Dee Makes Me Dizzy - Vertigo

He Also Reminds Me Not To Solve On A Sofa

Vertigo from DEDwood Crafts

I'm quite lucky to be able to blog about something today! Mrs S has decided that the decor needs refreshing and that entails painting and decorating as well as reupholstering furniture. This has cost me a fortune and nearly ended up with an assassination when I inadvertently questioned some of the decisions being made (Whack! Ouch!). I have spent part of the weekend moving furniture about in preparation for the painter to come and do his thing. This movement has "allowed"/forced me to be in a position to replace the sockets, fused spur point and TV aerial socket with nice new brushed steel ones that match her vision (I grudgingly have to agree that the old brass ones were looking a bit dated). Now, whenever I do electrical work, at some point I always forget to switch off the mains and electrocute myself at least once. This time it was a close run thing - I remembered just in time that I had to switch off the RCD before touching something live. As I have said many times...I am not terribly bright! It all went well and everything has tested and works fine without a death in the family - PHEW!

Instructions are quite clear

Today, I have to write about a puzzle that I have been trying to solve on and off for nearly a year! Sigh, more proof that I am not terribly bright and certainly not very good at this puzzling business. I received my copy from the amazing Dee Dixon way back in May last year and immediately loved the smell, the look and feel of it - he always makes wonderfully tactile puzzles. It is gorgeous being made from Tigerwood, Sapele and Black Walnut.  It is quite chunky at 5.5 diameter and 2.5 inches thick. When you get a puzzle from Dee you always receive an instruction card with the aim and the usual admonition not to use any force and not to complain when you can't solve the bloody thing! I have quite a few DEDwood puzzles that I am currently not whining about and also not solving.

Apart from the beauty, the first thing to notice is that very little moves when it arrives. The central disk can spin freely and that's about it. The is a hint of potential movement in a panel and the circular centre of the bottom face. I fiddled with that for at least 6 weeks before I found the next move. It's a bit disheartening to be completely unable to find even one non-obvious move for such a long time. I had to put it aside and solve or at least attempt other toys. If I only work on one puzzle at a time then you will only get a blog post every 6 months or less frequently 😱.

It was almost an accident that I worked out the first move - I just happened to be holding and twirling at the same time. After that move, the next one is screamingly obvious - HOORAY! And then I got stuck again... I was able to spin something else round and around and around and nothing was visible or changed whilst doing it. Sigh. Another few weeks of doing the same thing over and over again (from this you would wonder whether I should be trusted to administer potent drugs, all of which can prove quite fatal within a minute or two! I certainly should not be allowed to use a screwdriver on a mains circuit 🤣.

As often happens to me, I inadvertently did the same thing in a different way and there was a change - yessss! Unfortunately, whilst something had changed, it didn't seem to lead me anywhere and I spent more time searching for the next move. I couldn't find anything at all. I knew that something inside had changed but it didn't help me. Another month went by and I had a thought© which is odd because they are few and far between. Having thunk for a bit I tried something new and after a struggle it worked revealing the interior of the puzzle and a tool. At last, I was making progress - it had only taken me 6 months or so.

There are several places where the tool fits but only one placement actually does something. I didn't know what it was doing but definitely something. Time to fiddle again and turning the puzzle over for the 4th time I had a piece of puzzle come off in my hand. I couldn't see why at all but progress had been made. I was beginning to suspect why this puzzle was named Vertigo - it wasn't because of any height related issues. The design of this puzzle was such that the damned thing needed to be manipulated and flipped over and over from side to side to allow progression of the solution. 

With the next piece in my hand, it didn't look like it could be used as another tool but there was a hole visible. Flipping it over again and using the tool I had in the opposite side suddenly dropped something in my hand - another tool - a smaller one. It took a bit of play before I realised where it had come from. Looking at what I had, it was obvious that 2 tools combined into one and could be used elsewhere. There were several options  and none of them worked - more think©ing required. Suddenly I had a random epiphany and what had not been possible initially was suddenly possible. I was using the combined tool and nothing was happening. Maybe I was using it wrong?  I spent another unhappy afternoon searching every orifice and place to use my tool - unsuccessfully. 

Having been frustrated about the lack of progress for a while, I had to give up when summoned by the present wife to cook dinner. On standing up, I heard something and realised that another rather tiny item had fallen out of the puzzle onto my lap and I had not realised it. It was only by sheer luck that I was working in the conservatory which had very light tiles on the floor and I heard and could see the small piece on the floor. It could very easily have fallen into a fold in clothing or down the gaps between cushions of the sofa I was sitting on and I would still be attempting a solve with a missing piece years later!

