PMPP 2019

...it seems this blog is turning into me writing about my puzzling gatherings again... and this one will be another of those...

A couple of weeks ago Nick was in town for the Red Bull Escape Room World Champs, and he had some time free the day after it all wrapped up, so he invited a couple of us to partake in a little recreational (i.e. non-championship!) escaping. He’d booked a session at the Crystal Maze Experience in London and a gang of us duly met up at the appointed hour via coffees at Mickey Dee’s and my attempts at walking right past the place - Nick spared my embarrassment by yelling at me as I walked on by...

...a trinket, not THE Trinket

Our suitably camp Mazemaster arrived and introduced himself as Trinket (or Barry for the TripAdvisor review if you didn’t like him! - He looked like a Trinket though...) and started by getting everyone in a suitably silly mood with some wonderfully dubious banter as he got to know us a little. Once that was done, we were whisked (jogging!) into the bowels of the maze, winding our way from Olde England, sliding into the Aztec zone (with real sand on the ground), floating through the future in space (the sight of Ali riding a dodgy-looking thrusting pink “rocket ship” will remain with me for a very long time), the industrial zone, and finally getting our minute’s glory in the dome trying to catch bits of gold foil... much silliness and a whole heap of fun - even if we didn’t even come close to troubling the leaderboard at all!

From there we hopped on the tube to Shepherds Bush (insert own joke here) for a quick bite to eat before attacking “Sherlock, The Game is Now!”. By then we had accumulated sufficient folks for two teams and we separated into a serious team and a slightly less serious team... no prizes for guessing that I wasn’t on the former! Our team was made up of Nick, Anne, Ali, Steve and I - and after most of us had done the Time Run escapes created by the same team, we were really looking forward to this one... and the initial impressions certainly didn’t disappoint! 

We started in what appeared to be a perfectly normal shop front for a service business - the attention to detail had been superb, with signage, posters and marketing material all themed with a wicked sense of humour for anyone looking at the little details... an anteroom literally looked like it could have been lifted straight out of the TV-series set and then we lurched into the game itself, where the rooms (5 parallel sets of them!) were incredibly well-dressed, and each (for there were several) had plenty of seriously whizz-bang technology- it was clear that no expense had been spared - it was definitely on a par with the Time Run production values. If I could have one grumble, it would be that a couple of times you find yourself up against a task to get a bunch of things all answered, before you can progress, and you only get a clue as to whether you’ve passed or failed when you enter the final answer - and then you’re greeted with a pure binary response... no clues as to which element might be wrong... and that got a little frustrating, especially when one of them seemed to be giving encouraging feedback all the way through only for us to be told we were wrong. 

Unfortunately we didn’t manage to escape, but had managed to have a crack at all of the puzzles at least. In the wonderfully themed pub afterwards we had our free drinks and caught up with the other crew who’d literally smashed it.  Talking to them about one of the final puzzles that had stumped me, I wasn’t embarrassed given the solution required, and well-impressed that they’d managed to bash through it so quickly... these guys really are good!

Most of the visitors then headed off for yet more escape rooms - in fact some of them literally toured the UK over the next week visiting some escape rooms that had been recommended on a particular forum...

Later that week, after many,many more escapes, Nick and Anne dropped by to visit for a couple of days so we took them off to Stratford-upon-Avon for a wander through the old historic town with its many rather wonky buildings, a Shakespeare-themed escape room, a visit to the MAD Museum, dinner at E. Moon’s and then an interesting gender-bending production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Next day saw a walk in the woods with the hounds and breakfast in the village before some gentle puzzling at home, Nick got to play with a few puzzles he hadn’t managed to spend quite enough time on at home and ended up solving them all... we got caught up on the book and what still needed doing and managed to pull a few of the final remaining pages together.

Bright and early next morning we fed the tourists before heading down the motorway to Devon and the bustling metropolis of Luppitt. We made pretty good time in spite of the holiday traffic and found a bunch of puzzlers already making merry in the Puzzle Museum.

