Think Like It's String

But Sometimes That Doesn't Work

Summer on the Xiaoshang Bridge

You all know that I can't resist a good disentanglement puzzle (actually, I can't resist a puzzle!) and the king of good wire and string puzzles is Aaron Wang. Every year he sends out a nice new list of impossible challenges which I spend several years failing to solve. I have learned that I need to focus on the ones that don't have string if I am to have any chance at all but some of the releases every year are clearly ultra-complex N-ary puzzles and nobody can resist owning at least 1 (or 50-100) N-ary puzzles. I can't afford to buy the whole set but I always buy a good selection.

This release had four lovely looking challenges based on the Xiaoshang bridge and I bought the Summer version thinking that I might actually understand it and be able to solve one for once. In this version there is a fish swimming under the bridge that has been caught up and needs to be brought in to dry land. It didn't look that hard to me and so I started early on it.

The fish has a very particular shape to its' mouth and this provides the clue for how to proceed. The first thing that you notice is that there is very little wiggle room with all the links of the chain and the fish. The moves will need to be quite precise. After a little play it quickly became apparent that this was actually a string puzzle! The way to solve it is to think like the chain is made of string - if you can see how the string version would solve then the chain version is going to be the same....with a little bit extra. It needs a little fancy manoeuvring to get the fake string into position and then it does the required move. Unlike with the string version, the fish is not released in a single move - it just moves the fish to another part of the puzzle and then it's quite simple to remove the fish for a photograph:

I'm better at fishing than puzzling!

I was feeling really good about myself - I would have a subject for the blog today! Time to throw the fish back in the pond as you are supposed to. Just reverse the sequence that I did earlier. Move one hooks the fish onto part of the chain and then fancy reorganisation and unhook and...

Tadaaaaaa!

The fish is back on the bank of the river! Huh! How did that happen? It's very odd, I could have sworn that I did the exact reverse of the initial set of moves and it didn't put the puzzle back to the beginning. I tried again and again with the same result. Very odd! This was a cue for a minor panic. I couldn't possibly fall down on the very first puzzle in the batch! Aaron had rated this a level 10 and, after the disassembly, I did wonder how he came to that conclusion. When I failed multiple times at the reassembly, I realised that there was more to the puzzle than I had initially thought. Great fun. Time for some think©ing.

After another 15 minutes or so, I realised that the disassembly requires a very specific positioning of several parts of that chain and it's really important that the same positioning is repeated when doing the reverse. Once realised, I had it back together. The fun thing here is that I have repeated the disassembly and reassembly a number of times and the initial false start in the reassembly happens to me every single time! Maybe you will be better than me?

Trumpet - design by Shuai Chi and made by Mr Gao

There are a few puzzles in this year's release that are musical instrument themed. This one, Trumpet, looks very compelling and not terribly tough with no string and a shuttle to be removed from a relatively simple shape.

It's "only" a level 8 on Aaron's scale so maybe actually achievable? I think in all the years I have been buying from him, he has never released anything simpler than level 8. I thought that PuzzleMaster had a very odd difficulty scale of 5 to 10 but Aaron only has a scale of 8 to 10! If you missed out on buying his puzzles direct then a huge number are available from PuzzleMaster here.

There are a couple of very obvious things to do with the shuttle straight away and they do look like they are going in the right direction. The only trouble is that when you perform one or other of those "obvious" moves then nothing further seems to be possible. Literally, each time you do it you can do one sequence and then are stopped in your tracks! Level 8? Lord help me!

The Einsteinian approach of doing the same thing many dozens (hundreds?) of times doesn't work as usual and I was stuck. I took it to work with me and failed there, much to the amusement of a few colleagues. I didn't let any orthopaedic surgeons near a wire puzzle as they have access to bolt cutters and power saws! Eventually I tried something silly combined with what I had done before and suddenly the shuttle was somewhere new. That was unexpected. A few moves later and I had my solved puzzle:

I can solve a level 8 puzzle!

I was on a roll! I now had 2 puzzles solved - was I going to get a lucky third? Sob! The answer to that is a resounding NO! 

I continued with the musical theme with Double-barre

 

Double-barre - design by Shuai Chi and made by Mr Gao

My first issue with this one was that it's not actually terribly clear which pieces get removed. I think that it splits into 2 halves but I cannot actually completely certain. It's a level 8 and supposedly simple.

Just as with the Trumpet, there are a couple of obvious moves to try which moves the double shuttle to link up with another part of the chain of rings. After that, I cannot seem to find anything to do that doesn't get things either very badly tangled (even without string) or need to force the wire to bend which is not right.

