought we were looking for, Brett secures a recommendation from a local hotel and we head off to that one instead - where we get a private room and some superb sushi before braving the rain and dashing / hobbling from awning to awning back to the hotel. 

Next morning my foot is well and truly throbbing and I make sure to take my pain-killers regularly all day. After breakfast with Stan we board the bus for the short drive out of Kanazawa to the Ohno Karakuri Museum. 

At the Karakuri Museum we're treated to a demonstration of a couple of antique automata, including a tea-serving doll that delivers a cup of tea across a tatami mat and then turns around and returns for a refill after the tea has been drunk, and a tumbling acrobat powered by gravity and a little bit of Hg.

The exhibition includes some stunning model ships - not really my thing, but you can't help but be impressed by these models - demonstrations of some unusual linkages and a large number of Karakuri puzzle boxes, all there to be played with. A couple of us spent some time on a pair of cabinets with a number of hidden compartments that managed to keep their secrets in the face of several serious puzzlers' attempts. 

From there we went to JAIST to visit the relatively new Nob Yoshigahara collection and gallery. The gallery is gorgeous with the shelving all constructed of N-pentominoes in such a way that if you squashed the shelving units into one corner they would all fit neatly together and form a  solid cuboid. (The architect used Burr Tools to design them!) 

Across the corridor the main guts of the collection is housed in a large archive room filled with hundreds of plastic boxes safely storing the ten thousand-odd puzzles in the collection. The back wall of the archive room is given over to a set of glass cabinets displaying a couple of special puzzles, including the Cooksey Maze that had inspired Oskar several decades earlier. 

Front and centre in the main gallery, as you walk in the entrance is a single shelf with a puzzle jug given to Nob by James Dalgety on the occasion of the 9th IPP in  Tokyo. (It was nice to be able to show James some pics of that when I was back in Blighty.) There were literally hundreds of priceless puzzles in the display and a couple that stood out for me were the collection of Alan Boardman creations (complete with magnifying glasses!) and a set of Chinese Rings with 36 rings on it...!

 

The playroom next door to the gallery was well stocked with contemporary puzzles and they got a good going over while we were there...

On the way back into town we stopped off at a shopping mall for some lunch, which was rice covered in an omelette and drowned in a yummy sauce - no idea what is was called, but it was good and I'll definitely keep an eye out for that in the future!

Back on the bus again for a short drive to the Ninja Temple (Sorry Gill, the turtles weren't in.) so-called because of its many hidden doors / hiding places, pit falls and hidden rooms. (The temple literally is the ninja in this case!)  We were taken on a fascinating tour of the building through the warren of rooms - the layout is that convoluted that they're able to run five tours concurrently and you don't often come across another tour group along the way...

We did a little craft-shopping on the way back to the bus before heading off to the 21st Century Modern Art Museum where we wandered around and took a few pics of the rather interesting exhibits - including a swimming pool that allows punters to wander around underwater - can you recognise the well-known puzzler in the pool?

Headed (OK, hobbled!) back to the hotel for a cold bath (intentionally!) before the JAIST guys hosted us for a dinner and party in the hotel, including a short speech from the University's VP on how he got to know Nob. There followed plenty playing of puzzles including the Elusive "E" that amused several people (and I found homes for the two spare copies I'd taken along - result!) and Coverup that kept most folks puzzled for quite a while - my favourite memory of the evening was watching Nob's brother playing with Neil's copy of Coverup. (Thanks Neil - I've got a huge amount of mileage out of that puzzle!)  

Hwei Hwa was teaching Oskar about Portal on his laptop with Oskar giving directions and Hwei Hwa navigating through the various levels... Oskar was doing pretty well and had got himself past level 13 when I left them...

Next morning was another leisurely breakfast (spot the pattern here yet?) before heading out to the airport on the bus - I had a lovely chat with Stan Isaacs about mathematics, insurance and Unix - and about the joys of living through the birth of the computer age. 

The short flight back to Haneda went like clockwork and after taking the Friendly Limousine Bus back to Narita, I was checking back into my hotel again - getting the room two doors down from the one I'd had the week before. 

I rearranged my baggage so that I had one big case all packed up and ready to go before heading out to the mall in search of washi tape  and some food ... success on the former and Udon noodles on the latter - followed by an ice cream cone before heading back to the hotel for an early night - virtually guaranteed since all of the English channels are subscription and channel surfing when you have no idea what they're saying isn't all that interesting...

After breakfast with Pantazis and Afroditi (surprised to find them still in the hotel as they weren't on the tour) I mooched around a bit in the lobby and wandered off to the mall for a few hours - my earlier plans of heading into Tokyo being scuppered by the incessant need to hobble everywhere.

By Friday morning I was pretty organised and as I was closing up one of the large cases for the final time it suffered a closure malfunction - the zip broke ... leaving me with having to get out of the hotel in about half an hour to catch my flight and having one large useless puzzle-filled case on my bed. Thank heavens for the hotel's lobby shop and its stock of large (if not all that cheap!) suitcases (I guess others have suffered the same fate in the past!) - so I managed to repack everything in my shiny new case and get out to the airport in good time for my flight back to Britain - which thanks to BA was an absolute treat!