Steve and Ali shoved something heavy in my hand and refused to accept anything in return. (On a totally unrelated note, you WILL want to get a copy of the new Brass Monkey 3!) I collected a package of little Japanese puzzling goodness freshly off an aircraft... a bunch of new puzzles already in hand and I’d literally only been there a few minutes.

Through in the inner sanctum there were quick introductions and Nick seemed vaguely impressed with the set-up... truth be told, I didn’t see his initial reaction, but if he wasn’t impressed, I’ll eat my Panama!

Chinny’d asked James for some pics of the internals of a family of puzzles he’s currently researching... James had already sent him the pictures but decided he should leave the reassembly to us... so we were greeted by a large pile of pieces all helpfully mixed together... in fairness there was a pretty solid clue as to which bits went together, in the woods they were made of. Ali steamed through a bunch of them, I managed to contribute a pair of them and so did Big-Steve... when they were done, Chinny had asked us to attack another family and we duly dived in... 

...although it later transpired that I don’t know my Triacontahedrons from my Dodechedrons (or frankly my R’s from my elbow!) and Ali and I ended up disassembling and photographing 4 things already rather well-known to the Chin-meister... we had some fun, but it wasn’t any use at all to Chinny - it just terrified the heck out of Ali, Big-Steve and I - so not a total loss then!

James and Lindsey provided a fantastic spread for lunch yet again, although it always seems difficult to attract puzzlers away from the puzzles just long enough to actually take some fuel onboard.

Big-Steve and I spent a while in the afternoon photographing a set of Jean Bihourd jigsaws for Jim - we definitely got the right puzzles this time and Jim was suitably chuffed when I sent the files through to him the next day - at least one of my missions for the day had been successful!

Ethel and Simon had each brought along a crate of goodies for the assembled masses to rake through and I managed to find a couple of little things I’d been looking for in Ethel’s crate, so I swapped them for a little pile of paper.

One of James’ visitors had brought along a puzzle stool (please don’t insert your favourite joke here!) he’d made when he was but a youth... and twenty years later it managed to keep several stout puzzlers at bay for more than an hour - they got it in the end and then enjoyed discussing the elegance of the mechanism with its creator.

During the course of the day I discovered a new set of folding puzzles from Kohfuh which I’m looking forward to having a serious crack at when I get a chance to do some gentle puzzling myself... 

The English weather threw us a serious curve-ball that weekend - catching all of us out by being wonderfully sunny, in spite of the fact that it was a Bank Holiday weekend! So good it was, that we spent quite a while out in the garden launching pneumatic rockets skywards, and then spending a little while in between shots trying to find the errant little rockets among the trees and shrubs at the edge of the garden - serious pop-whizzzzzzz stuff!

During the course of the afternoon Rich decided he wanted a go at Richelieu... except that en route to Richelieu he spotted Goliath, so Goliath duly got stripped down into many pieces which he then thoroughly mixed up (without the need for any of us to encourage him or do some of it for him!). 

During the course of the afternoon Goliath went together bit by bit, with Rich occasionally looking at a piece in his hand, realising he needed to backtrack a bit and duly tearing it all down again... my series of pics of the progress were a bit confusing given the not-altogether-linear-nature of his progress... when I left he was pretty close, and Michael duly sent me evidence that Rich had indeed triumphed over Goliath shortly after I’d left for home. 

MPP XXXvii

(I can see I’m going to need to swot up on my Roman numerals soon…)

This one was a little hectic… we’d just had a hut put in the garden for Gill to use as a new craft-space (yes, it’s called Jabba) at the start of the week and we were in the process of moving her in there and getting my study to move downstairs to make room for a new puzzle cave (Part 2) – when Friday arrived and I found myself at the airport collecting Louis and Wil off a KLM flight, Stefan off a Lufthansa flight and Rob off a train, before taking them all back to the chaos of chez Walker.