After a few days of doing the same thing multiple times, I saw a post on FB that had olved this puzzle. I reached out for a clue and received a nice photograph of a partway state and a comment that I should solve it like the Chinese Lantern 1 puzzle. The only problem is that I have singularly failed on that one too.

I have tried to get my version into the same configuration as my advisor and nope, I cannot do it. I have put it down for a while and will come back to it when I have some new ideas. Or maybe get some more hints. Sigh - I am rubbish at puzzles!

Whilst you are here, I have to tell you that most of the puzzles from Pelikan's latest release are still available. Don't miss out... they are really good.

Does Being Married Decrease Your Solving Ability?

Tortoise Protocol from Juno

Well! That was an inflammatory thing to write as a title! It might earn me a Whack! Ouch! but probably not as she never looks at my site. If one of you rats me out then I'll be very upset with you.

The reason for the title is that I have nothing solved to write about due to a combination of work (catching up after some annual leave has left me little time) and having a better half who insists on decorating the house periodically seems to get in the way of puzzling. Yes, she doesn't make me actually do the decorating but its the moving everything around from room to room and forcing me to tidy up my piles (yes, multiple) of puzzles to be solved gets in the way.

Then, it just happened to be our 31st wedding anniversary yesterday and that involved something really special and really time consuming - kittens! I married a crazy cat lady and we got our first cats 28 years ago in an attempt to prevent the further multiplication of cat pictures, porcelain cats, stone cats etc. It didn't really work very well as they still proliferated but at a slightly slower rate. Our last feline friend died last year and after a little break to get over it she decided (and yes, I did not disagree) that more were required. So, when the most international MPP of the year went ahead, I drove with a happy Mrs S to pick up Amenadiel and Mazikeen (I am sure you can work out where those names came from). I cannot leave much lying around for fear of it being chewed or batted around the kitchen floor and also have been "forced" to spend some time in the company of the crazy cat lady and her cats. It has been quite refreshing.

I have attempted some puzzling and made some progress but not much. My copy of Tortoise Protocol from Juno arrived and I have been working on it. Just as with the Hippo, you have to do some truly awful things to the poor tortoise but progress was being made...until it wasn't. I have found lots of pieces and things that happen but I've been stuck at a critical point for a week. Sigh!

The Clutch lock from Andrew Coles has been in my pile for weeks and weeks - I have made some real progress in that the lock is open - I am not entirely sure why but now it will not lock properly. Actually it will lock but I cannot remove the damn key. He's a devious bugger that Mr Coles as I have mentioned before. Allard has discussed this lock recently and loved it - I am not very bright and hopefully will love it in a year or 3 when I understand it. You should love it soon when he puts them up for sale.

How does being married interfere with this? She got very upset with the constant muttering and the loud click, clunk noises I was making as I repeatedly opened and closed the bloody thing.

The day before our wedding anniversary, a nice compact box arrived from China. It had some puzzles in it that I was hesitant to tell "her" about until she was in a very good mood. My latest batch from Aaron Wang arrived and, GULP, they are noisy jingly things! I'm hoping the cats love the sound and that will give me an excuse to play without being shouted at.

Trumpet

Double-Barre

These two named after musical instruments are "just" level 8 out of 10. I have started with Trumpet yesterday and today and after an hour, I wonder whether Aaron is a superhuman being. These are the easy ones and I still can't do them!

Luckily for me the cats are fascinated by the jingling!

Circuit Board I

Circuit Board II

These two are level 10 and look ferocious. I wasn't going to buy them but Aaron insisted that the solutions were truly something special and I would love them. I am sure he is right but I do not know if I will ever find the solution!

Grenade V

Grenade VI

I have no idea why I bought these! I guess it was to complete the set. I do own the Grenade I - IV as well and as far as I remember have only saved one of them! They are impossibly tough but they really are wonderful to look at. I did have a forlorn hope that maybe without string they might be less impossible? Doh!

French Horn

Galaxy I

Another music themed one but this time level 10 and something that looks like it will be in a knot in no time and with no quick release mechanism that may stay that way. Aargh!

Concertina Wire

Sweet Hug

I absolutely adore these wire puzzles with a base. They tend to be very N-ary but the complexity of the interlocking rings can make these incredibly difficult to follow the solution and I often find myself either hopelessly lost or back at the beginning. Some have some very complex movements which I am never able to find. These looked like the two most straightforward ones from the current batch - I have hope even if it's just a faint one!

Summer in the Xiaoshang Bridge

This is one of a series of four designed by Aaron himself. Looking at the picture, maybe I stand a small chance at solving it despite the level 10!

