I Need To Learn To Count!

Also I Properly Prove Primacy!

Freeze 14 from Yuu Asaka

At the end of last week's blog post the intrepid puzzler had tracked through a puzzle lock and opened it and closed it. He then boasted about it and posted photos of said lock on his website and some social media. Needless to say he felt very smug! That is until the creator of the challenge pointed out that he had not seen a picture of the ant that had to be hunted. Ah! Maybe the puzzler is less bright than he thought he was? He should have realised he wasn't very bright - if he had read his own website, it would have told him in no uncertain terms how dense he really is. Doh! 

I actually thought that one of the tiny metal pieces that had been retrieved during the solution was the ant. I showed Boaz the photo of all the pieces and what I thought was the ant and was disabused of the idea very quickly! Time to go back to the drawing board and solve it again and search for the ant. Oddly doing it this time showed me that I hadn't fully understood the opening mechanism because despite having opened it 5 or 6 times before writing about it, I couldn't repeat it. after another 3 or 4 hours, I opened it and noticed something new and realised I had manipulated it entirely by accident the first time and then not reset it properly. This meant that my subsequent solves were accidental. I went on my extended ant hunt and found the sneaky creature that Boaz had left for me to find. Phew! Finally completed.

Next I had to work out exactly how to fully reset the puzzle every time. I had managed it once by accident and also failed several times. This time I had it properly done. OMG! There is a lot more to this puzzle than I had initially thought - go and buy it - you won't regret it:

PuzzleMaster Link or PuzzLocks direct link.

Having finally completed that puzzle, I needed another quick success because I knew that I had a busy week coming up and the MPP (yesterday). So what did I do? I went back yet again to another masterpiece from the great Yuu Asaka. I had bought the Freeze 14 from Mine along with a bunch of his own creations back in January (most of which I have failed to solve) but it is available from many other stores (PuzzleMaster has them here, Brits can get them here or here, Europeans from here or here and from Yuu-san himself here.

Freeze 14 by Yuu Asaka

There are 3  each of a small square piece and a circle as well as 8 wedges that have cutouts for the squares and circles (one of which is oddly combined as well as 2 semicircles o=attached to the wedges. All of these pieces need to be packed inside of the octagonal shaped tray. Should be simple? Yeah! Right! It might be simple for you lot but for me I have spent 5 months proving that either it's not simple or I'm thick! Mrs S frequently tells me one of those and she tends towards the "thick" decision!

I have spent quite a long time trying to put the wedges together approximating the two halves of the cutout holes to make space for the 6 shapes to be inserted. With the positions of the cutouts, there really aren't very many options for positioning the wedges. I confidently placed them and also ensured that the semicircles were also contained in a hole only to find that there was alsways one (or more pieces that I was unable to place).

Close? Definitely not close enough!

I tried multiple variants of this over the months. I did it in the evenings, I did it at work and always failed much to the amusement of my colleagues. They used to think I was a genius but I have definitely proved to them that "thick" is a better word to describe me. 😱

At one point (or even several points, to my shame) I even attempted a higgledy piggledy assembly of the wedges in the hope that alternating the orientation of them might make more spaces to place the small pieces. It didn't take me long to give up on that idea - I am think but not that thick! I put it away for a while.

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a surgeon close a wound and listening to the scrub nurse count the needles, blades and instruments and checking against the list from the start. This made me think©... maybe I needed to count as well? Not because I might have lost anything, but because it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have enough holes for the number of pieces and semicircles I had.

This momentary lapse into genius proved a turning point to me. I counted the halves, I counted the holes (or wholes) and counted the pieces and semicircles and got hopelessly lost making it to 6 or 7. Scrub nurses only count to 5 and occasionally 10 (rarely they go higher if they take their shoes and socks off) but it's almost always a nice round number. Counting in halves to 7 is very confusing but no matter how many times I tried, the number wasn't right. Aargh! Time to think© - yet again! After a little think©ing got me nowhere, I slept on it and had an epiphany. I need to make more holes. But how? This time I had something to try and went for it.

I will not be showing you the solution but that Yuu-san is a very very devious man! I really should have seen the answer much earlier - in fact the box states that the puzzle should take just 40 minutes and has a difficulty level of 3½ out of 5 (PuzzleMaster make it a Level 8 on their 5-10 scale). It certainly took me a LOT longer than that but Mrs S has stated the truth - I am thick - so 40 minutes for a normal puzzler equals 4 months for me! OMG Blush! Such shame!

At the MPP yesterday I received/purchaased a few new toys and expect that they will take me several years.

I didn't recall what this STC puzzle is called but I don't have enough hands to assemble it:

I don't remember what it is

This won't go in without coordinate motion

Mrs S has made several useful suggestions but not actually offered any hands in assistance!