IPP33 - Sunday - Puzzle Party!

Following the usual breakfast I headed up to the room to grab an empty rucksack and a full wallet before heading down to the puzzle party to try and reverse that situation.

There was a gaggle of folks milling around outside the room waiting for the 9 o'clock starter's gun (no, not quite, but you get the picture!). At the stroke of 9am everyone piles in and almost immediately there's an excited mob forming at the back left-hand corner of the room. 

 

Curiosity wins and I head in that direction to find Teddy and Hirano-san rapidly selling some rather unusual Karakuri boxes - they're all gone in about ten minutes and things calmed down a bit from then on.  I got a burr :-).

I did my usual quick wander around the hall to identify anything special that I absolutely had to get and then proceeded to wander at a more genteel pace, fiddle with the odd puzzle, chat, and occasionally purchase something. 

Torito had a table groaning with stock on it including all of the latest cast puzzles so I loaded up on some spares to take back to the Midlands boys as it's going to be a while before 2Gs and Cast Cylinder wend their way over here.

I found a set of three nested burrs by Hiroshi Kaneko where the smallest one is about 10mm long - he'd exchanged a set of two nested burrs the day before but I couldn't resist picking up a copy with three of them neatly nested inside one another...

During the lunch break a bunch of us set up camp with our lunch boxes, outside the puzzle party room and tucked in - and while we were munching away there was a vaguely familiar rumbling and the chandeliers began swaying - the Californians immediately identified it as being reasonably far away and of moderate intensity, and then promptly all hauled out their smart phones and logged onto the USGS website for confirmation... and a short while later it had been logged as a magnitude 5.2 around 100 km away - those guys know their tremblers. 

After lunch I completed a couple more laps around the room (to be sure, to be sure!) with an increasing amount of chatting and a slightly decreasing amount of purchasing. Things wound down to a natural end and most of us simply wandered next door to the Design Competition room to finalise our voting choices.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Hanayama's Cast Puzzles, there were three talks on various aspects of cast puzzle design, production and sales. The first talk had to be delivered by a stand-in as James Dalgety was sadly unable to join us in Narita. James had put together a lovely witty presentation that got a great reaction to a number of the jokes he'd woven in. It was really interesting seeing the history of the puzzles we all recognise in the current Hanayama range after James introduced the old puzzles to Nob Yoshigahara who in turn improved some of the designs before they were produced by Hanayama.

Next up Oskar van Deventer gave a talk on the development of the Cast H&H puzzle and his puzzle designing history and development - including a great link from the Cooksey Maze that started him off as a serious puzzle designer decades ago, to finally finding and meeting Richard Cooksey, its designer, earlier this year. The final speaker was Teddy Sakamoto who talked about the manufacturing and marketing of Cast Puzzles around the world. It was interesting to see how the sales of cast puzzles differ around the world and quite amusing to see the sales figures analysed various ways, like puzzles per capita and puzzles per square kilometre - so we now know that in Japan, on average, you're never more than SQRT(2) km from a cast puzzle!

In the spare hour or so between the lectures and dinner I managed to get almost all of my packing done and then headed down for dinner where we duly set up a largely Renegades table and we were joined by Jinhoo Ahn and Edi Nagata and his family.

It was Jinhoo's first IPP so I gave him a copy of my exchange puzzle (in honour of the Wiltshire / Fisher tradition!) and was very chuffed to receive a copy of his latest cardboard entanglement puzzle Double O Grid.

During the speeches the host committee was thanked profusely and Iwahiro was presented with a unique Wayne Daniels puzzle creation as thanks for being a tremendous host for IPP33.  Nick Baxter ran through the awards resulting in another Renegades win when Derek Bosch won for his wonderfully confusing Helical Burr.

After the awards and the official declaration of the end of IPP33 everyone seemed loathe to leave and admit that another IPP was actually all over and I suspect that I wasn't the only person who said goodbye to some folks several times as we all failed to actually leave a number of times. 

A bunch of us ended up back in the lobby with the great divide between the twisty-puzzlers and the non-twisty-puzzlers with Rox floating between the two groups every now and then as some form of mediator...

There was a classic situation when George Bell pulled out a copy of Tricky Dicky he'd bought earlier on in the day from Brian Young. He fiddled with it for a while and got nowhere fast, so when Nick wandered over and said "Oh, that's just a ball and chain" it was presented to him to solve and a little while later it was duly returned to George, still unsolved, with a bit of the sheep about him. 

Noticing that Rick Eason had joined our merry little band, it was handed to him and when he made a show of placing it behind his back I leapt up sensing a great photo opportunity - only for him in turn to rather sheepishly admit partial defeat and bring it out in front of him - and then proceeded to tie it up in a  number of rather impressive knots under Nick's watchful gaze ... he did free the ring in the end and it was duly passed around the group and Stan and Chinny took turns putting it on and taking it off again...be warned, there's a clue in the name - that one's hard! Even if you invented it!

I called it a day at around midnight and finished off packing the bags that would stay at the hotel for the next few days while I headed off west... because in spite of the official end of IPP33, the story doesn't quite end here...

Renegades - Class '13