If you want some of these wire puzzles then some may still be available - contact Aaron via FB or via me.

Hopefully I will have a bit more time and success this week.

Weaving For Years!

Weaving from Aaron Wang

A very short post today - I have been working yet again this weekend and had very little time for puzzling and no Morbidity and Mortality meetings to ignore whilst playing with my toys! 🤣

Every year Aaron Wang produces a whole bunch of new disentanglement puzzles for sale from various genius designers. He sends out an email with his upcoming catalogue additions to his adoring customers and also posts the list on Facebook for people to choose from. This year he has a huge batch and I have already made my selection (don't tell Mrs S!) He only really produces puzzles of level 9 and higher and most are 10 or 10+ which means terrifyingly difficult. I have collected dozens (if not hundreds) of his creations over the years and there are 3 very large boxes of them in my garage with the ones that I have solved and 2 boxes in a wardrobe in the house of those I have so far failed to solve. Many of his puzzles involve string which means huge complexity and the ability to create tangled knotted catastrophes. More recently he has been using a lobster claw to allow emergency release of the catastrophe but there are a good few that don't have it and these frighten me to death! One of these is the Weaving puzzle signed by the incredible DDK and made in very very limited numbers by Aaron. In fact, as far as I know there may be only 2 or 3 copies in existence. I received one as a gift within my 2022 purchase.

Why did he not mass produce it? Some of the puzzles are so horrendous to make that he only makes a very small batch. That wasn't the reason this time. Aaron only made a few because he felt it was too simple a puzzle to put out on sale. OMG!

I have had this in one of my trays of puzzles to be solved for nearly 3 years and have picked it up many many times since I got it and have singularly failed and scared myself to death on a number of occasions. It consists of a single loop of string (not very long) and a ball to prevent the loop just being fed through all the oval metal rings. It is woven through a complex metal grill that looks rather like a radiator. The short length of the string should be reassuring BUT the lack of a lobster claw release mechanism is scary. I was also rather bamboozled by the way the string is woven through the centre of the grill completely but the outer wires were split on either side. On multiple occasions I tried various approaches to the disentanglement and began to get caught up in a knot or found myself running out of length. Despite the claimed "excessive simplicity" of the puzzle, I managed to completely fail for a very long time. I refused to put it away in my wardrobe and give up - if Aaron said it was easy, then there must be something to it that I should be able to find. I persevered...

During the meeting last week, having solved the packing puzzles first and feeling that I was on a roll, I picked up the Weaving puzzle yet again. As usual, I had no recollection of anything I had tried before and just started afresh. What if I do this??? Oooh! that's interesting. Suddenly, I was weaving away and not creating a knot. After 16 moves I had a rather nice interesting configuration and then another 18 moves I suddenly had 2 pieces of puzzle and a mystifies expression on my face. Why had it taken nearly 3 years? Aaron was right, it was a lot simpler than his usual level but, I have to say, no less delightful for that. 

Finally!
Now I need to put it back together again

Returning it to the start position did cause a little difficulty as I could not recall what I had done at the midpoint of the solve but I did manage it after an extra ½ hour of swearing under my breath! Yay! I can finally put another puzzle away in the wire puzzle collection box in the garage.

Thank you Aaron for yet another fabulous challenge - I am looking forward to my selection of puzzles from the new set. I am sure that I am not the only one but I think it would be good if you would consider making a few slightly simpler puzzles for sale. Not all of us are the disentanglement genius that you and your designing geniuses are.

---

Bucolic Cube

About 6 months ago I received some correspondence from a puzzler who suggested that I might want to have a look at the Bucolic cube. It was designed by Yasuhiro Hashimoto and entered into the 2013 IPP design competition in Narita, Japan where it won a "Top ten vote getters award". I had taken a note of this one to be either purchased or made in the future and this week managed to have a play.

What stimulated me to try it now when I had so little time to play? Well, Mrs S has decided that painting and decorating needs to be done in the house as it has been quite a long time since it was last done. Luckily for me, she does not want me to do the painting and decorating - she has another man who comes in to do it. My job is to go out and work my arse off to pay for the other man's services. During the process of clearing a couple of the rooms, I was handed my compartmented box with my fight cubes in them and was told that the box needed to be put away somewhere not cluttering the house. I had completely forgotten that I had them and this jogged my memory to go back and create the Bucolic cube and see what all the fuss was about.

