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.

I Need To Learn To Count!

Also I Properly Prove Primacy!

Freeze 14 from Yuu Asaka

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

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

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

PuzzleMaster Link or PuzzLocks direct link.

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

Freeze 14 by Yuu Asaka

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

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

Close? Definitely not close enough!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't remember what it is

This won't go in without coordinate motion

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

Can You Prove That You Are A Primate?

Ant Hunt by Boaz Feldman comes with a "primat"ive narrative

Having bought and even solved a whole bunch of the Feldman family creations over the years, starting with the incredible DanLock from Dan Feldman way back in 2011 (currently only available from PuzzleMaster) and moving through a whole bunch of increasingly amazing creations from Boaz, I couldn't resist the latest one, Ant Hunt (which is on sale just now direct from Boaz or available from PuzzleMaster here).

It arrived at PuzzleMad HQ back at the beginning of November last year and I was pleased to see that the instructions were simple:

"Open the lock and find the ant!"

As usual there is the admonishment not to use excessive force or use and external tools. Oddly, the back of the instruction card mentioned using tools to go bug hunting and how chimps did it. This had to be a big clue and I had to prove that I was at least as good as a chimp! Having said that, if I was a chimp relying on my abilities here to feed myself, I would have starved to death a long time ago!

Beautifully presented!

All of these locks are beautifully presented in a bag with the card. I dutifully now check the bag very carefully for hidden tools having been caught out for a long time with a previous puzzle. This puzzle accompanied me to work for several months with me getting absolutely nowhere before I transferred it to my pile of puzzles to solve at home. Oddly, the velour bag kept turning itself inside out every time I went to pick it up. I would return it to the correct orientation each time only to find it inside out again within a few days. This was very confusing to the male primate of the house (I actually began to question my sanity yet again) until one day I caught the female chimp in the HQ turning the bag inside out. I found out that Mrs S couldn't stand the fact that the bag picks up fluff and stour from my work bag which offends her deeply! Once I had taken a lint cleaner to it, she allowed it to stay the correct way around! Phew! I'm not bonkers!

I have sort of been on a lock roll recently - I managed to solve the Who Dares Wins and the MWPuzzles Keyring within a week or so and thinking this might bode well for other similar types of puzzles, I went back to Ant Hunt again and tried to utilise a little Think©ing. That will be an Ouch! without the Whack!

The keyring comes apart in the usual fashion and the key goes in the keyway in the usual way. It even turns 90º giving a very false hope. The key turns and the lock fails to open! Yes, what did any of you expect? Time for a closer look...there is hole in the front of the lock which you can see right through  and also a hole in each side which don't seem to show anything significant. if you feel the urge to emulate the picture at the top of the blog post you can poke your undone keyring into any of those holes and achieve pretty much nothing:

Look at me! I'm a chimp!
If you do this on the front it will go right through

None of this poking is terribly helpful and so it's time to look elsewhere. Interestingly, the shackle of the lock has quite a lot of play in it with movement of about 6-8mm. Except sometimes there is minimal movement possible (only a couple of mm) and oddly this minimal movement can occur at an extended position or a retracted position. It doesn't take long to work out what is going on to be able to make the shackle abilities change to whichever state you want it to be in - apart from open! This was where I was stuck for several months.

I played with this state of affairs for a while before I discovered something else that I should have found a long time before - Boaz had used a fairly standard trick but because I had been kept occupied by holes and a moving shackle, I had not looked further. Having made this important discovery, I now had more "primat"ive things to try and a new ability was found. Even with this nice new ability, I was unable to go any further until I thought© to combine one or two abilities into a chain (this really marks me as one of the higher primates or maybe a crow) and suddenly I had found the resident ant in the puzzle. Incredibly well hidden and not going to be found by accident without doing the right sequence of moves. After that, opening the lock was a lovely next step and the reason it all worked was revealed with a gasp of delight:

Incredible puzzle manufacturing skills

Resetting the lock is a relatively easy sequence as long as you know what you had done to get it open and doing it again is a pleasant bit of fun. I will be showing this off to my long-suffering anaesthesia assistants to show the engineering possibilities of a lock.

