Looking a Gift Horse (or Dragon or Lock or Wire Thingy) in the Mouth

It's a horse!

I have a very good puzzle friend in the Far East who is very good to me and always on the look out for puzzles that he thinks I might enjoy. We email often and I am constantly amazed at the sheer breadth of his puzzling knowledge and skills. I also am amazed when he sends me the occasional package. These packages contain puzzles that he has found for me or managed to obtain from his own friends. He never accepts payment for them so these are always gifts. Occasionally he asks me to source puzzles for him and I buy them and send them his way (which I am always delighted to do) but the majority of the giving is to my advantage. I consider myself a very lucky man to have such a great friend. Mrs S doesn't favour him so much because a lot of the puzzles are jingly and you all know how she hates that - the laser burning stare is terribly painful! I have told her this time that I can never look a gift horse in the mouth - this time literally.

Some time ago I received another package of puzzles from him which included some rare disentanglement puzzles and some new designs from Wang Yulong. The first one that I attempted was The Horse by Binary Arts - produced in 1985. I had noticed this many years ago and tried a time or two to get one on ebay but always missed it by a few $$. Knowing how much I love N-ary puzzles, my friend managed to get me this copy and I have to say it is lovely. In fact it is pretty enough that it sits on show next to me on my shelves unlike my other disentanglement puzzles which get shoved into a drawer. I love that the string in this is a piece of leather just like the reins of a real horse. The aim, obviously, is to remove the loop of cord and the wooden block which impairs movements. There are a few moves that need to be done in the right sequence - it is a lovely satisfying thing to do. Even Mrs S said it was a pretty one.

Well trained horse - not run away with the reins off

I must be locking crazy!

Haleslock 1 with instructions

An extra post today just to show off something that arrived from my buddy Shane. I have known for ages that Shane has been working on another lock - this is the Haleslock 1 and is the first puzzle that Shane has produced for sale. He made a "big bunch" (don't ask how many) and let puzzlers know by email. We all did him proud as the whole lot all sold out in just a few hours - this shows just how sought after his work is. There will still be a few available from a number of other puzzle lock outlets/sellers but I am not sure when this will be as he still has to put them together.

For some strange reason Shane keeps insisting on sending me puzzle number 01 of whatever comes out and I am hugely grateful to him.

Lock number 01

So far I have done a little exploring and noticed the "obvious" features and had a play. Unlike Shane, who has been a professional locksmith, I have very little idea of the details of how locks work and suspect that this will keep me stumped for quite some time! With all of Shane's puzzles the "rules" are that they can never be sold on - if a puzzler no longer wants one then it should be returned to him (like a puzzle loan) but with this series he has relaxed the rules. These can be sold on but Shane would like to keep track of where they are and so he should be notified when they are sold and who to. Good luck getting one - there are not many and they went to select puzzlers around the world so I doubt many will be resold any time soon.

I have already received a couple of the interval puzzles - including his fantastic "Imitation" puzzle lock based on a design by Marcel Gillen and marvelled at the workmanship that went into making something like that at home. From the pictures it looks like an ordinary padlock but just like the Gillen lock there is a distinct knack to opening it.

Looks just like a simple lock!

Took a fair while to open

I think Shane must be taunting me because he knows that I have still not managed to open the Popplock that I received a couple of weeks ago at the MPP. It does all sorts of strange things but I still cannot open the damned thing! I'm just not very bright.

The other Hales interval puzzle that I have and which sits in my dining room looking lovely with all the other wooden beauties is the Wirecutter. This was reviewed by Allard here and is based on a very clever physical principal. In a slightly simpler form, it is used to embarrass apprentice joiners and I have to say that it took me a good hour to work out what was going on and be confident enough to do what was required. Of course Shane would not have left it as the basic version - he added something to make it a little tougher and it had me stumped. The initials are  proudly displayed!

Wire cutter

Thanks for everything mate - you have once again done the puzzle world a great service!

You have nothing to fear......

Except fear itself!

Lucky Clover - it frightened me to death!

It's Valentine's day and Mrs S loves me enough to let me continue my hobby even on this special day! However I had better not take too long at it and risk losing her good will - a Whack! Ouch! would not be good today!