The puzzle consists of 3 identical shapes to be assembled into a 3x3x3 shape - there will be 6 holes in the structure which should make it simpler but actually made it harder for me because I was not creating a complete face and they did not properly interlock. This meant that there were a lot more possible orientations of the pieces alongside each other. After a whole evening of playing with it, I came to the same conclusion as my corespondent and the IPP members that this puzzle was a good one - a very VERY good one.

It took me a good few hours!

If you don't have the Fight cubes then this should be easy to 3D print or you could buy it from PuzzleMaster here or from PuzzleGuy here. This is well worth getting your hands on - it is significantly more challenging than it looks.

Think Where You Want To Be...

A Lesson For Life As Well As Puzzling

Python designed by DDK

It's been a tough week with long working days and yet another Saturday working too (rota writing this time). I sometimes think I am getting too old for all this. I had saved the Python puzzle bought from Aaron Wang until fairly late. I had heard that it was relatively easy to solve despite the level 10 assigned to it. I figured that when I reach a time where I have only a few hours to play, solve and write about something then I will be able to use this one.

I was sort of correct but also did not figure in a bit of a hiccough in the path. This puzzle teaches a good lesson to plan ahead and think about the direction you want to travel in. My! That's very deep for me...I am usually a pretty shallow person.

The first thing that threw me when I picked this puzzle up was that my copy had been sent to me with an incorrect start position. Compare the picture at the top with the diagram to the left. The shuttle is in the wrong place. Will this make it easier or harder?

I suspected that the puzzle had not been solved all the way back to the start position and that it would have a lower number of steps to separate the shuttle than it should. An alternative horrible thought did occur to me that to save time the maker had assembled the shuttle from open wire into the start position and had done it in the wrong place. If this was the case, had he placed it in an unsolvable position? Only time would tell. I set to work this morning.

This is clearly going to be an N-ary type puzzle but made interesting by the maze pathway to be navigated. This requires the choices of direction for the shuttle to be placed through the rings to be chosen carefully. At each point the ring can be fed through from either direction and only one is the correct one. Needless to say, I got lost a few times and ended up having to backtrack to where I made the mistake. After doing this a few times, I realised that trial and error was time consuming and less than fun. Time to think© yet again. I fed through a few times and watched the response as it moved and finally managed to see how the shuttle and ring interacted in a predictable way. At last I could choose my path deliberately and know where I was going. All I needed to do was decide which way through the maze. After about 20 minutes I had the shuttle:

First part of the solve

Having taken my photo, it was time to reassemble it and to aim for the correct start position. Easier said than done. I had no idea how that final stage of the reassembly was done because I had never navigated it. I would have to work out where I wanted to be and work out a way through the last part of the maze. It looks like a simple maze but is quite well blocked by this 3 rings on the left hand side. I managed to get almost there quite easily:

Close, but no cigar!

Getting that last step proved quite a challenge. I tried something and found myself inadvertently heading back to the beginning and then had to backtrack and think© yet again. Twice in one day for me gives me a bit of a headache! Eventually I managed it and we have a correctly assembled puzzle.

Got there in the end

This is a really delightful puzzle, it is N-ary but unlike the simple Chinese ring style, there are numerous decisions to make and positive choices are essential to simultaneously navigate the maze to where you need to be. My personal journey was actually made better by having to solve it differently as an assembly than as a disassembly. I would suggest that something like this might be a good step up after a beginner has solved the Chinese ring puzzle. If you live in North America then you should have a look at Aaron's other challenges currently available in PuzzleMaster. They may end up stocking some of these in the future as well.

Thank you Aaron and DDK.

I Think I Cheated...

Did I?

Rippl by DDK

I had hoped to be able to review a different type of puzzle for you today but despite weeks and weeks of trying, I have still not managed to finish the Free Me 9 puzzle from Joe Turner. I had been stuck on the second coin up until early in the week when a good puzzle friend and I started a combined attempt at solving it. Dominic gave me a little teeny hint and I suddenly found what I needed to free the second coin and now the two of us are stuck on the third - we are both noticing the same things, trying the same things and despite two of us doing the same thing over and over and over again, nothing seems to be changing for us...sigh!

In desperation and in the many many moments when I put down the Free me in disgust, I started playing with the Rippl puzzle from Aaron and managed to get very confused very quickly. The rings are threaded such that they straddle two "lanes" of the spirals and the shuttle is through all 8 of them. I thought that this would be a simple N-ary puzzle and with "only" 8 rings should not be too arduous. After all, it's ONLY a level 9 puzzle which must make it relatively simple?

Oh boy! I got a shock! Yet again! I explored this over the last week or so every time I put down the Free me puzzle. Mrs S was most displeased with me because this one really jingles a lot.