Gill and I had managed to clear enough out of the dining room so that we could actually feed our guests, but I coerced the younger visitors into helping me dismantle my desk unit and carry it down the stairs – actually I applied the screwdriver, they did all the lugging. With three quarters of the desk bits downstairs in their new home, Louis wandered up and asked for a tape measure – BAD SIGN – turns out my ceilings downstairs are 10cm lower than they are upstairs. Problem was there was less than 10cm clearance between the top of my desk unit and the ceiling upstairs… some bad language may have leaked out – we stopped for some dinner and then the lads – rather good-naturedly - carried everything back upstairs and we reassembled the desk… how’s that for a great start to a puzzling weekend?!

After all that excitement we treated ourselves to a rummage through Wil’s suitcases – just the puzzles, not his travelling gear. Most of us managed to acquire a couple of goodies that we didn’t already have and some puzzling ensued. I crashed somewhere around midnight and left them all still puzzling furiously… I think they all went to sleep at some point.

Next morning we loaded up on croissants and pain au chocolat before heading down to the hall where we found Angela and Peter had already set out their stall with books and puzzles for sale. We got the tables and drinks set out before most of the gang descended.

Tim set out several table’s worth of vintage collectible puzzles – all for sale at the blow-out price of £3 each. I picked up a few little bits as did several others over the course of the morning… even Wil managed to find a few things that interested him.

Angela knows my fondness for Martin Gardner first editions and she’d set aside a bunch of them for me – that part of the collection is growing slowly and I must make sure I spend the time reading them all…

Wil laid out his wares and there was a steady stream of folks raking through the crates and picking out new treasures. Ali seemed quite chuffed to find a copy of one of Jon Keegan’s puzzles lying there waiting patiently for a new owner.

I’d taken a pile of notched sticks along in the hopes that someone would assemble it into something less chaotic for me… I’d bought the sticks from Ethel back in February when we’d decided it was probably a copy of Cutler’s Square Rod Dodecaplex (SRD)… but one pile of notched sticks looks just like another to me. In the intervening month I got James to send me a copy of the solution for said assembly and I tried unsuccessfully to assemble it –having convinced myself that the notches weren’t quite what I needed for the assembly. I had another go at it when Chris came round one evening – unfortunately the two of us reached the same conclusion and I ended up asking James for a solution to another puzzle in the belief that I had a better chance of constructing that one with those sticks. (Cutler’s Spider’s Web in case you’re interested.) 

When that solution arrived it was clear I was mistaken so I resolved to get someone at MPP to build it for me… Louis, Steve and Chris began to assemble it and it was progressing reasonably slowly when I headed over to the station to collect Ed… and when I arrived back at the hall with Ed in tow, the lads were putting the finishing touches to the assembly, and I was well impressed. They seemed immensely chuffed with themselves – possibly more chuffed than they should have been and I discovered the reason for that when I went in search of my camera to document the success for the blog… at which point the giggling directed me to the assembly, which had my camera neatly secured inside it… so the camera-phone came out for the obligatory shot instead. (They’re a great bunch and actually extracted my camera and reassembled the whole thing for me…)

On the same sort of lines, Kevin brought along a bag full of Happiness (Cubes), in pieces since the last MPP – and Ali sat down resolutely at a table on his own and worked through assembling every single one of them, pronouncing them cracking puzzles when he’d finished.

Kevin had also brought along a large number of TICs which Rich duly worked his way through disassembling and leaving them in piles of pieces on the table while moving on to the next one… before eventually retracing his steps and reassembling the whole lot once more, in spite of the fact that someone MAY just have swapped some pieces between the piles.

