Allard’s 2019 Puzzle Puzzle Solution

Sorry! I hadn’t realised I’d made it that hard…

I had exactly one correct entry – from Brendan P, who’d managed to identify all of the puzzles by midnight on Christmas eve and solved the puzzle by early evening on Boxing Day – well done Brendan! A copy of HalesLock 4 is on its way to you, along with a couple of other goodies. 

A few others corresponded with various degrees of success at deriving the characters from the grid – Big Steve came pretty close and then ran out of steam… Ryan managed a couple of them but couldn’t identify some of the disentanglements and ground to a halt. Steven C and Amy picked up the baton a few days later and managed to derive all the characters, then couldn’t work out where to go from there… so close!

…and that was it – nobody else even had a bash – those that did all seemed to enjoy it, so perhaps it was worthwhile. 

My random draw from non-solvers goes to Amy, who also gets a copy of HalesLock 4.  Thanks for playing along folks!

Solution

Starting with clue bottom right – hopefully you recognised the not-so-subtle clues to Caesar Shift and ROT 13 – which resolved the horrible font to “Identify, Analyse, Link, Derive and Solve” – the instructions for the puzzle.

I’m sure you noticed that some of the letters in the plaintext challenge were randomly underlined, so you wrote them down and got: “the answer is a single word”.  

Start by identifying the puzzles and their designers, using the usual convention of dropping articles at the start of puzzle names and using surnames for the designers. Sort them alphabetically (analyse) and then join the dots for each designer separately – link. Draw out the shapes you’ve derived, realise that they’re numbers and work out what you could do with six numbers in a specific order. 

Now in the challenge I reminded you all I was in the UK, where we write dates as DDMMYY – six digits – so you have 070311, or 7^th March 2011. At this point may I remind you that this is a puzzle blog…and if you look back through the entries for March 2011, you will find exactly one entry for the 7^th of March 2011- a write-up on Danlock, which is the one-word solution you’re looking for. 

<There was a confirming clue hidden in the white space above the Rose that referred to “EH’s favourite” if you fiddled with it in a photo editor – sadly blogspot reduced that to a blurred mess! Something I didn't realsie until after Brendan had solved it.>

The Grid

B1	A5	A1		B2
E1	D1	C5/C1		F1
				D2
A4	C4	D3	C2	A2
				D4
E2		C3		F2
B3	D5	A3

Key	Designer	Puzzle
A1	Bosch	Big MazNCube
A2	Bosch	Helical Burr
A3	Bosch	Pole Dancer
A4	Bosch	Really Bent Board Burr
A5	Bosch	Rhombic Maze Burr
B1	Bright	Escape from the Labyrinth
B2	Bright	Great One
B3	Bright	Shoot the Moon
C1	Kawashima	Pod
C2	Kawashima	Rose
C3	Kawashima	Spring Camera
C4	Kawashima	Twin Lens Reflex
C5	Kawashima	XY
D1	Sound	Cocobolo Maze Burr
D2	Sound	Loop Box
D3	Sound	Lotus Box
D4	Sound	(Number 2 / #2) Pencil Case
D5	Sound	Snake Box
E1	Toulouzas	Fairy Door
E2	Toulouzas	Judge's Gavel
F1	Yananose	Meanders Box
F2	Yananose	Spade Case

Christmas 2019 Puzzle

I've traditionally put up a puzzle of some description on Christmas Eve for my puzzling mates around the world to amuse themselves with - I didn't really have much time to come up with a good puzzle this year, so I've made a hard one instead. 

It's a bit of a developmenet of the ideas in last year's puzzle, which not many people liked. 

I expect even fewer will like this year's puzzle... 

But hey, there are going to be two prizes again! 

One for the first correct entry I receive and a second for a random entry received before 2020 reaches these shores. 

<Having said all of that, you should be able to find enough clues in there to confirm that you're doing the right thing and even what you're after.>

Wishing you and yours a wonderful Christmas and a fantastic start to 2020!

allard 

 

Heavy metal gifts…

Over the past couple of months my good friends Steve and Ali have given me a couple of rather puzzling lumps of brass…

I got a prototype copy of their remake of Oskar’s Hyperboloid Burr  for my birthday. 

The original wooden Hyperboloid Burr had been Naoki Takashima’s Exchange puzzle a couple of years ago. It was presented as an interesting burr assembly with six identical pieces, each shaped with hyperboloid curves – part of the presentation was that a further unanticipated assembly had been discovered allowing an additional identical piece to be added – at which point Takashima-san produced an extra piece from his pocket and handed it over for the additional challenge… it made not only a nice (true!) story, but made the puzzle even more intriguing. 

It often got foisted on visiting puzzlers and judging from the number of times I’ve come across it at others’, I’m clearly not the only one who enjoyed it. 

The Two Brass Monkeys took on the challenge of making them up in nice, solid, brass – and pretty soon they realised that the original material was a heck of a lot more forgiving than their chosen form… and the resulting hunt for the perfect tolerances turned into a real world binary sort as they tuned the tolerances between “too loose – falls apart” and “too tight – can’t assemble”!

What they’ve ended up with is an excellent compromise to within 0.03mm of either falling apart or not being assemblable (Yes, it IS a word, damn spellchecker!). Both assemblies work neatly – with the six-piece, assembly is on the looser side – you can’t pick it up by a single piece- but the seven-piece assembly locks together with a satisfying little clink. 

Looks terrific in either assembly and makes for a damn fine piece of desk furniture. 

 _______________________________

A couple of weeks ago the boys presented me with a copy of their newest endeavour – something I’d been allowed to coo over at a previous get together. They’d taken a design by Scott Elliott called “It’s Nuts!” (exchanged by Jerry Slocum a couple of years ago) and produced it in brass… that doesn’t sound very impressive, unless you know “It’s Nuts!” or you’ve seen one in the flesh… the premise is simple: you have a large threaded bolt with two nuts on it. Turn the bolt and the two nuts head off in opposite directions!

Just think about that for a little while… it’ll sink in… and you’ll be left wondering a little…

The back-story on the original design, as I’ve heard and remember it (feel free to correct me in the comments) was that Scott originally stumbled across a video of this being presented in a language he hadn’t understood – a magician was demonstrating that the nuts on this bolt behaved rather oddly and Scott was hooked. He spent a while working out how to get it to work and then duly printed some on his trusty 3D printer… Jerry was totally bowled over by them and insisted on using them as his exchange puzzle that year so Scott 3D printed hundreds of them. Since then it turns out that the original video he’d seen had all sorts of trickery and couldn’t be demonstrated in the clean, open manner that Scott’s version works – in short, he’d seen a magic trick and then made it work in real life – he’s a bright lad is our Scott!

“It’s Nuts!” becomes a bit of a standard and from time to time Scott would offer them in different 3D printed formats, including a small number of quite impressive (albeit rather dear) 3D printed metal copies. Being 3D printed, some of the subtler points weren’t quite as subtle as he might have liked… enter the Two Brass Monkeys who duly challenge their tame engineer to do better – and boy does he!

“The Monkey’s Nuts!” is a big old solid brass bolt with a pair of nuts threaded onto it… spin the nuts and they head in opposite directions… and it is beautifully made – the clever stuff is wonderfully subtle, to the extent that you’d need a very close inspection to spot the trick – most people won’t!

This one probably stretches the boundaries of what a puzzle is – it’s more an impossible object – or a downright confusing one at least – it begs to be fiddled with and challenges everyone’s assumptions about a simple everyday object. 

<And make sure you read the little card that comes with it - there's some important info on there, there is also some excellent humour and wordplay!> 

Thanks lads!