The shuttle comes off the first ring and the second very easily but then the third ring is completely blocked. I figured it was N-ary and went back to the first ring and replaced it hoping to get access where I needed it. Nope! That didn't work. I am sure that you noticed that the shuttle can be threaded through the rings both forward and reversed and after an embarrassingly long time, I also noticed that and after trying it with both the first and second rings, I found the one that worked. I had my access to the third ring and the shuttle was off of that one. 

And here I remained for over a week! I tried every combination of forward and back with the shuttle, through the rings forwards, through them in reverse and every single time I was blocked from releasing the shuttle from the fourth ring. What on earth was going on? I just could not get any further! What sort of puzzle blogger am I? A bloody useless one, I think - I should be ashamed of myself! There was a significant chance that there would be no blog post for you today! I have only ever missed one due to illness or death and really didn't want to do it again with no adequate excuse. Is being rubbish at puzzles an excuse?

Finally after 5 or 6 days I found a move. It had the desired effect of getting me access to the next ring but I wasn't happy with it. I kept putting the puzzle back to the beginning because that move I found did not seem right. It required me to slightly flex the spiral to allow the shuttle to be pulled through, I don't think any of DDK or Aaron's puzzles have ever needed even that tiny amount of force. So I kept returning to the beginning and trying afresh. Finally, this morning I bit the bullet and continued with that move and it opened up a whole new section of the puzzle which got very interesting very quickly. It also got really quite confusing but I was determined and carried on. Finally, just minutes before starting this post, I had a solved puzzle:

I have taken it apart but...
have I actually solved it?

Once I had taken my picture, I felt that I had better put it back together and check with Aaron whether I had cheated (I am pretty sure that I did on that one step). 

Erm...putting it back together was a whole extra challenge! I had, as usual, not really paid enough attention to how it came out and then got mightily confused when it would not go back in and when I did get it started on the return journey, I found that I could not seem to get the second ring on the shuttle. Wow! Despite being "only" a level 9, this was a really really tough challenge. Eventually I got to the mid point and tried the final moves to return to the start. Unfortunately one of the rings had unwound itself and was only held on one of the arms of the spiral and I hadn't noticed it. Another 30 minutes of swearing at it when I couldn't get it back to the start and then another 30 minutes swearing at my own stupidity when I noticed the problem. Finally it is back at the beginning and I am hoping to find out whether I had done something wrong at that crucial early step.

Yet again, an absolutely amazing and incredibly difficult puzzle from Aaron and DDK. It shows that disentanglement puzzles with wire only really can be incredibly tough and confusing - it has N-ary elements to it but only a couple of parts are - the challenge is navigating between them. Great value and a hugely bamboozling challenge. My head hurts now and I think I need to lie down for a while.

I Thought That I was On a Roll

But then...

Xmas Tree gift from Aaron

Every time I order a little batch of puzzles from Aaron, he includes a little (or even not so small in this case) extra puzzle in the package. This time it was this adorable little Xmas tree with a couple of baubles on it (attached in different ways to interfere with the slider movement and, of course, the obligatory piece to be removed. This puzzle has been absolutely beautifully made and almost reminds me of something that would have been produced by the wonderful and sadly missed LiveWire puzzles guys.

Having been successful last week with the Ball and chain puzzle that isn't, I couldn't resist playing with this one for a little light relief. Any of you who are better than an absolute beginner at disentanglement puzzles can look at this and immediately see where the exit point is but will also see how it is blocked by the baubles. The challenge here is to get past that part of the blocked path. I am absolutely delighted that with my huge experience of wire puzzles and (BLUSH!) embarassingly enormous collection (I have 6 plastic cases of them in my garage), I managed to solve this clever little challenge in about 10 minutes:

Delightful and not too tough

The sequence is absolutely delightful and fun to do repeatedly. It does show that a puzzle doesn't need to be impossibly difficult to still be fun. This is a nice one that I will be taking in to work with me as we approach the holiday season to bamboozle and hopefully delight my colleagues. I am due to work on Xmas day this year and it will be taken in with me.

Pipe

Pipe by the incredibly talented DDK was next on my list to try mostly because it looks quite a lot less fearsome than most of the others I received. This was partially true.

It is obvious where the name comes from and the aim is also obviously to remove the long shuttle. 

I always take a photo of the instruction sheet giving the setup position to aid my memory and also because it has the "idealised" position of the various components (the picture I took does look slightly different to the printed sheet). 