This is an amazing feat of puzzle engineering using a standard Nabob padlock. Yet again, I'm blown away by what is possible. Basically, I will have to buy everything that Boaz makes - I am not very good at lock puzzles (or any puzzles for that matter!) and they do keep me occupied for a very long time which proves very good value and ends with a phenomenal (slightly desperate) Aha! moment. You should get one whilst you can (either from Boaz direct or from PuzzleMaster) - you won't be disappointed.

Don't Be A Coward!

If You Dare - You Will Probably Win!

Who Dares Wins aka Haleslock 6
A fabulous design by Shane Hales in collaboration with the Two Brass Monkeys

Today is a day for locking metal stuff or unlocking it.

The first thing I should tell you all is that Big Steve and Ali (the Two Brass Monkeys) have released their latest creation, the Bag O'Tangles and you should all go there and buy it/them. I saw the pre-production version at the last MPP and immediately decided that I needed to buy a copy when I saw it there - it has just gone up for sale and I have placed the order to pick it up at the next MPP at the end of the month. If you aren't sure then read Allard's review to be convinced. Apparently they can all be nested together for a final master challenge - if nothing else convinces you, then that certain should!

In August last year, I purchased the 6th in Shane's series of lock puzzles. When you have all the others it would be rude not to continue collecting and Mrs S definitely agreed with that. Whack! Ouch! or maybe not! 😱 

The Who Dares Wins puzzle is still available from the Two Brass Monkeys site and you definitely should get one whilst they are still available. I had no idea what a rim cylinder lock was until I got this. I had always called the classic door lock on a British front door a "Yale" lock but that is apparently a trade name for the type of lock I grew up with on my front door and certainly in retrospect, from the top this thing would not be out of place embedded in a door. Shane had created a prototype puzzle from one of these and showed it to the monkey boys and they all colluded to create something that did not require a puzzler to carry a door around with them (Mrs S would definitely have disapproved quite strongly had I brought in an extra door!). As soon as they were available to purchase one arrived and I took me customary photos. It is nicely shiny in brass and some anodised aluminium with a key on a keyring and a helpful tag with the instructions - open the lock and find the golden padlock. It is all delivered in a Jute bag. This thing is pretty weighty at 380g with dimensions of 36mm diameter and 88m long.

I'm glad this one was so attractive as it stayed on display in my pile o' puzzles to solve for many many months! I played and played and played with it daily, then weekly then monthly since August last year and got absolutely nowhere! At some point during the 9 month wait I even retrieved the jute bag and turned it inside out searching for hidden tools in the sewn edges. I've been caught by that sort of thing before and refuse to be caught again - at least until the next time!

Looking at it, there is not much to really see that gives any immediate clues. Putting the key in the lock and trying to turn does the usual nothing at all - it won't turn but at least the key comes out again. Fiddling with the brass collars gives a teeny hint that they might be involved at some point as there is a fraction of a mm movement in one of the three but no rotation. After discovering that, there is nothing else to be found for a VERY long time. I am sure that all of us do the usual of trying to insert the key to varying depths and attempting to turn it - no, that doesn't work either. Then it's time to attempt it with the puzzle in a whole lot of different positions. I am getting a bit too old to be doing handstands with a puzzle but at least I didn't hurt myself.

Looking very closely at the puzzle does give a small hint at one of the things that Shane has done to the insides of this thing to convert a standard lock into something that won't open with a key but seeing it doesn't really help. At least it didn't help me! Remember, I am not terribly bright.

Right from the very beginning there was something that I wanted to do but didn't have what was required to do it and with these you are not allowed to use anything that you haven't been given. This was one of the reasons I went to the jute bag at least 3 or 4 times to see whether I had missed anything. I really wanted to do one particular thing but never had the courage to do it. This was a deliberate part of Shane's devious design! He knew that no puzzler would be happy doing what he knew was necessary, hence the name of the puzzle - if you were going to win with this one then you had to be daring and try something special. I was a coward! Month after month I didn't dare to try it until in desperation I did the unthinkable. 

AHA!