I now had a teeny weeny item and an obvious place to put it. It seemed to engage with something inside but that alone wasn't terribly helpful. At least, after this amount of time, I had gotten used to having to turn the puzzle over and over and try things in multiple positions. There was one more hole to play with and this time I was ready for it. I didn't lose the next bit that came out. Another pretty small item and despite having middle aged eyes, I noticed that there was something on the surface of it.

The DEDwood logo at last!

My goodness, what an odyssey - it has taken me 10 months and cost me what little hair I had left! Resetting it was fun - really just the reverse of what was done before but for me made a bit harder because I was not entirely certain where some of the pieces had been hidden inside. After an hour of fiddling it was all back to the beginning. Solving it a second time was just as much fun!

This is a cracking puzzle! At the 2024 EPP, it was mentioned by a couple of people as one of the best puzzles of the year and at last I can now agree with them. It is no longer available but if you ever see one come up at auction then just buy it, you won't regret it. It is beautiful, smells nice and is a fantastic challenge. I am sure that you will manage to solve it MUCH faster than I did!

Thank you Dee, I am still working on quite a few others that I have bought from you and always on the lookout for more.

Is It Bad To Get Help?

Orbit from Dee Dixon

Way back in June I ordered and received this gorgeous little (gulp!) box from the amazing Dee Dixon. The goal of this puzzle is to remove the center piece so I guess I cannot classify it as anything other than a box but I won't let that discourage me from denying that I collect boxes. It is vibrantly beautiful made from Canarywood and Purpleheart and measures 5 x 5 x 2". I set to playing with it as soon as it arrived only to rapidly get stumped. Dee had said:

"Orbit is a seemingly simple puzzle that will have you going in circles trying to decipher the mechanism that keeps it firmly locked in position."

And he wasn't kidding. I wondered whether the odd shape on the lid had any significance but couldn't seem to find one. Maybe that shape was just there to act as a handle? The lid spun around freely most of the time until at odd intervals, it went click and wouldn't spin any more - I had absolutely no idea why! Sometimes I found that things inside had shifted and I could tilt the lid and when tilting it there was an alarming sound of what I thought might be ball bearings inside. Every now and then, if you peek around the edge of the disk with a bright light then you catch a fleeting glimpse of something shiny - was this confirmation of my ball bearing thought?

I went round and round in circles, spinning and not spinning, tilting and pulling and generally getting nowhere. This went on for months! I moved it from my tray of allowed puzzles in the kitchen (thank you dear) to my other tray of allowed puzzles in the living room where I played whilst watching TV. All the while I kept doing the same sort of thing over and over and over again! No matter how many times I did the same thing, I never seemed to be able to make any headway. The odd thing was sometimes things moved and sometimes they didn't. This was despite doing the same moves repeatedly! Maybe Einstein was wrong and sometimes different things happen? After about 3 months I had to stop for a while and just went back to it every now and then. Until the recent MPP!

Someone had also brought in their copy of Orbit (I think it might have been Allard but in my confusion of solving and playing with so many puzzles in one day, I couldn't be sure). Another admission that this copy had never been solved made me feel a lot better and it was handed to another puzzler who claimed to know how it worked. My jaw literally hit the floor when he opened that copy of the puzzle in about 60 seconds - that was absolutely bloody bonkers! I briefly looked inside and saw things that were surprisingly not ball bearings. Hmmm! I did see what looked like a locking mechanism but tried not to look too closely.

When I came home I quickly got working on it and used my phone as a torch. At this point, the Aha! moment almost knocked me on my back. It is so simple...why could I not work it out?

No clues here.

Some of the rattling was coming from the little flame that was inside and maybe that had confused me. I can now categorically state that the shape on top is useful for more than being a handle and I can also conclude that I am not terribly bright!

Having finally understood the mechanism, I can now understand all the funny things that seemed to be going on inside like the tilting, the spinning which sometimes wouldn't happen and the clicking noises inside. I have now opened it from fully locked inside of 60 seconds and feel very smug about it! It is genuinely quite simple in design but, for me at least, seems impossible to work out without some sort of clue. Sigh!

---

2 sets of salt and pepper shakers!
Something is wrong with the lettering though!

I saw that Jon Keegan and Tartarus puzzles were offering the Sandfield salt and pepper shakers in their beautiful metal version. Even though I have the original proudly displayed on the shelf directly in front of me, I could not receive something similar of Jon's quality.

They have truly managed a beautiful recreation of the original puzzles with only the odd lettering and a slight tiny change in the detail of the solution. It took me about 15 minutes to recall the process and redo it until I had a bunch of pieces and my seasoning:

Salt and pepper released from the cruet set

Even Mrs S agreed that they look gorgeous on display. If you get a chance to own it or at least play with them then jump at the chance!

So Uplifting That It Gave Me a Fright!