Having been encouraged with my early success with Pocket watch and Xmas tree, I immediately thought that this would actually be a nice (maybe arduous) N-ary puzzle and would be fun but easy. I genuinely thought I was being very clever doing this puzzle next and that there would be an easy blog post for me. I was wrong about the easy bit - maybe I should have paid attention to the Level 10+?

Initially, I thought that the left side of the puzzle (bowl of the pipe) must be the exit and started moving the shuttle through the centre of the puzzle towards it. I quickly found that this led to a dead end - I could work my way out that end but immediately any further moves are blocked by the rings. Like an eejit, I tried this same thing multiple times before coming to the correct conclusion and abandoning that approach. I went back to the picture and with the idealised positioning, I think that most of you should be able to see what looks like an obvious exit point for the shuttle. This should lead to you being able to formulate an initial plan to begin manoeuvring towards that exit. Unfortunately, within a few minutes I made the horrible realisation that the shuttle is actually inside the centre of this new exit point and it was definitely not going to be an easy task to get there. I was stuck for a while. As the week went by, I got a bit desperate and even brought it into the living room during our evening TV watching. Mrs S gave me a telling off again but she must be mellowing a bit because she did it with a smile. Not even a mention of a Whack! Ouch!

I was stuck at this point for a couple of days as I struggled to see how I could aim for that exit point without the shuttle being caught in the middle of it. It is important to notice that several of the rings are large and several are too small to pass the shuttle through. his is an important feature which helps but also confuses. I tried something completely new and suddenly I had made progress - I was not sure whether it was correct but I carried on. At one point I performed multiple moves and.... I was back at the beginning! How the?? I had no idea how I managed to undo things without realising it and took a deep breath before starting again and this time I got a bit further (I thought so, but it is quite difficult to remember every position that you have been in). I continued along what seemed like a promising path and occasionally reached a blockage which needed a little thought©. After a few days, the shuttle came out with me having only a slight idea of how I had achieved it:

That was fun and much tougher than expected

I left it like this for a day or so and then bit the bullet and started the reassembly. Oh boy! This really made it clear that I had not fully understood my sequence. I was able to get the process started but, as I progressed, my hopes kept getting dashed when suddenly and unexpectedly, the shuttle came back out again. This happened several times! Time to think© properly!

Here I realised that I needed to look at the diagram and work out a specific approach to traveling a particularly problematic ring which kept turning me around back to the exit. Having thunk© and arranged my puzzle like the picture, I tried again and finally after a whole week of play on this one I had my success.

The Pipe is a genius design which looks much easier than it actually is. It has some N-ary portions to the sequence but is not truly an N-ary puzzle. I would liken it more to the tree puzzle that I reviewed at the early on in this PuzzleMad odyssey but a lot more confusing.

Thank you DDK, for the challenge and thank you Aaron, for the opportunity.

It's Not What It Seems To Be...

But It's Still Really Good

Pocket Watch
Designed by Shaui Chi and made by Mr Gao

Having had a really good time with one of Aaron's gift puzzles whilst on my holibobs, but still hadn't managed to solve a puzzle, I was determined to do better with the new batch that arrived whilst I was away.

Telescope (level 7)

The Pocket watch puzzle is "only" a level 8 on Aaron's scale. I really don't know what to make of his scale because I have never seen anything less than a 7 on it and almost all of the puzzles he releases are 10 or 10+. The odd thing is that the single level 7 puzzle that I bought from him remains unsolved and I have not come even close to working it out.

I had high hopes for the Pocket watch puzzle because it immediately screams out to most experienced puzzlers as very similar to the classic Ball and ring puzzle described in van Delft & Botermans' Creative puzzles of the world and, from it,  a whole bunch of variants which add degrees of difficulty and which I have struggled with multiple times over the years. My late mentor Tsy Hung Chein (aka Felix) got me entangled in their delights and made me a large number of them. There have been reviews of them here, here and here.

Classic Ball and chain (Livewire version)

The Pocket watch looks so like a variant of the Ball and ring puzzles except...the ring is not on the string in this one. This should start the alarm bells ringing...why not? My initial thought was that I had to move the ring onto that string and then solve it the usual way. The only problem with that is that I could not find any way to achieve that aim. Luckily the puzzle comes with a nice lobster-claw release mechanism for if you have made a knot and I deliberately reorganised it to have the ring where I desired and started trying to do the classic move (you have to be careful with that classic move because if you get it even slightly misaligned then you end up with a loop around the wire and can then get it more and more looped as you try to backtrack. Being very careful (and practicing with one of my old standard versions) I attempted the solve in the "new" start position. Here again I should have listened to the alarm bells in my head (especially as my head is usually pretty empty most of the time). The classic challenge requires that the ring get passed around the circumference of the puzzle and this is completely impossible with the Pocket watch due to the invagination that is closed off by another ring the same size as the movable one. 