OMG! I cannot believe that he did that! All of a sudden after 9 months of cowardice, I was daring for the first time and I managed my first step. Now it was time to explore further. Don't solve this puzzle anywhere where you might lose small pieces because after a further 10 or 15 minutes you will find some "stuff" dropping out (in my case into my lap and into the grooves of the sofa cushions). 

Solved the bloody thing - I had my golden padlock!

Once the lock is open you can see how simple and yet ingenious the design is. Shane is relying on people not having the courage to do what is necessary and, from what I can gather talking to other puzzlers, he is absolutely right - not many of us are willing to be daring. at least not until we get absolutely desperate. That man is a genius! I texted Shane when I had finally solved the bloody thing and he actually wrote:

"I wanted to psychologically f..k people over      I guess it worked perfectly!"

 It certainly did! B.st..d! But finally after all this time I can place it on display in the lock section of my display cabinets, much to the pleasure of Mrs S.

---

MW Puzzles keyring

I had missed out on the whole of Matthew Williams' puzzle designs as they seemed to go viral via the Mechanical puzzle discord and I just don't have time to get involved in that. I saw a few of his incredible creations at the MPP and they all looked fabulous but I resigned myself to only getting to look at them at puzzle parties. I even missed out on the second run of Pinball Wizard puzzles because they went up for sale whilst I was anaesthetising a weekend trauma list and they sold out in about 5 minutes - I was 2 hours late! 😭. 

Get that key out

My only experience of MW puzzles' creations was the Keyring 1 (I have heard that a Keyring 2 might be released sometime soon). I managed to acquire this at a Midlands puzzle party and I think I received it as a gift from Matthew (thanks mate!) This lovely little thing is made of steel, brass ands a few acrylic bits as well. It has been in my work bag for over a year! The aim is to remove the key from the lock and then put it back and trap it again.

The key is inserted in the keyway at one end and doesn't move much at all. There is a very small amount of wiggle room but it certainly won't turn or pull out. Looking at it you cannot see what mechanism inside might be preventing the movement.

The only thing that you can do is move the brass collar - it can rotate and it can be pulled a few mm towards the far end to pushed back. At some point during the movement of the collar you can see a red something inside.

Red insert inside?

There appears to be a pin

Fiddling with this collar eventually reveals a pin and it feels like that pin can be moved but when the collar is rotated back to the start position the pin is always back in place. It feels like that pin needs to be extracted outwards into the brass collar to release something inside.

I spent over a year trying to get that damn pin to do something and failed. Now, with many puzzles there are lots of things to try and you keep attempting different combinations of various things until you get enough information to progress to the next step. Both of today's delights have none of this progression - there is absolutely nothing new to try and only one or two tiny little movements which don't get you anywhere. I sometimes think that these puzzle designers are out to drive me crazy......crazier than I am already!

After a year of fiddling and doing the same 1 or 2 things over and over and over again, I noticed that something had changed. It would appear that Einstein was wrong - sometimes doing the same thing again and again for a very long time does actually make something happen on one occasion. Or maybe it happened every time but I failed to notice it.

That was rather interesting; if only I actually knew what was the cause. Determined to put another puzzle away, I continued with my repetition and before I knew it, there was a major change inside. More repetition was required until I had yet another of those

AHA!

moments!

I had no idea how this was working but I finally had my key:

At last! Another puzzle I can put on display.

Could I put it back to the start? Yes I could. It's very clever and I am slightly ashamed of myself that it took me so long to work out what was required. Thank you Matthew for keeping me occupied for a year! I need some easier puzzles for a while!

The MPP Forced Me To Look For A Loophole

Loophole Lock from Boaz Feldman

Yet another success caused by the recent MPP - I am on a roll! I am absolutely terrible at lock puzzles but I am attracted to them like Icarus to the sun! I guess that I have not been killed by a lock like Icarus was but when Mrs S noticed that a new lock migrated into the house on my return from the MPP, she was distinctly unimpressed and that dangerous violent gleam could be seen in her eyes.