Uplift by Dee Dixon

This might be a bit less coherent than normal - I am a bit sick and had to work whilst ill. My thought processes are even slower than usual.

It would appear that Dedwood crafts has become one of my new obsessions. I missed out on the early productions because they were boxes and I "don't collect boxes" but later there were puzzles with interesting shapes and even robot faces which spoke to me. Those voices never seem to go away and my chats with my psychiatrist friend reassures me that they are "normal". Admittedly, when we chat, I am armed with needles and syringes and he is armed with an ECT machine but I am sure that he is not frightened of what I might do with my weapons and is telling me the truth.

Well, several months ago those voices told me to buy the Uplift puzzle from Dee as soon as it came out. It's just a bit embarrassing to be writing about it now when it arrived at the beginning of October last year. My excuse? Erm...it's quite difficult! At least for me it was. This has literally been on my evening armchair alongside me to be played with ever since then. I attempted to solve it every evening for several months without getting anywhere. Lord! I am rubbish at puzzles!

This fabulous creation is simply gorgeous...and huge! It is made from quarter-sawn Sapele (with an incredible lustre and grain with a layer of nicely coloured Cherry. The dimensions are 6.75" diameter and 2.25" thick. The aim is to open it up and find the hidden compartment (and a surprise). The central area of the top section can rotate freely around in circles and nothing seems to happen when you do spin it. There is a button on the side where a section of the Sapele can be pushed in a few mm. The obvious thing is to push the button whilst spinning the centre around and of course, it does absolutely nothing. That is disappointing and pleasing at the same time. After a little while trying the same thing over and over again, it occurred to me that I hadn't tried to just lift the lid off. That little wedge on top just lifts off having been held on by a magnet. Inside is the cavity - it's the same size as the wedge/lid and it's empty. It is quite clear that there is a whole lot more space inside for another cavity and that must be what we are looking for. 

Interestingly, the centre section can still spin around with the lid off and the whole interior spins with it. This is a cue to start playing with the button again whilst spinning the interior/centre. I got bored of this after a week when nothing new happened and was left scratching my head wondering what else I could do. Playing around with the magnet on the lid, did reveal that there are more magnets inside but I was completely unable to trigger any changes with it. Now what? It was clear that the layers that are visible on the outside are also maintained on the inside spinning part of the puzzle. There seems to be a little movement between the layers but no change in position, orientation or push of the button (with or without magnet placement) would change anything. Desperation began to set in around February after about 4 months and Mrs S sniggering at me. I was thinking about submerging it in gin when a slip whilst holding it caused me to almost drop it. The new hand position I found myself in revealed something special for me. I wish that I could say that I worked it out through sheer bwain power but alas no!

After my little accident, I had more puzzle to look at! There were cavities to explore and more movements that didn't lead anywhere until a poke of a finger got me one of Dee's little tools (those of you who have played with other Dedwood puzzles will have seen these acrylic rods. I was making progress! With the appropriate tool poised, I found a place to use it and...it did nothing. Nothing at all! Yet again, I was left to try different orientations and combinations of moves with or without button presses whilst standing on my head. Needless to say, I looked very silly and totally failed to continue in my progress. Sigh!

After another few weeks of swearing at an inanimate object, I noticed a rather subtle feature that had eluded me up to this point. Aha! What if I do this? Aha! again. After five months I had finally found the hidden cavity and my lovely little surprise. I have not shown Mrs S that surprise for fear that she will beat me over the head with the puzzle - she really doesn't like what was inside the Uplift. Don't look if you don't want to see what is waiting inside:

This would have scared the crap out Mrs S

All in all, this was fabulous value for money for me. There weren't very many steps involved but I found 2 of them almost impossible to find and a real diversion that had me fooled for longer than I am happy about! I cannot wait for the next release from Dee. I have still not managed to reset the Wardrobe to put it away which is upsetting Mrs S a lot!

Oleg’s Orb/Ball Is Smaller Than Expected!

Oleg's Wardrobe from DEDwood Crafts

A few months ago Dee Dixon notified the world of the next puzzle in his never ending series of sequential discovery puzzles and I duly placed the release date in my task manager app with a reminder to go online on the dot of the release time and be ready with my credit card. I was very lucky to be quick enough and complete my purchase because all 65 copies went in under 5 minutes! My goodness the market for these has gone through the roof. Luckily for all of you who missed out, there will be another batch of 50 being released within a few weeks. Believe me, it is worth it!

