A pair of empty Fuller boxes

I got my grubby mitts on a pair of older puzzle boxes from Eric Fuller recently. 

I picked up a copy of one of his Splined puzzle boxes from Wil Strijbos at IPP back in August. Originally offered for sale back in 2005, there were two variants in contrasting woods, and while they appeared to be identical from a design perspective, I’m pretty certain they had totally different locking mechanisms. 

I managed to find a lonely copy of the Wenge Splined box in one of Wil’s many crates at the puzzle party and decided to give it a good home. It’s a neat little box that looks pretty impenetrable – it appears to have a pair of floating panels on the top and the bottom of the box with four mitred sides being properly secured by a set of Sycamore splines…

Fiddle around with the box for a little while and you’ll notice a few interesting things to experiment on … and then with a little intelligent sleuthing you’ll probably get yourself to where the box is almost open, but something’s still in the way – and getting past that final hurdle is a lovely touch that unites all the design elements of the box into the solution. 

It’s a really cute box that makes use of all of the box’s features to provide an interesting mechanism and a fun solution. Locked up there aren’t many clues to the mechanism (just as it should be!) but it rewards exploration in the right direction by opening up new avenues as you progress… visiting puzzlers seem to enjoy it so I reckon it’s a fine little puzzle box. 

The second Fuller box came from one of Nick Baxter’s recent auctions – the 16 Move puzzle box is now more than 10 years old having been first offered back in February 2004. Eric says he took inspiration for this design from traditional Japanese puzzle boxes – but his design doesn’t use any of the traditional sliding keys and locks. 

His design relies on the absolute accuracy of his work, and ten years on, that accuracy still gives unwary puzzlers a really hard time. 

Finding the first panel to move is pretty straight-forward – making progress from there, isn’t. 

When I said this design relied on Eric’s superb accuracy I really wasn’t kidding – to make any progress at all, you need to work out what the central idea is and then use it to get any further forward… of course having done that, there’s a lovely patch in the middle of the solve that still confuses me sometimes.

The first time I played with it I found myself running round and round in circles and managing to clock up a lot more than 16 moves without opening the box… and just when I was about to start doubting all sorts of things, the lid came off… leaving me relieved, but thoroughly perplexed!

It took several more goes at it before I could more or less predictably open and close this box… and even now, if I leave it alone for a while, it confuses me all over again. 

It might look reasonably plain on the outside, but the design’s intriguing and the execution is faultless – and still behaves beautifully 10 years on…

Spot the Difference!

OK, so it’s a bit of a trick question.

Who’d have thought? 

On a puzzler's blog, eh?

On the right we have Gordian’s Knot from Thinkfun – fine purveyors of puzzles to the mass market … and on the left we have a rather beautiful incarnation of Frans de Vreugd’s Extreme Torture.

Thinkfun’s marketing proclaims this to be “the world’s hardest take-a-part puzzle!” and that it takes 69 steps for the full solution.  

Coincidentally, Frans’ Extreme Torture also takes 69 moves to take it apart… 

Hang on… 

OK – so pretty much everyone already knows all that (Gordian's Knot IS Frans' Extreme Torture!), so why the long-winded intro? Basically just to give me an opportunity to introduce a really beautiful piece of work from Tom Lensch. 

If you surf puzzle-crafters web-sites like I do, you’ll have seen a gorgeous version of Torture (Frans’ forerunner of Extreme Torture that requires a mere 29 moves to disassemble) on Tom Lensch’s site. It’s a stunning puzzle crafted in some beautiful woods whose image has been stuck in my mind for a while now.  

…so when I spotted what I thought I’d seen on Tom’s web-site, I snapped it up – except when I got it home I was in for a bit of a surprise – it wasn’t Torture, it was Torture’s bigger brother ... in a set of different woods – with Tom’s logo stamped on it. Whereas Torture appeared in Tulipwood with Ebony spacers and holly slip-feathers, Extreme Torture comes in Wenge with Holly spacers and Tulipwood slip-feathers. [I've already told you I was rubbish at identifying woods!] 

The fit and finish is classic Tom Lensch – simply perfect and gorgeous to boot!

What’s it like as a puzzle? Well, it’s a high level 6 board burr… which means that disassembly is just-about within my reach … and assembly is well beyond it – especially at 28 moves to release the first piece, and a further 21 for the next one … with several multi-piece moves and a lot of positioning before you can do “useful things” along the way… it’ll provide anyone with a decent challenge! 

 

The Thinkfun version is super-colourful, totally stable with regards humidity changes (are you listening over there in Hong Kong?) and comes with a handy spiral-bound solution booklet to walk you through the solution in either direction – a really neat little touch! 

They might be the same puzzle, but I’m guessing you can tell which version I like a little more than the other! ;-)

MPP Burr

Yip, you read that right – it says MPP Burr… what the heck is that, I hear you ask, well let me tell you a little story. 

A couple of weeks ago I received a little package from Austria – which was strange, because I couldn’t remember having bought anything from anyone in Austria recently – and I don’t buy that much that I’d forget an entire delivery like that. [I have a decent memory! ;-) ]

Turned out it was a unique burr designed and made by Stephan Baumegger for the Midlands Puzzle Party – complete with the initials MPP across the three axes – how cool is that!

Stephan has been experimenting with some unusual shapes of burr for a while now ('Droid anyone?) and more recently had begun playing around with letters – at which point he decided it might be rather fun to surprise the Midlands bunch with a burr in their honour – heaven only knows what we did to deserve that!

Having designed it and satisfied himself it would be interesting, he duly knocked up a rather gorgeous copy and dropped it in the post to me on behalf of the Midlands-bunch … which gets me to the start of my little story. 

Now not only does it look smashing as a puzzle, it’s unique and “ours”! The pieces have some rather interesting shapes – especially the bits that make up the legs of the ‘M’ - some of them wrap around the bits next to them and make for a really interesting solution path. 

When I started playing with it, it quickly became abundantly clear that this isn’t a simple little burr that happens to form the shapes of our initials – it’s a proper decent puzzle that just happens to have those letters on its faces. 

There’s a clue in the level – 6.10.3.3… while there are several false starts, it has a unique 34-move solution to fully disassemble it … and given my general rubbishness at burrs, it won't surprise you to hear that reassembly came courtesy of BurrTools. 

Having received such a lovely gift, I thought it was only fitting that it start a tour of all the MPP-regulars – so I’ve passed it on to a local puzzler and asked him to send it on to the next one until everyone’s had a bash at it and told Stephan what they think of it…

Thank you Stephan – that was a wonderful gesture – I’ve enjoyed it and I suspect that my fellow MPP-ers will as well! Thanks!