I bought the Loophole lock (currently sold out direct from Boaz but still available from PuzzleMaster) way back in December 2023 at the same time as the simply amazing PicoLock (available here from Boaz and also from PuzzleMaster). Having had such fun and great success with the PicoLock, I expected to have similar success with the Loophole which was supposed to be considerably simpler (indeed, it is rated only a 9 in PuzzleMaster's 5-10 scale). But here I am over a year later and only just managing to write about it. In retrospect, I have to admit that it's not because it is incredibly tough, it's because I am awful at locks! I should be ashamed of myself really.

The MPP stimulated me to try again because someone had brought in the Ant Hunt which had been released just a few months ago and I had had similar complete lack of progress. 

I asked a few people at the MPP about the Loophole and whether they had found it particularly difficult. Yes, they all agreed that it was a lovely but not too difficult puzzle. Damn! I really needed to go back to it and try again. Mrs S had made me rationalise my pile 'o puzzles to be solved because the weight was marking the carpet and I needed to hunt for it in a secondary storage area. It arrives in a nice bag with instructions to "open the lock" - well duh!

One thing I did manage to do correctly was the obvious removal of the key and ring from the shackle by unscrewing the ring. 

Yes, I know that it is a cliché but you simply have to insert the key and try to open the lock. I don't know why we always do it, we know it won't work and sometimes it gets us into trouble by locking the key in place. At least this time I inserted the key and tried the inevitable and it wouldn't even turn a little bit. At least the key was removable afterwards. After that, it's time to explore. The first thing to notice is that right in the middle of the 'O' of Loophole there is a hole. All the way through - you can create a loop by passing the key ring through it:

Now that looks nice but doesn't help you one little bit!

The other thing to be seen is that there is a fairly decent hole in the side of the lock which allows you to see inside and reveals...nothing! I could see into the depths of the lock and even poke about with the open end of the keyring. That does nothing either. Hmm! Turning the lock shackle downward reveals a bulky pin or something that shifts back and forth to cover the hole. It looks completely innocuous and doesn't have anything that could be engaged with the keyring. Looking through the hole in the front shows that the pin is so big that it impinges a little bit on that hole - enough to prevent me putting the keyring through the hole again. 

A pin visible in the side hole

This was the point that I had gotten stumped a year ago and on and off for months afterwards.

Having started again this time, I had a little think© and sort of wondered to myself: "self, why has Boaz knurled that pin?" Time to investigate the pin and suddenly I found a new detail that had evaded me completely for months. It didn't really help me initially but something new is always good. I moved the pin about up and down and tried to see more of the details of it. Suddenly I found a second something and this sent me up a new pathway that got me nowhere. I tried to screw the keyring inside and needless to say, that was a fruitless attempt but I then had a wild thought! What if I???

Opened

AHA!

The thing that really helped me here was to be sitting in a quiet room with no TV, radio or chattering complaining wife in it. This allowed me to listen to what was going on inside and whilst it's pretty subtle, there is a distinct extra unexpected sound that helped me work out what was the next thing to try and it worked. I have to say that it is very elegant. The quality of the workmanship is incredible. It isn't the voyage that PicoLock was but it is stunning and fun. This is one to show colleagues - they may actually think it through given enough time.

Thanks Boaz - now I need to go back to Ant Hunt (not even found the first step) and Andrew Coles' Clutch Lock which I have made some progress but am now all "locked up" with. 😱

Rainer Nearly Killed Me...Again!

Popplock T14

T13 unsolved

Every few years, Rainer Popp lets loose on the world the latest edition of his incredible series of beasts. It had been almost 3 years since the T13 was released and I (as well as the rest of the eager puzzling fraternity) had begun to anticipate the next one. This does remind me that I have so far completely failed to do anything with that one and it has been sitting on my puzzle tray next to my armchair for over 2 years. In fact it has been responsible for a significant part of the weight of it and upset Mrs S by marking the carpet. I really should get a move on and start work on it again.