It took a little while for the rather enormous box to cross the pond and the unboxing was well worth the wait. This puzzle is simply gorgeous! It genuinely looks like a wardrobe that would be present in a medieval castle complete with a beautifully carved door handle. It is 5"x7"x3.5" and made from Peruvian walnut and African striped mahogany (I think the handle might be Ebony). The door of the wardrobe has been textured to add to the authenticity and the quality feel of the puzzle. It is accompanied by a rather large card explaining the rules and the rather endearing story written by Brent Hessel to explain why we have a wardrobe and are looking for the Orb of Prosperity. Apparently King Oleg stole it from the villagers and hid it in his wardrobe. The plucky Knight Note has stolen the wardrobe from Oleg but cannot find the Orb and has asked for help from this plucky puzzler!

It is all absolutely beautifully presented (the cards are really difficult to photograph!). The first thing I noticed after my initial admiration of the craftsmanship (Dee always makes such gorgeous puzzles) was the fact that on the left side of the wardrobe there was a small area cut out that could be rotated in place to reveal a slot for something. I obeyed the rules and did not spinning of the puzzle but have to admit that I did shake it a bit upside down to see if I could make anything come out of the slot. Of course neither Dee not Oleg would make it so simple. There is also a small area on the base of the wardrobe that acts as a button but barely moves at this point.

There's nothing else for it...time to open the wardrobe. What do you do with a wardrobe? Pull the handle of course and Aha! the door opens (in fact it comes off) much to my surprise. Inside there is a warning and four drawers:

It's all so gorgeous!

There are no handles on the drawers so I tipped them out - luckily it's only a small wardrobe! They all come out and there is nothing in those drawers. What next? Time to think©!

The craftsmanship is wonderful

Dee's mark

With the drawers out it is possible to see that the wardrobe has been constructed in layers and one is slightly wiggly. This might be useful but at the moment for me, did nothing. I have to sheepishly admit that I got stuck at this point for over a week! Whilst investigating this I suddenly found a tool had appeared and I had absolutely no idea where from. Odd! I used a torch and looked inside and there was no clue where it came from and only 2 days later did I work it out. As I have said before, "I am really not terribly bright". Having found the tool, I had to work out what to do with it. The little slot that I had mentioned before seemed an obvious choice and with huge expectations I slotted it into place and...NADA! It wouldn't fit. Bugger! Maybe I was doing it wrong? I tried to do the same move on multiple occasions and in different orientations of both me and the puzzle. And...still NADA! Think© dammit!

I thunk for a while and noticed something else where the tool might be helpful so tried that and...NADA! I am really not very good at puzzling - it's amazing that anyone reads what I write. I then had to put this one down for a while or there would be no blog posts for you. I went back and forth from Brass Monkey 6 to the twisty puzzle to the Wardrobe for a while and only made progress on the two former puzzles. I must be missing something in this. I was convinced that the wiggly bit must be the secret but it wasn't doing anything in any position and so I was tempted to try something that was not in the rules - my last resort after blowing on a puzzle is to submerge it in gin to see whether that might help. With the size of this bloody thing, I would need to use a whole bottle and Mrs S was not going to let me do that. I did also suspect that gin might not be good for the wood - I know that I am thick but really not that dumb. Eventually, after 2 weeks, I made a very small but very interesting discovery - I had another tool which made what was wiggly really quite mobile. Man, that is a very unusual move in a puzzle! I had lots more movement and a lovely locking mechanism that I could not see but worked every time. This allowed me to try something else which did nothing until I tried it differently and it did. Bang! I had another tool which I did not know how I managed to unlock or even where it had come from.

This new tool looked very useful. It fit somewhere and then fell out again. Maybe I could try....

Aha!

That is very interesting. I could make the took disappear inside. At this point there were only so many possibilities and before long I heard a click. I couldn't see anything new as a result of the click so carried on fiddling when Oleg's orb fell on the table. A word of warning - if you are doing SD puzzles, always do them on a table or on a lap tray. Son't do them on an armchair and especially not with a cat on your lap because stuff disappears quickly inside the crevices of an armchair or in the gaping maw of a peeved cat!

I appeared to have retrieved the Orb and I have to say that King Oleg has a very small ball!

The Orb of Prosperity is a little erm underwhelming

Having found the Orb, I am told that all is well in the village and I can now reset the puzzle back to the beginning without fear of the consequences. Except after over a week of trying, I cannot seem to reset the puzzle. I am trying to do the reverse of what I had done but something is not working for me. I suspect that I have forgotten a specific orientation for the puzzle when I do a certain move or sequence and need to keep experimenting to get it to work. The result of this? Note to myself to always pay attention to what moves you do and what position they are in when you do them.

I'll keep at it. It will look fabulous on display with all my other Dedwood Crafts puzzles. I really must get back to the Burner and Uplift puzzles which I have also singularly failed:

Uplift

Burner

I also think there is another new one coming out which I will hopefully be quick enough on the draw to purchase! If all the previous ones are anything to go by then it will be superb.

