Peter Hajek’s usual End of year
Puzzle Party was slightly delayed last year, so instead of happening in 2014,
it took place just into 2015 – on the first Saturday of the year, in fact. The
premise remained the same – puzzlists are invited along to Peter’s for an
afternoon of socialising, puzzling, food and short presentations as everyone presents
their 3 best-puzzle-finds-of-the-year for 2014.
This year the weather wasn’t too
bad so I chose to drive down to London and gave Chris a lift down… so we got to
chat largely about puzzles for an extra few hours. In spite of having driven
down to Peter’s place before, I still managed to take a wrong turn at one point
and gave the sat-nav an extra little work-out … it still got us there in the
end, although we ended up approaching it from a totally different direction.
We were greeted at the door by
some fellow puzzlers and bumped into Peter a short while later in the kitchen
when I was trying to offload the EPP orange cake and some nibbles for the
assembled masses. It didn’t take very long for the puzzling ranks to swell and
pretty soon there were several knots of puzzlers scattered between the study,
kitchen, conservatory and the lounge.
As usual there were several crates
of puzzles scattered around the conservatory looking for a new home – some of
them had a clue to their current owner and several people spent a while trying
to hunt down the current owners in order to strike a bargain and re-home a
spare puzzle or twelve.
Wil Strijbos had a selection of
his wares available and I took the opportunity to pick up a prize for Nick
Baxter for winning my Christmas competition (a checkerboard burr-in-a-box and a
limp key lock, if you’re still interested).
Steve and I had a chat about his
latest experiments with 3D printing Derek Bosch’s Helical Burrs and a little
project he’s currently working on – if it works out you’ll be able to read
about it on the blog in due course … if Ali survives the finishing process,
that is! [He’d maimed himself on one of the early parts…]
Oli and I spent ages chatting
about a crate-full of impossibility that he’d brought along…he’d been hoping to
offload as much of it as possible and when he was having trouble coming up with
suitable prices for some of the rather unusual items, he asked Wil’s advice on
the prices – ever full of mischief, Wil promptly announced that they were free
and waltzed off. Oli had been dishing out all sorts of impossible bits to the
assembled puzzlists for free, but as I was interested in a bottle or two as
well, I wasn’t going to accept Wil’s rather favourable pricing strategy for
Oli. We haggled for a while, with me suggesting a price and Oli insisting on
arguing me down(!) before I ended up coming away with several impossible
bottles for a price that I frankly found a little embarrassing…
David Singmaster was giving away
copies of a 3D two-piece symmetry puzzle he’d recently rediscovered on his
bookshelf and Tim Rowett made sure that everyone got a little goodie-bag of
delights.
When everyone had arrived, Peter
herded us into the lounge for the presentations and we all took turns
presenting our best finds to the others…in alphabetical order … sort of…
As usual there was a brilliant
spread of puzzles and listening to everyone else’s talks it was clear that
quite often, the choice was due not only to the puzzle itself, but also due to
the circumstances of the acquisition or where it came from.
My choices this year (i.e. last
year…!) were:
Stickman Pirate’s Wallet Puzzlebox
Robert
Yarger’s latest creation is a sequential discovery puzzlebox in the shape of a
little pirate’s chest with a wooden padlock on the front of it. From start to
finish, nothing is what it appears to be and some rather useful tools are
either beautifully hidden or rather well-disguised. The multiple layered solve
provides a number of discrete stages, each with its own wonderful “A-Ha!”
moment. Beautifully made (as always!) with all of the mechanics on display when
fully solved.
Power Tower
Jointly
designed by Jack Krijnen and Goh Pit Khiam, Power Tower is a major step forward
in n-ary puzzle design. The design allows puzzlists to not only alter the number
of sliders (anything from three up to six) but also to mix and match pieces
with different bases at the same time – producing some very interesting, often
confusing, solve patterns. An absolute delight for any fans of n-ary puzzles.
Big Ben
John Moores’
stand-out exchange puzzle from IPP34. Jointly designed by John, Junichi
Yananose and Brian Young, this sequential discovery puzzle is classic Mr Puzzle
goodness. Lots to discover along the way and some truly ingenious uses of
unusual objects. Broadly divided into two main sections, the solve presents a
number of excellent challenges, with puzzlers often realising what they want to
do but being totally befuddled at how to achieve it – resulting in a few really
special “A-Ha!”s … the last one’s a fitting climax!
I really found narrowing my choice
down to just three was embarrassingly difficult given all of the wonderful
puzzles I managed to add to the collection in 2014. Perhaps Nick Baxter had the
right idea of selecting three and then giving a couple of others a shout-out at
the end.
In all 70 puzzlists from 15
countries contributed to this year’s EPP booklet (available electronically to
everyone who takes part… so if you need a reason to contribute next year…) and
16 of us presented our favourite finds in person at Peter’s place.
It turned out that 11 people had
selected Big Ben making it the single most coveted puzzle of 2014 – I know that
would have put a smile on John’s face. Brian Young was the runaway best
designer of the year with a total of 21 nominations thanks largely to Big Ben, Katie
Koala and his Gold Coast Parking Meter from 2007. Robert “Stickman” Yarger picked
up 16 nominations – particularly impressive when you realise that his puzzles
only appear in limited runs once or twice a year.
After the presentations there
was time for some more relaxed chatting and playing before Peter declared
dinner ready and we all trooped into the kitchen to load up on food from the
table groaning with food of all sorts.
Gee Mahabir treated us to a short
set of magic while we were finishing off our dinner – hopefully Katja didn’t
mind the cutlery mangling demonstration too much!
After dinner there was an
informal gathering upstairs in the puzzle room, with various treasures coming
out for a play… Chris and I spotted a pile of disassembled puzzles on a shelf
and decided they should be reassembled – so I tried one or two of them and
largely failed, but Chris and Ali managed to get a few of them restored to
their familiar shapes… much to Peter’s delight since he reckoned some of them
had been disassembled since he’d got them many many years previous.
Another brilliant day with
fellow puzzlists from round and about…Thanks Peter!
