Ferris’ Box

(Nope, that’s not a typo!)

Ferris’ Box was Peter Wiltshire’s entry in the 2012 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition and he duly went and won a Jury First Prize for his trouble. It’s a great puzzle box, superbly crafted by a bloke who clearly loves his hobby.

I really enjoyed playing with the Design Competition puzzle – not so much because it was a difficult puzzle to solve, but because it was so darn unusual and a really rewarding puzzle. 

There was a lot of chat about the puzzle at IPP and I’m sure that I was one of many people who were pestering him about making some more… at that stage he’d made a run of them to serve as his contribution to the Apothecary Chest and as an entry into the design competition – with a few spare copies already having been dispatched to some very deserving homes.

There was clearly more than enough demand around for them so Peter managed to convince himself to make another short run, albeit in different wood this time around in order to differentiate them from the earlier run … and so it came to pass that John Devost announced that a number of maple and purple heart Ferris’ Boxes would be auctioned on Puzzle Paradise – and I duly joined the queue of enthusiastic bidders.

Now I’m sure there’s some clever economic theory that would tell me how best to place my bids on the auctions (there were a number of overlapping auctions for essentially identical puzzles) in order to maximise my chances of getting a box at the lowest price, however I wasn’t going to take any chances and made sure that I took one really early on in the process rather than lurking and hoping to snag a (relative) bargain… and a short while later a well-packed box from Canada dropped on the porch.

At first glance it looks like a purple heart Rubik’s cube captured inside a maple cage – except that all of the usual sorts of movements that you might attempt don’t really do anything at all…

Finding the first move is a bit of a surprise.

The second move is pretty darn unusual…

…and the third move is very cute!

It’s “only” a three-move box, but it’s brilliant! Those moves will put a smile on the most jaundiced of puzzlers and Peter’s workmanship is simply stunning, so the moves are beautifully hidden.

I am delighted that I finally managed to get my hands on one of these after enjoying it so much in Washington in 2012 … I love watching puzzlers faces when they start playing with it – when they find the first move there’s a flicker of delight, at the second there’s serious respect for the craftsman and the third is the icing on the top.

Peter added a little something extra to the auction versions, tossing in a little artefact that served as the original inspiration for the design, along with a couple of PDF files explain the design and manufacture process and giving a rather unique view of the innards that you won’t ever get to see…

Very chuffed to have snagged one of these…. Thanks for making a few more, Peter!

Havanas Box #3 - "Mike"

Eric Fuller began a planned series of cigar puzzle boxes at the end of 2011. The first box appeared in December 2011 with the second following three months later. The third in the series, dubbed Mike after Eric’s favourite cigar bar’s owner, appeared this past November and was available to those who’d taken the trouble to pre-order them (or got someone else to do that for them – long story!) earlier in the year.

Mike was available in three variants with different veneers used on the top and bottom to contrast with the quilted Sapele veneer used on all the other sides. I chose the Pink Ebony version because it really stood out and looked rather different to any of the other puzzles in my collection.

The package from Eric happened to arrive within a couple of weeks of Christmas, so my better half duly hijacked it and put it under the Christmas tree … where it waited until we returned from our Christmas trip to Glasgow.

Having seen a couple of my puzzling buddies in the run-up to Christmas, I knew that this puzzle wasn’t going to be trivial – a couple of them had received their copies and had been playing with them and still hadn’t opened them – and during the course of a day’s puzzling at Nigel’s, several folks tried out new theories, but nobody managed to open one…

Knowing this, I had my first bash at it and found the obvious first few moves that result in one of the panels coming off – if you’ve ever seen a classic puzzle box mechanism, you’re going to get to this stage pretty quickly, trust me.

But there it stopped.

I tried all sorts of things, went backwards and forwards in the hopes of spotting something different, but nothing presented itself… so I put it back together and played with something else for a while.

Over the course of the next few days I found myself trying the same things over and over without getting a different result. (Yes, I KNOW!) I’d keep coming back to it every now and then until eventually I tried something that I knew wouldn’t work and something strange happened …my first new move in days on this puzzle – determined to crack it I settled down for some further exploration and engaged both brain and fingers … only to realise that I was just as stuck at the next move as I had been for the past few days on the previous one!

…and so it remained for a few more days until I finally managed to stumble across the final move required to open the box and release the stogie inside.

In his description of the puzzle, Eric says: “I'm pleased with the box and the tricks I used :) “ – and he ought to be – it’s easily up to his usual impeccable standards of craftsmanship, and it’s a jolly sneaky puzzle that should entertain even the most jaded of puzzlers out there.

...but don't just take my word for it - read what Jerry has to say over here.