Keep an eye out for the second batch if you didn't manage to get one of these from the first.

The Radiation From Walter's Radio Fried My Brain

Walter with his rather large radio

Yes, Dee Dixon has done it again! He sold me a new toy and it took me a very VERY long time to solve it and, sob!, I needed a nudge.

This beautiful toy matches the lovely Canarywood Walter that I have in my collection. It is made from iroko and jatoba woods and  measures 4.5 x 6.5 x 1.75 inches. This is a perfect size for all the manipulations that were needed for the solve…several of them were a bit fiddly. There are an amazing 20 steps in the full solution to it.

When it arrived I noticed a wedge of wood freely able to rattle about behind the speaker grille and I had to contact Dee to ask whether the rather rough postal service (the box had a bit of a big dent in it) had dislodged something - he reassured me that it was supposed to be there.

There is a story to go with the puzzle:

"When a wave of Angry Walters waged war on the world, we fought back valiantly, seeking to remove the cold fusion generators that fueled his robotic rage. Some of us succeeded, disabling the power sources in support of the sapien resistance; others struggled to make sense of the robotic systems, their patchwork patterns too puzzling, too complex to understand. The robots exploited this gap, continuing to grow in numbers as we humans faltered in the face of their fury. But the Walters soon faced a new dilemma: as they grew, so too did the need for an infrastructure that could sustain the new robotic world order. As humanity sought refuge online, sharing stories of the underground at war with our new overlords, offering advice to those who could not overcome the Walters' power, as we banded together, the Walters' world frayed at the edges, humanity chipping away at the cracks within. The Walters scrambled to fill in these gaps, developing new communications technology that allowed for the instantaneous transfer of information between synthetic minds. Such profound development rested on the invention of the Dimensional Electronic Divergence Chip (DED chip), a small component that disseminated data through tiny wormholes connecting the radio devices.

Humanity's hope faded as the radios allowed the robots to respond quickly to each battle, each spark of resistance snuffed out as soon as it surfaced. Humanity learned that the removal of the DED chip could turn the tides of the robopocalypse, diminishing the Walters' ability to communicate. But they knew that any such success would come at a great cost, and so they ensured that the removal of these chips would not be such a simple task. After humans stole what copies they could, they discovered that the removal and manipulation of the DED chip allowed them to transmit their own data, indistinguishable from that sent by the Walters, creating the opportunity to subvert their communications to humanity's own ends.

Human fighters recently secured a shipment of radios that are being shared across the global resistance movement. We must find our way through the robotic defenses built into the devices to remove the DED chip and undermine the Walters' newest weapon in the war for our world's future. Go forth and answer Walter's Radio!"

Now, that must be the longest spiel I’ve ever seen come with a puzzle! It can be summed up as use tools to dismantle the radio and remove a special chip. So where to start? Looking at it there are plugged holes on each edge of the puzzle and a push button on the back. Pushing all of these did absolutely nothing apart from wiggle a millimetre. 

The next thing I noticed was that the speaker grille could rotate freely and didn’t seem to engage with anything and then I realised that the wedge of wood inside was able to drop into one of two gaps on opposite sites of the grille. It takes a bit of dexterity to manipulate the wedge to where I needed it. Interesting! I guessed that I needed to find some way to make that wedge interact beyond that circular area. This led to a bit of exploration and 4 areas that would block further movement as the wedge fell further through. I found some positions did nothing and others seemed to manipulate something inside. This was fun. Very quickly I found that one of those interactions did something that gave me a new tool or at least a piece of the puzzle and left a hole.

And then it was less fun for a very very long time. As usual, I got in touch with my insanity and did the same things over and over and over again hoping for something different one time. Mrs S was convinced I had actually gone nuts because she watched me do them multiple times but tried in every orientation o could think of. Of course, nothing changed! I was on the verge of trying to do it in a handstand position or even submerging it in gin. I had noticed a few things of interest but they didn’t help for this current position. I was stuck…yet again!

Then, at the last Midlands Puzzle Party, I happened to walk by as the puzzle solving machine that is Louis Coolen was playing with a copy. He had got to the same point as me and had tried something that I hadn’t managed in several weeks/months. It wasn’t helping him but I instantly realised that I had already found something that would help him. I suggested what to do and it worked - Louis had found another puzzle piece and I had a plan to take home with me. That very evening after I got home from the MPP, I gushed about what a great time I had had and immediately picked up the radio and managed the next step.

