These Brought Real Happiness
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Great Haul from last week's MPP Quite a few were from the IPP
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After last week's MPP (great write up from Allard
here), I came home with a bunch of new toys to play with much to the disgust of the
first wife. There is a bit of pressure to tidy up in PuzzleMad HQ because the
collection is out of control and I have been working so much that the new
acquisitions have just been placed on my desk, next to my living room armchair,
in the conservatory and (heaven help me!) in the dining room! "She" has told me
in ever increasingly irritated terms that they had better be cleared up or
extreme measures will be taken. I have not had the courage to ask what they
were! I had one last day of annual leave last Tuesday and, having had some new
fitted wardrobes installed in my, gulp, second puzzle room. I was provided with
some storage containers (nice ones that her tidiness fetish had "forced" her to
buy) and told that the dining room needs to be clear by the end of the
day.
Needless to say, with that look in her eyes, I quickly complied and after
several hours of moving things around, finding 2 puzzles that I did not
remember the names of (thank you
Aaron
for reminding me) and we had a nice tidy puzzle free (almost) dining room. The
latest acquisitions were placed into a position to play with and I have used
what little time I have had this week to attempt to solve some.
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Poor Colin! |
I have had only a little success with the 5 piece Jig5aw from Haym,
managing only to solve 1 of the 3 challenges and despite hours of attempts, not
gotten anywhere close to success on the other 2. However, I had been full of
confidence having solved the 10 piece jigsaw and had watched my poor assistant
and trainee fail dismally at it. I received the Jigs4w as part of my IPP haul
which Ali had carted back for me and immediately suffered the same problem as I
had had with the 5 piece. Damn! That man is so devious!
No matter what you do with this one there always seems to be there always
seems to be one of the tabs overlapping the edge of the frame. For heaven's
sake! There are only 4 pieces! Why is it so difficult?
To my eternal shame, it took me 4 hours of trying the same thing over and over
again until I finally got it! Why was I trying the same thing repeatedly?
Because I couldn't remember previous combinations and orientations of pieces.
Not only am I not a genius like Derek, I am actually not terribly bright. I
think I have written that before on this website.
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I think this is called Second Stellation Interlocking puzzle
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This shiny piece of jagged plastic was being given away free at the MPP (I think
it was Allard that made it) and I was forced to take it home disassembled like
this. When I unpacked it and stuffed it onto my pile to be payed with next to my
chair, I got a beady eyed look and decided that I had better get on with it
pretty quickly. It really does look cluttered when left as a pile o' pieces. I
did express yet again the wish to buy a cheap 3D printer of my own but was very
quickly disabused of the idea when I was told that the spiders in the garage
might eat me alive whilst I slept...because that would be where I would be
living!
I had seen this one come apart, so I was aware that it was yet another
variation of the Diagonal star puzzle which I have written about
many times. However, when trying to put this one together, there are various notches in
the stem of the pieces (obviously they interlock) and an awful lot of sharp
end pieces getting in the way of each other once more than 2 are assembled.
Despite the pain of stabbing myself a couple of times, I happily played with
these in various combinations and managed to create two 3-piece halves which
would not assemble together due to being blocked. Time to think© and I had a
proper look at the shapes and after a lovely little Aha! moment I had a more
presentable shape to show Mrs S:
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I think this might be the best diagonal star yet. It would be
amazing in wood
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That is two puzzles solved in a week!
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Happiness cube #001
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Happiness cube #006
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I have a history of misery with
happiness cubes! I have a bunch of them in wood and the b£@$tards took them apart and mixed
them all up......TWICE! Amongst the same pile of freebies was a few more
happiness cubes and at the end of the day, there were a couple left over to be
picked up my me. Yay!
Starting with this week, I will be working 6 day weeks for the next month
which means I will need as much happiness as I could get. I was very impressed
with Rich's collection of 3D printed hapinnes cubes and playing with them last
week reminded me that I love finding disassemblies. After getting home from
work yesterday, I felt the need to take something to bits and had a lovely
time exploring the movements and disassembly sequence of these. I even managed
to make enough muscle memory to be able to assemble them again after
rearranging the pieces for the photo. I may need to prevail upon someone with
a 3D printer to make me a bunch more of them!
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Number 1 pieces |
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Number 6 pieces |
They are now back together and ready for filing away with my other pieces of
happiness!
Thank you Allard for a great MPP and also for the plastic fantastic fun.
Also, thank you to my readers for helping me pass yet another milestone. I
have now had over 4 million page views since I begun the term into lunacy in
2011. The views even continued after the death of my mother and have taken
off over the last year. It may well be that my site is just being scraped by
AI bots and if that is the case then we will be safe from the machine
overlords for a while yet. My drivel won't teach them anything useful!
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Main site |
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New stuff site
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3,975,734 + 97,169 makes 4,072,903
Thank you so much, guys and bots, for putting up with my craziness!
Second Stellation was invented by David Bruce in 1997. A wood version was made by Wayne Daniel and became David Bruce's IPP17 exchange puzzle. I updated the design for easy 3D printing, I needed to change every piece, although the assembled puzzle looks identical. Sadly, David Bruce passed away shortly after IPP17, more than 25 years ago.
ReplyDeleteWell, you did a fantastic job on it. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and for me to manage an assembly puzzle it must be just the right level for it to be fun.
DeleteFree download at https://www.printables.com/model/1059785-second-stellation-puzzle
ReplyDelete