It would appear that my whole rationale for starting the new batch of Aaron's torture devices with this one was based on a false premise. This puzzle is NOT a Ball and Ring puzzle even if it looks like one. It was time to put it back to the start and look for the correct way to solve it. The odd thing is that the moves of the ring are so constrained that it is initially quite hard to get tangled up doing what you feel is the right thing. Now one bonus with these is that it is possible to dismantle it and start with a solved puzzle and work your way back i.e. an entanglement challenge. I took the ring off and started here and tried to get to the beginning with minimal success until I had a huge (yes, HUGE) realisation. The movement of the ring to solve this one is really REALLY easy.

I set the start position the way I wanted it and within a couple of seconds had the ring where it needed to be. My new target was to see how to arrange the string into that require position without using the lobster-claw. It took me a few fairly tangled knots which needed undoing before I had a truly delicious Aha! moment as I worked out a sequence to move my string back and forth from the puzzle start to the solvable position. Once this was easily possible, it is just a matter of repeating that simple 2 second move with the ring and the puzzle is solved.

Solved (without the quick release)

Yes, it is "just" a level 8 puzzle but don't let that put you off. It is absolutely terrific and has a couple of delightful Aha! moments in it.

Hopefully I will have similar success with the rest of the puzzles in the recent delivery. Some look very tough with enormous lengths of string in them!

Some great challenges here!

Beware of Aaron's Mystery Puzzles!

Sometimes Aaron gives away a little extra freebie

This will be a rather short blog - in fact the present wife (she's doing OK for a first wife but I might be open to better offers Whack! Ouch!) gave me the text, more or less, for this blog. She said:

Solved puzzle!

No idea how...

The end!

This blog post will, unfortunately for all of you, be a little longer than that but her words are a fabulous summary of my recent luck one of Aaron's simpler string puzzles. The problem for most of us mere mortals is that Aaron and his fellow Chinese designers (DDK, Shuai Chi, Heping Gao) are complete geniuses who can solve all of there incredible wire and string puzzles in their heads. Every year Aaron releases a bunch of puzzles for the world to order and every year a huge bunch of us order what we can afford and spend months and months attempting to solve them. Last year I managed to acquire all of these:

All string and at least 3 are N-ary

I have spent almost a whole year, on and off, working on these and, to my utter shame, have solved precisely none of them. 

Previous year - solved only 2!

They are beautifully made and very compelling to play with. Aaron is aware that string puzzles can go horribly wrong and end up in a tangled mess and so for most of the complex ones he includes a lobster claw release to allow easy reset when needed.

In amongst the 2023 arrivals there was a non-named mystery puzzle which looked relatively simple (by Aaron's standards) and consequently he did not include any quick reset mechanism. The loop of string is heat sealed with a ship-shaped bead on it which prevents the loop passing through certain parts of the puzzle. Having spent a while on the complex puzzles and gotten nowhere, I picked up the "easy" challenge and spent a few hours on it realising that it was NOT easy. I put it in my work bag to play with when I had time at work and spent a year failing at it. Either it is bloody difficult or, more likely, I am not terribly bright! It has been in my work bag for almost a whole year.

Just this week, I have been oop north on holiday and having a nice lazy time. I always take my work bag with me to keep iPad etc in and, of course, a few puzzles to solve (or try to). Having failed to solve the Free Me 9, in desperation I rummaged around the bottom of the bag and found Aaron's mystery which I had forgotten about. OK! Time to give it another good go.

Yes, after about an hour I had created a tangled loop and was stuck (again!) and had to put it down and pace around for a bit. I thought holidays were supposed to be relaxing and puzzles a fun form of recreation? It took another ½ hour to untangle the loop back to the beginning and in the process I made a discovery about something that I had not known was possible. Yes, it was an Aha! moment. I used it to advance a step and then got caught up with nowhere to go. I returned to the beginning and proceeded to do the same thing over and over again.

Another ½ hour of doing the same thing over and over again and suddenly it was different. How that hd happened, I had no idea! Interestingly, I was completely unable to backtrack to the beginning. I thought to myself: "self, time to go forward". After another brief tangle and some effing and blinding, I found myself in a different position and after a further few moves I was able to take a completely new photo:

Have I really solved it?