Of course, I got stuck again! Removing the two pieces that I had so far led to something very tempting and I pushed another piece that looked like it may have interacted with the previous two. It pushed a little way in but stopped sharply after a little way and nothing else happened. I then had a brainwave (or brain fart) and manipulated other things to give me some extra space and pushed even further. Needless to say, it didn’t do anything useful and got wedged in place quite hard. I had locked the puzzle up! Aaargh! The instructions say that no banging is allowed but there had to be banging to reverse my stupidity. It would probably be best if Mrs S bashed some sense I to me occasionally.

Yes, stuck again. I had 2 pieces, a few things I had already worked out I could manipulate and nothing helped. I stayed like this working my inner insanity again for the best part of 2 weeks. I even drew a diagram of what I had found and what I thought might be happening inside. At this point, I did one of my usual moves but was holding the puzzle differently and I saw what one of my moves was doing. Oddly, I have always held the puzzle in a certain way and had not been looking at the opposite side whilst doing my insanity thing. This time I was hoping it differently and noticed the effect of a manipulation. Little empty bwain creaked into activity and I thunk to myself - "what if I…?" 

The Ded chip

I had another tool! This tool was going to need a bit of dexterity to use but I figured that if I tried the move that had landed me I trouble earlier but using the new tool then I might get somewhere. It certainly did something but the move was visibly locked. This time I, and my diagram, had a solution to that locking mechanism. A bit of fiddling and another tool followed by another and another. Now I had quite a few pieces that were of interest to a cat and I had to put them in a plastic bag. The moves were flowing now and from here I managed to find the final moves and deactivate the evil radio. All this was done in a single evening with me getting more and more excited and Mrs S getting more and more fed up with my muttering and shouts!

This puzzle was an absolutely wonderful odyssey! I didn’t count the moves but the 20 that is in the description from Dee is just the right number. There are a couple of very hard to figure steps which may be my stupidity or may be because they are so well hidden. Once found, there is definitely progress before the next halt occurs and some real thought is required. In all, this probably took me 15 - 20 hours of intermittent fiddling (even if quite a lot of that was Einsteinian repetition). The final sequence was genius and beautifully setup. The craftsmanship here is astonishing. Every piece is perfectly made to lock and interact with others. This has put Dee's work on my "must have" list.

Walter's radio deactivated with the makers mark shown

Thou Shalt Never Use External Tool...

Except When Given Permission by Dee

Bad Moon by Dee Dixon

The moon has feet!

Yes, Puzzleboxes tend not to be my thing but I had been led astray by a friend and bought the wonderful Angry Walter which made it into my top 5 of 2022. This certainly made me very interested in what Dee was going to produce in the future and then, at the last MPP, a prototype copy was doing the rounds which I studiously avoided playing with because I sort of knew that I wanted to buy and solve my own copy. I slantways watched a blind man solve it and throughly enjoy himself which reinforced my determination. After all, if a blind man can manage it then I might stand half a chance. Although...come to think of it, Allard seems to use the blind man to solve quite a few of his boxes that he cannot solve himself. I suspect that Ed is a savant! I was delighted a few weeks ago when Dee put out that he had made a whole bunch of them and put them up for sale. There were plenty for all interested puzzlers and it took 24 hours for them to sell out. Even I was able to get one in time.

I followed it as it moved stepwise across the USA and then stepped onto an airplane and promptly disappeared for quite a while. After a few weeks it suddenly arrived in the Royal Mail's hands (I presume that HM Customs and Excise had spent time examining and X-raying it before deciding it was not harmful. Except it was harmful to my mental health for a day!

The aim is to find the maker's brand inside the puzzle and, as with Angry Walter: 

no force or prying necessary
no spinning necessary
no striking or hitting necessary
no crying or whining unless necessary 

Then later, an emailed extra instruction that we cannot insert our fingers inside any further than the fingertips. Damn! He removes the only chance I have!

This puzzle had a wonderful progression... at first, you find something which is the only thing that moves and wonder what you can do with it. A little exploration shows that it can be removed and then further movement happens but stops abruptly but revealed something new. There are plenty of "what if I?" moments and some of them are rewarded with a lovely Aha! moment.

I struggled for a day with the second step. I had a "thing", I had a couple of places the "thing" would fit and it didn't seem to help. Stuck as usual. After a couple of evenings of doing the same thing over and over again, I heard something whilst doing that same thing. Yessss! Aha! It took me another little while to convert that sound into a step but I got there. This might explain why I am rubbish at puzzles - I spend most of my time playing whilst watching a noisy TV with Mrs S and maybe I miss these important noises?

As you explore there are more steps and more pieces to use. It really is a fun progression. After a few days I really thought I was getting somewhere and I had a small piece which I didn't know what to do with and in desperation, I wondered to myself:

"Self, do you think that putting this small piece inside the main puzzle and then pushing it further in with the main piece might be helpful?"