Ed worked his way through all of the secret opening boxes available in the morning before pausing for a large kebab (hopefully his girlfriend doesn’t read this blog!). After said kebab he was in the mood for a challenge and stumbled across (figuratively!) the recently assembled SRD – felt all around it and announced that he was scared by it… but he really wanted to take a piece out… so he did. And another. And so on until the last 5 pieces fell on the table in a disorderly pile. 

At this point Steve and a few of the guys decided that a teaching moment was upon them, and they duly talked Ed through the piece identification and the assembly - getting him to physically insert every single piece… which says quite a lot about (a) Ed’s spatial awareness and (b) Steve’s ability to describe objects and pieces in 3-space. 
 
All of which leaves me as having failed to assemble a puzzle that my blind puzzling mate has done successfully.

Shane was in top form as usual – at one point he was having a bit of a rant about one of his neighbours when Ali and I both simultaneously asked him to tell us what he really thought – dissolving everyone within earshot into tears of laughter. 

He did have more success on a particular Chinese padlock that Wil had found which has two keys and a shackle that could lock in two directions… releasing the alternate key each time… we’d all assumed that it was only possible to release one key at a time, but Shane managed to find a way to release both – without resorting to the rather well-equipped Locksmith’s workshop in his van.

Sometime after 5pm packed up and headed up the road to chez Walker for yet more puzzling over a gigantic fish supper sponsored by Ali. Thanks mate! 

After the dishes had been cleared away, there was a throng of merry puzzlers around the dining room table trying to solve Wil’s increasingly challenging matchstick puzzles. He’d been challenging all comers with a fiendish matchstick equation all day, with successful puzzlers being gifted a copy of a very interesting symmetry puzzle from Vladimir – and solving that one was really FUN! (Even I managed to solve that one and I’m thoroughly rubbish at symmetry puzzles!) 

When Wil ran out of matchstick puzzles Steve ran out to the car and brought in what appears to be an old Japanese / Chinese book of matchstick puzzles that subsequently created huge amusement as they tried to work out what the challenges were and then how to actually solve them – that little book and a box or two of matches literally kept them amused for hours.

I crashed somewhere around midnight again, but have it on good authority that some of my guests were puzzling until just before the clocks went forward – particularly brave given that two of them had a mid-morning flight home…

Sunday disappeared into a haze of successive trips to the airport depositing various puzzlers for their flights home before I was let loose in Jabba to construct a couple of butterfly tables and some chairs for Gill… boy, did I sleep well that night!

Ken’s Pushbutton Burr

Ken Irvine’s been designing unusual cube assemblies for a good few years now… mostly they’ve been lovingly designed by hand (because BurrTools isn’t that useful at solving assemblies that rely on rotations – and a lot of Ken’s designs certainly involved rotations – that, or taking a step into the next few dimensions and back again!). 

Last year he entered his Pushbutton Burr in the Design Competition and I was lucky to snaffle one from Tom Lensch who’d made a few extra copies just in case anyone wanted one.

Tom’s usual build quality yells out loud and clear and if you hadn’t spotted it from the outsides, there’s a confirming little logo on the first piece you get to remove… it is beautifully made. 

The unusual feature on this design is the dark spots on all of the sides, almost opposite one another on each side, ten of them…

Sit down and fiddle with it and you find that you can’t pull any pieces apart -  but if you push on the buttons, they’ll move – there was a large clue in the name!

Move enough of them and you’ll find you begin moving the lighter pieces and indeed disassemble the whole thing into a disorderly pile of oddly shaped pieces – except for those five pairs of spots formed of five offset rods that interfere with one another through the centre(-ish) of the assembled puzzle. 

Mix ‘em up and puzzle a little and you’ll find you can figure out where the light bits need to go with a little trial and error, but the fun bit is introducing all of those keys at the right time in the right direction so that you can continue to get everything back into the 5*5*5 cube that you started with.

Once again, Ken’s produced a fun puzzle – not horribly difficult, possibly even within reach of absolute muggles – but definitely in the “fun-range” for mere mortal puzzlers like me-self.