Did I Just Perform Animal Cruelty?

Tortoise Protocol By Junichi Yananose

Juno Does It Again

I missed out on the Hippo puzzle from Juno which was such a huge hit last year - it dropped at the wrong time for me due to a combination of finances and being too busy to pay proper attention. I was determined not to allow that to happen when the next of his fabulous sequential discovery puzzles dropped. I was poised, logged in and with Apple Pay ready to go. It was just as well that I took these precautions as I have never seen a production run sell out so quickly!

When it arrived, I was rather staggered at the sheer size and heft of it. It is 211 x 162 x 82mm across and weighs in at 870g. The sales spiel had mentioned that it was big and heavy but it really caught me by surprised. It may cause some storage problems but I am not going to think about that until someone who I am frightened of harangues me for leaving it lying around. It is rather stunning being made of PNG Rosewood (shell), Golden Sassafras (body), Silky Oak (limbs and head) as well as Jarrah, Iroko and Juno's often used beautiful plywood. There are also some brass pieces and a whole lot of magnets.

The aim is to find a cavity and a prize somewhere inside. Yes, there's a cavity and NO, it's not a box! The presence of a cavity does not automatically make everything a box. I myself have some cavities within me and I am definitely not a box!

Having received it, photographed it from a number of angles, it was time to torture the Tortoise. It sounds awful but if I was to get my prize from inside then I knew I had to do some awful things. Turning it over and over doesn't really reveal any suspicious noises of anything loose inside and pushing and pulling at limbs and shell does very little. However, if you poke a tortoise on his nose then what will he do? Yes, the obvious thing happens here:

Now you seem me...

Now you don't

After this a few more things are possible and you get to play "Pattycake" with your tortoise and on a few occasions a bit of the internals are briefly visible. I went around in circles for a while moving bits and then moving them back. The moves are rather satisfying and assisted by magnets inside. Up until this point, I was able to go back and forth to the beginning each time but seemed to be missing a critical move to progress. This was where I stopped for the first day.

Returning to it the next day, I used my Einsteinian approach for a bit until something spontaneously different happened - oooooh! Now I really had done something terrible to the poor creature:

That has got to have hurt!

All of a sudden, I could see the innards of a tortoise and just like my own innards, they aren't really intended for the world to see - so I won't be showing them to you! At this point, it's possible to see the sheer complexity of the puzzle and understand why it had taken Juno quite so long to design, perfect and manufacture them. The interior is an absolute masterpiece! Let's just say, more horrors are possible for the poor tortoise including amputatlion of all limbs and tail as well as decapitation. It's gruesome!

Having ripped all appendages off, hopefully to use as tools later, I decided to return it back to the beginning and got my first shock - I couldn't;d not close it up again. I thought I had understood the process but I had missed something and part of the reassembly was blocked. I was flummoxed for a while and was forced to Think© for a bit. Ouch! Eventually I saw through the fiendish design and was able to return to the beginning and leave it for another evening. This was proving to be real fun.

The following day, I quickly tore the tortoise to pieces and examined the interior to see where tools would be used. There were magnets, buttons that were sunken, buttons that were flush, it was beautiful. All you can do is push and prod a few bits to see what happens. Interestingly, you need to combine pushing stuff with specific orientation to make pieces shift inside. Initially, you can see the move but it doesn't seem to help get you any further along. Thinking© again and trying an old old trick reveals a new part of the interior and then brass pieces can be seen sliding around inside. The odd thing is that sometimes those brass things disappear and won't return.......until they do. Why???

I got stuck again at this point. There is an obvious thing to do but it wasn't doing anything until I did it again and it did. It caught me quite by surprise as a component shot out of the tortoise and landed in my lap. Juno did suggest solving this puzzle over a fusion ops folded bath towel and I agree - in the end there are quit a LOT of pieces which could easily be lost down a sofa if you are not careful. Having gotten this piece out, I was able to see a bit more of the interior but it didn't really help me and I was pretty stuck for a day or so. At some point, I must have manipulated a mechanism without realising it because after a couple of days of getting nowhere, I suddenly had a gorgeous piece of plywood in my lap and no idea how. It had quite obviously been held in place by a pin and that pin was nowhere to be seen. I frantically checked my lap, the sofa and the floor and couldn't find the pin. I had no idea where it was and had no way to put it back. Now I had no option but to continue to the end and hope that I would work out how I had achieved that step or I would not be able to reset.

I was able to see why one piece had been disappearing inside and only occasionally reappearing during the early part of the solve. I suddenly had an extra tool and an obvious place to use it. Another beautiful piece of plywood was revealed and I was stuck again. From now on, there was a lot of thinking, a lot of trying random ideas that wouldn't work until in desperation I tried the correct random thing. The progression over another few days was absolutely delightful. There are sliding pieces, magnetic locking mechanisms and even a lever to manipulate (once you have found the lever) and all of a sudden a cavity is found - not the cavity of a box, you understand... it's the cavity of a tortoise. I had my prize!

For some reason, I was expecting a loaf of bread!

This is an absolute Tour de force of puzzling! It is beautiful, well thought out, fabulously logical and worth every penny. It is absolutely certain to be in my next Top Ten(ish) of the year. Whether it makes it to number one depends on whether I manage to solve some of the other incredible puzzles I have received over the last few weeks. The Jukebox, the Moonage M5, the Ice Bucket, Dead Mortimer are all proving impossible for my feeble brain but I do hope that I might manage to solve one or two soon!

Thank you Juno and Yukari for an amazing odyssey!