"Yes, I don't think it can do any harm and might just be helpful"

In the words of the venerable Captain Mainwaring: "You Stupid Boy". I performed the appropriate move and my latest piece of the puzzle disappeared inside and gulp, wouldn't come out again. I tried everything I could think of and even committed the cardinal sin of bashing it in various different directions to persuade it to come out. Nothing would work! I sinned again by inserting my fingers all the way inside and nope, it was out of reach. I had no idea where it had gone. Help! I have killed my new lovely toy. I got on FB messenger with Dee and he couldn't think where it could have gotten caught and apart from the bashing he did not know how such a thing could happen. He even apologised for me being stupid! Such a lovely man. He did give me permission to use other tools: JUST for retrieving this piece.

I took a wooden skewer which I could curve and tried to use that to dislodge it blindly - nope, that wasn't going to work either. I knew I had to take ultimate measures! Time to take it to work with me the following day and use something special:

I need access to a whole lot of toys to allow me to insert lots of nasty objects into all sorts of places. As an anaesthetist, I tend to stay at the top end of the lucky contestant as much as I can - I leave the other end to other specialists like Steve (although sometimes I have no choice - Eeeew). I sometimes use a video laryngoscope for either fiberoptic intubation or just plain intubation under indirect vision. It is a great way to see around corners. One of the devices we use is a Glidescope. I had some spare teaching disposables and had a little fiddle, much to the amusement of my ODP:

Light on and ready

Perfect fit and view

Aha! I could see that my piece had gotten wedged sideways into a groove in the base of the puzzle. I've put the phot behind a spoiler button Only click it if you really want to. BUT There is nothing in the photo that really tells you much about the solution to the puzzle.

There it is - little bastard!

Having established what was causing my problems I had another special tool. I usually use it for insertion of nasogastric feeding tubes or helping with intubation but it's equally good at retrieval of lost objects - I have only ever knocked out a tooth/crown once in 28 years as an anaesthetist!

Time to go fishing under video guidance

Yay! I had my missing piece and took the puzzle home to play later that evening. The final step took me a couple of evenings as I could not for the life of me work out how to use what I had to continue the odyssey. Finally, I realised there were some slots and pieces I had not used yet and with trepidation I inserted pieces into places and pushed...

Yesssssss! The Bad moon had revealed it's final secret:

Dee's mark is revealed.

I can heartily recommend playing with this puzzle if you get a chance. It is BIG and heavy (10" x 5" x 2.5" - 850g) made from Bubinga and European Beech. The grain and colour is stunning.

The Surgery Went Well - Angry Walter is No Longer a Danger

Angry Walter from DEDwood Crafts

I can't remember when I learned about Walter. I think it must have been at the end of last year that initial discussions began to happen and then Brent wrote a fabulous review of it in January. I was intrigued but somehow forgot about it completely due to pressure of work during the 5th or 6th wave of the pandemic. I may have sort of dismissed it because it had been labelled as a puzzle box and I really do try to steer away form these in a desperate attempt to keep my bank balance (and marriage) intact. The fact that it was more of a Sequential discovery puzzle didn't really impinge on me until much later when my friend Dominic asked me my opinion and was then horrified that I had not bought it (especially for such a silly reason). 

Suitably ashamed, I contacted Dee Dixon, the head honcho, and ashamedly enquired about purchasing a copy. Luckily he did not hold my earlier reticence against me and informed me that a new batch was about to be released and I manages to get hold of a copy which arrived in September with some rather frightening instructions. I particularly liked the "No crying or whining" line!

My copy was absolutely gorgeous made from some very vibrant woods. There is of course a bunch of magnets and  some very striking Canarywood, Peruvian Walnut, Bubinga, Claro Walnut, Sapele and Yellowheart. It is a pretty substantial item at 135x125x55mm. Mrs S was not impressed with the size of yet another toy left in the living room, kitchen, conservatory or wherever I happened to be (no puzzles in the bedroom)! She did agree that he was strikingly beautiful in an angry sort of way.

Dee says on his site:

"He's back...

Walter wasn't always angry. He was the world's best robot-friend, but time passed and the novelty wore off. He was left to rust in a junkyard alongside other abandoned robots. Walter swore revenge and started patching himself with whatever parts he could scavenge. He then began building his army. With his minions behind him, Angry Walter would emerge from the forgotten fields of misshapen metal mad as hell and ready to exact the revenge he promised on mankind. For humanity to have any hope of surviving his robot rage, you must find and remove his green power cell before it's too late. Stay calm as you make your way into Walter's inner workings and discover the tools and tricks you need to protect us all. It won't be easy, but the moments of discovery along the way will keep you from going mad. Now go forth and see if we can still be saved!"