I looked up from the puzzle, showed it to Mrs S and explained that I had no idea how that had happened and she proffered her short blog post text for me to use. Not only am I ashamed that I have not solved any others from last year (or earlier years) but I am also ashamed that I haven't really solved this one. I have said before, more than once, that a dismantling a puzzle is not solving it. I said:

"A puzzle is only truly solved when you can open/disassemble it and then put it back together again… And then, you have to do it a second time quicker than the first! This proves to me that the puzzle hasn’t just been opened by blind luck - it has been understood and truly mastered!" 

After over an hour of attempts, I have proved my lack of solution because I have completely failed to reassemble it. The most odd thing is that I cannot even get it knotted up in a way that is difficult to take apart. There seems to be a difficult hurdle move that gets it to a position that can be knotted. Yet another of Aaron's puzzles that I have dismantled but not really solved - aargh!

If any of you know how to reassemble this little bugger then do drop me an email with some instructions or a clue.

This is just in time to unpack the 2024 delivery of Aaron's latest creations! At least this time there are a bunch of pure wire puzzles with no string to play with. Hopefully I will manage at least 2 of them!

A Puzzle For A Scrub Nurse?

Shuttle Run

Another 6 day week has meant that I have not managed to solve anything for you. In the few hours I did manage to find, I think I...erm...bit off more than I could chew! The Shuttle Run puzzle is yet another of the incredible designs by the amazing Chinese designer, Shuai Chi. It was one of the designs recently offered up for sale by Aaron Wang from his Facebook page. The puzzles that he puts up for sale are always incredibly complex and ALWAYS very difficult. Most are Level 10 or 10+ and the ones that he does occasionally label as lower than that are, I reckon, actually level 10 for us normal people.

The workmanship in these puzzles is superb and they are priced accordingly. Everyone thinks that wire puzzles are extremely cheap but this one was $47. I must add that it is worth every penny/cent.

I could not buy every single one that went up for sale for fear of spending several hundred dollars and receiving a Whack! Ouch! from Mrs S who has returned from Edinburgh and is unimpressed with the proliferation that has occurred whilst she was away. I bought the few that I felt I might (possibly if the wind is going the right way) stand a chance of successfully solving. I still have a whole lot of his previous puzzles unsolved and persistently beating me.

Recent disentanglement puzzles
The sheer length of string is very intimidating!

You may be wondering why I have called the Shuttle Run a puzzle for a scrub nurse? The operating theatre staff out there who are stupid enough to read my drivel (I know there are a few surgeons and anaesthetists and who knows, maybe even the odd theatre nurse) will all be aware of the vital role that counting plays during any operation. At the beginning and end of every single operation there is an exhaustive count of every instrument, swab, neuro pattie and suture to ensure that nothing that shouldn't be is left in the patient. It is an odd fact that scrub nurses can only count to 5! Any higher number than that and they count to 5 again. The very senior nurses (i.e. old) might manage to count to 10 but never higher than that. If a nurse has counted above 10 then she has taken her shoes and socks off! I often work in a vascular theatre and and counting the patient's digits is no use as the leg count is often less than 2 and the toe count almost inevitably less than 10!

The Shuttle Run puzzle seems to require counting to 5 and no higher! Perfect for a scrub nurse. The only downside is that this puzzle needs you to count to 5 in odd creative ways:

1, 1 2, 2, 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 3, 3, 3 4, 1 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 2 3 4, 2 4, 1 2 4, 1 4, 4, 4 5 etc...

Being a bear of little brain, I could not do this sequence in my head! I had to speak it out loud and this REALLY did nothing to improve Mrs S' mood. She has a cold just now and is not really enjoying my monotonic counting in funny ways. Periodically she interjects random sequences of numbers which has on several occasions forced me to stop puzzling and may have contributed to me backtracking inadvertently back to the beginning.

Is this progress? I hope so, but am not entirely certain!

That sequence is just what is required for the top section of the puzzle - that is obviously a binary sequence. Unfortunately, the sequence has to pass back and forth for each single unit advance of the lower section. I have not yet managed to work it out properly yet due to dementia/confusion, but I think that the bottom section has 2 states to go through for each column supporting the shuttle and thus I am tentatively categorising this one as a ternary puzzle. I may be wrong on this and it may be higher than that because I have managed to get stuck several times and been inadvertently backtracked at least 5 times due to stupidity and interference by Mrs S.

I will persevere for a while and fully expect to fail dismally. However, I am having some fun trying to work it out. 

My plea to Aaron - please please please make a few easier challenges? There are very few people on the planet who can solve your incredibly difficult and beautiful contraptions. Maybe you could make a few level 6-9? This would be helpful to those of us who are less capable than you!