I guess that a few people get to hear early when the latest release is coming but I had absolutely no idea when it was due to be released. In fact this one has been released in phases already. At Peter Hajek's End of Year Puzzle Party there were a good few people who showed it off and several others piped up to say they had been working on it for a while (including Allard. Whilst I gulped at the knowledge of the cost of it (handmade puzzles from brass and steel are never going to be cheap) I fired off an email to make an enquiry and was duly put on the waiting list. A few weeks later a VERY heavy box arrived and the sheer beauty of the creation was revealed. It is 1.7Kg! I received the dire warning of a painful death if I were to crack a tile or the kitchen granite and I insisted that it would only stay in the kitchen for long enough to take my photos. It was very quickly taken into the living room to be a couple of weeks of evening puzzling. It isn't much fun having nearly 2Kg of brass on your thighs and it doesn't mix well with china mugs!

It has rivets and dials and a key and...no bloody keyway! That's very odd. Reassuringly, the underside has Rainer's mark:

The only thing possible at this stage is to poke at things and try to push and pull stuff. Needless to say, not a lot is possible. A few things can be twiddled but that's about it. I spent a couple of evenings twiddling and alternating that with prodding and can only say that by pure chance doing the same thing over and over again actually made something change. Wow! There's a first time for everything.

In my usual manner I backed up to the beginning and tried again. It didn't work this time. That's odd! I was sure that I hadn't hallucinated it. I tried it a few more times until suddenly it worked again and I had an idea what was required. I had no idea how it worked that way but I could do it repeatably. With my discovery, I had a piece separate from the main body of the lock. What on earth was I supposed to do with that? Time to look and think© again. After all these years, I am still rubbish at this thinking business. If you look close enough then there is something obvious to see at this point but fiddling with that obvious item doesn't seem to do anything. It's time again for random movements until something happens. Just because you cannot see it doesn't mean that nothing is happening or changing whilst you carry out random moves. Discovering my second item I could see what my random moves had done and why they had the desired effect. My second item is MUCH more useful straight away - YAY!

I had a keyhole at last but the key wouldn't go in it - there is a front and a back keyhole and they aren't aligned. Damn - he's a sneaky bugger!

And here I got stuck....for a very long time! By this stage I have a few pieces and none of them seem terribly useful even in combination. I suspect that this is the place where Allard spent a very long time as well. I spent over a week at this point with nothing I could even try. I did end up sneaking a little peak at the solution (these are nicely set out in stages to allow clues for just one step without revealing others). Interestingly, the step that was described was exactly what I had been trying to do for a week or more and not managed to make it happen. Did I have a defunct lock? Impossibly unlikely from Rainer but I fetched the device I had used all those years ago when I had locked up my Louvre puzzle:

It's amazing what you can do with an unfolded paperclip!

This amazing device showed me that the lock was fully functional and I put the lock back to the beginning again and put the unwanted tool away and started again. Even knowing what was needed and how it worked I still couldn't do it with the pieces of the lock. Why was that? Because I wasnt doing it right of course! It took another couple of days before I found the right technique and it's very very subtle. It requires the exact combination of moves and positioning to do the required thing but it works every time if done right - Phew!

Having done that elusive move, I'd like to say the rest was plain sailing but I can't. I am not terribly bright because I was only able to do the next couple of moves before getting stuck again.

I'm not going to give much away here but at this point the key is useful in several ways - mostly unexpected ways. The most important movement to be done is a bit of a shock when you do it. The clue to do it comes by a careful examination of the entire exterior of the puzzle and having a think©. At this point I was thinking the impossible or even the slightly unfeasible. I thought to myself

"Self, that cannot be possible!"

Of course, with Rainer, the impossible is actually quite likely. After a bit of wrestling I noticed a teeny tiny change and continued what I was doing and got the fright of my life! I had sort of understood that it was going to happen but when it did, it was quite a shock! The engineering in this thing is incredible! 

It was still not over! I had thought that the huge move might be it but there was still more to be done. The next steps were quite logical but nicely disguised and it took a few minutes to find out what was needed. Suddenly, I had an open lock and a breathless admiration for Mr Popp's ingenuity - this might be the best one yet!

There is absolutely nothing given away in this picture

I have taken a photo of all the pieces that I had at the end and it is breathtaking! This will definitely be in my top ten(ish) of 2025.

The reassembly is a perfectly logical sequence and only takes a couple of minutes. Now that I know the solution, the whole process (including the difficult step) can be done quickly and easily in no time at all. Every single time I do it I find myself with a very big grin on my face! Amazing!