So it would appear that my new patient needs some surgery to remove his green power cell. I have been known at work to scrub in to various surgeries (mostly orthopaedic) when the surgeon needs an assistant and if I have a suitably skilled junior doctor with me to give an anaesthetic. I do occasionally find it fun to wield a drill/saw or suture but not enough to make me want to change career. Luckily, as a robot he doesn't need to be anaesthetised whilst I perform surgery (it is not allowed to do both at the same time!)

That is usually quite painful!

There are lots of pieces that will obviously need to be removed. Just from looking at him, the eyes move, the mouth wiggles and so these may well need to be surgically manipulated. The ears and nose are rock solid however. During my initial viewing I turned him "prone" and did it without the usual Wilson frame and Proneview mask and eye tape. The cat in my lap (we don't usually have cats in the operating theatre!) was not impressed when Walter's right eye fell out on his head. It was quite heavy too! Well, encouraging for a Puzzlebox idiot like me, I had made progress straight away!

His left eye did not fall out but would rotate in its' socket which is not something I would advise any of you to do to yourselves - free medical advice for you!

For puzzles like this, I often bring out my trusty compass to allow me to detect magnet position and there are a LOT of magnets in Walter. I was obviously going to have to manipulate them somehow. I am usually rubbish at this but the early steps had very few choices for what could possibly be tried. It is down to the lack of options that I made progress and not due to any particular skill on my part. I moved stuff, I made things go click and before long Walter was being dismembered (actually, as an isolated head, he had already been dismembered but I don't know the word for having bits of his face ripped off surgically altered. After a while I had a few bits and needed to work out what to do with them. Here I stopped for several weeks. 2 of my "organs" were magnetic and I attempted to use them on all the other magnetic bits inside and got nowhere. I have no previous experience of Dee's puzzles and so tried everything I could think of...for a month!

Eventually Dominic contacted me to ask how I was getting on and I explained what I had and what I was trying to do. I could feel his exasperation across the pond and he admonished me to stop such silliness and just look at the puzzle again! Sigh! Yet another friend who realises that I am not terribly bright and am truly rubbish at puzzles. I stopped my silliness and did as he told me. 

DOH!

Aha! That was very clever. That Dee Dixon hides stuff very well. The mechanism for that step I had missed for 4 weeks was  beautifully constructed and I should have noticed it earlier but I got fixated on the magnets. I now had another tool and could carry on working. Walter got more radical surgery and I found a small coloured ball bearing. I wondered whether that was me finished (was that a blue-green and his power cell?) and asked Dominic. I could almost feel his surprise that I hadn't noticed something else. He said I had more to try. I had noticed the other "thing" but had thought that it was related to the construction rather than the solution and had ignored it. 

It was back to trying everything I could think of and I couldn't think of much (not terribly bright) - back to the magnets again. In general, I am not a huge fan of having to blindly manipulate the interior of a puzzle with magnets because it is too much trial and error and just flailing around in the dark. But sometimes puzzle designers make you do that and I usually spend way too long failing to find the right moves. After a further 2 weeks or so of getting nowhere, Dominic contacted me to ask how I was getting on (he is not very patient!) and after I described my attempts, he gave me a clue. Not much of a clue but it was absolutely perfect - he said:

"Be brave!"

That was it! Just be brave. I knew what he meant by this and I "screwed my courage to the sticking place" and did something that I had previously thought was very silly. A metal piece then got stuck to a magnet in a hole and I couldn't for the life of me get it out again. I tried using a different magnet but it wasn't strong enough. Eventually, I retrieved that metal piece and tried a different object and promptly lost it! 😱😱😱

After my initial panic, I realised that this was what Dom and Dee had intended. I could hear it rattling around and then had a special thought..."what if I???" Now another piece was stuck in the wrong position. Quick! Backtrack a bit and think©. I wonder? I tried something else - similar but slightly different and Walter powered down!

The green power cell has been removed

Walter is no longer a threat to mankind and even after I put him back together he seemed very docile. Over the last day or so, I have heard mutterings from him about taking over the collected animals in the living room and forming a dictatorship. Each time I remove his power cell and he stops his nonsense and is as good as gold when I power him back up

If Walter takes charge then we may be devoured in our sleep!

My verdict? Absolutely brilliant! It will be a contender for my top 10 this year that I will be publishing on New Years Day. Of course, you all know that already because I am very late to the party here. It is beautifully made and very logical. My slow solve was due to my incompetence and I know that other puzzlers would sail through it much quicker than me. 

Thank you Dee, for a marvellous and beautiful puzzle that will remain on display in the living room rather than a cabinet and, thank you Dominic, for encouraging me to buy it and then just nudging me in the right direction without giving anything away! I cannot wait to try any new creations from the workshop of DEDwood crafts