Thank you Rainer - keep doing what you do, it is fabulous. I look forward to the T15 in a couple of years.

PicoLock

Definitely Not a Trillionth (10^-12) of a Puzzle!

PicoLock from Boaz Feldman

It's beautifully presented

Ouch! Allodynia after surgery is a bit of a bugger! It is not helping me solve puzzles! It is very hard to prevent clothing touching your groin whilst sitting or moving or doing much of anything. I'll leave you with an image of me maybe solving puzzles naked to try and decrease my pain! 🤣🤣🤣😈

I watched as a bunch of people picked up the latest locks from Boaz Feldman and always intended to buy them for myself. This was especially reinforced when Allard reviewed both Loophole and the PicoLock and really seems to enjoy them. But with me being me, I kept buying gorgeous wood and kept running out of money before I bought the new shiny locks. Eventually, I managed to save up enough cash and quickly sent it to Boaz before any more wood showed up and both the latest puzzle locks arrived at the beginning of December. I took my customary photos and set to work on the Loophole first (encouraged by Allard's review) and having failed to turn the key I looked elsewhere and, you guessed it, failed to find anything else! Yep so far I have found NOTHING useful. I put it down and played with a few other shiny things that had arrived at roughly the same time and then, having been coshed by Tramadol, stopped solving anything for a little while. I put the locks aside on my newly cleared desk for later investigation.

Then, just before New Year's eve a bunch of us attended Peter Hajek's End of year Puzzle Party (EPP) and had to show off our favourites from 2023. A few people did mention the PicoLock as in their top three from the year and with the sheer calibre and experience of these puzzlers, I was very quickly enticed back to the locks. This time I decided to try and decrease my frustration and try the PicoLock. I had been Think©ing about the Loophole but my mind was blank.

PicoLock is a standard Nabob padlock from Israel which has been obviously tampered with. There is a hole in the side through which you can sort of see into the keyway and on the opposite side something has been drilled and filled. Boaz always provides the key on one of those wire keyring things keep it safe. 

Yes, I know that it won't be helpful but I have to do it - I put the key into the lock and turn. We all know that it won't be helpful but if we don't do it then those pesky voices won't stop muttering in the back of your head ("maybe it might to something or maybe you might learn something"). I probably should worry about those voices in my head! I turned the key and.... it wouldn't turn! Not entirely unexpected. Time to inspect it properly and see what you can see/do. I often use the light on my phone to illuminate holes etc and as a man of a certain age, use the magnifier function of the phone to be able to properly see inside said holes. Not terribly helpful. Poking at the holes with the tip of the key and my fingernails is not helpful and I'm beginning to worry that it will be another total failure. 

As is pretty common for me, I completely ignore what I have already learned (Mrs S says it is because I am not terribly bright and I can't argue with her) and I reinsert the key into the keyway and this time it turns. Huh!!!! Why now? Some further fiddling revealed something interesting and gives a hint of what Boaz might have done. He's a sneaky bugger! This interesting thing starts me on some of my usual tricks to try on locks and for a very long time, I couldn't to anything until, Aha! I could do something. It was only a small thing I did but it opened up a very unusual step. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen a puzzle lock do that before. After this unusual step, I received a tool and had no idea what to do with it. I was stuck for a while. Time to Think© yet again... Ouch!

At this point, I realised that something special might be possible (no clues here!) The next part of the sequence was classic Boaz - stuff was hidden from you in very clever ways and only Think©ing would find it. I then found another wonderful thing which led to a really clever manoeuvre - in fact, I really cannot believe that he managed to do what he did. After the best part of a day of play, I had an open lock and a huge grin on my face:

There really are NO spoilers here

I can see why this was in the top three puzzles of 2023 for several puzzlers. It is fabulous! I was significantly helped by buying and paying with two at the same time. There is a subtle difference between them that gave me a little clue for one of the steps. You definitely need to buy two puzzles to help Boaz and definitely help yourself with a clue.

I think this might be one that I might take to work to show off to colleagues. I think the orthopods in particular might appreciate the metalwork that has been created here.

If you live in the Americas then it may be easier for you to buy it/them from PuzzleMaster here and here.