About a year ago I was at an MPP which was held at Allard's house and Wil was also present. As usual, I spent a fair bit of money that I didn't have lining Wil's bank account and at some point that day Wil showed off the Lucky Clover puzzle. This gorgeous thing was designed by Hans van der Zon who seems to have been moderately prolific at designing what I call sequential movement puzzles. When Wil showed me (and Jamie too) the wonderful clickety clack movements and the sheets of paper giving numerous challenges then I (and he) just couldn't resist. I bought it immediately and Jamie did too when he had saved up the cash.

Most of Hans' puzzles are made by laser cutter at LaserExact in the Netherlands and the quality is just superb. It is a great weight to hold (not too light and flimsy but not too heavy) and 13.4mm square. It is sold in a box with 3 sheets of paper with the various challenges/patterns you need to aim for and the extra pieces that effectively bandage the movements to give more challenges and also make it much MUCH tougher!

Constructing another in the series

In the picture above you can see the beautiful accuracy with which these are made. Even the screws are acrylic and turn smoothly. There are 3 square sheets of paper each with 4 conformations to aim for.

Fourfold and a brief MPP tale

Fourfold

Today will need to be a fairly quick blog post. I spent all day yesterday down in Birmingham at the 21st Midlands Puzzle Party and so really owe the present Mrs S some of my time this weekend. She has had me doing chores and the weekly shopping but has generously allowed me to write my weekend post as long as I don't spend too long. I don't want to risk a Whack! Ouch! or worse so this is a quickie (but still a good puzzle to be reviewed).

The puzzle pictured above is the Fourfold puzzle which I bought from Tomas Linden's Sloyd puzzle store. It was designed by Ad van der Schagt who seems to have been reasonably prolific in several puzzle areas. Puzzle Master have some of his burr designs and Sloyd have quite a few disentanglement designs. I picked this because it looked horrific with a very long string intertwining everything and because it was rated as 4 stars out of a possible 4 in difficulty by the producers - Eureka puzzles. I have had quite a few new disentanglement puzzles recently and have singularly failed to solve most of them. Either I have lost my mojo or I have picked out some seriously tough puzzles to work on! I took the Fourfold to work one day in the hope of finding a moment to have a play. Several of my colleagues were fairly horrified at the complexity of it and I expressed the fear that a very large knot may ensue which I might not be able to undo. But these challenges are sent to try us!

A Burrtastic (but painful) Week! A Wish Come True!

Mimicry

Last week's blog post was all about metal puzzles - I did manage a short abstinent period but I'm very easily swayed and it only takes a little push to have me back playing with my wood! In the middle of January I received a couple of new puzzles from Jakub Dvořák of the New Pelikan Workshop and a few days later they were made generally available for you all to buy. This gorgeous looking burr has kept me occupied for a couple of weeks and I finally managed to solve it last Friday. This one is called Mimicry and is designed by the incredible Christoph Lohe whose designs always seem to add something new and fun to explore. This puzzle is not yet on Puzzlewillbeplayed so there was no chance for me to cheat by looking up the pieces and entering them into Burrtools.

Jakub and Jaroslav have made this with their usual extreme perfection and every move has just the right amount of resistance. It is 77mm cubed and made of Maple, Purpleheart and Wenge. At level 27.18 it is a real challenge. Christoph says this about the design:

"This design exists of six 2x2 sticks of length 6 in an unusual 6x6x6 frame which I think has never been used before. The frame consists of twelve 4x1 rods which are connected by eight internal corner voxels. Because of these internal corners, the puzzle is densely packed. The sticks are bicolored and the frame is tricolored to result in a unique 27.18 solution. Ignoring the colors there are more than thousand solutions, starting from level 1. The name 'Mimicry' was selected as the outer appearance looks like six 2x4 sticks of length 6."

Of course when I was offered the chance to buy it, I couldn't resist! I love my burrs but really like a level that is challenging and fun. As my friend Jose Dias says; "any puzzle with too high a level ceases to be fun and becomes work", I can honestly say that whilst level 27 sounds very high, it is actually a perfectly solvable puzzle by anyone with a little bit of burr experience. There is a little bit of work because there are quite a lot of blind ends in the solution path, but they are not so long that you risk getting lost. The correct path is long and winding and has a few tricky moves but never enough to dishearten you.

Enticed away from Wood by a Friend?

Wil's Metal delivery

All that wood!

You are all aware by now that I seem to have developed a bit of a wood fetish over the last few years! With all the gorgeous stuff being produced by Jakub, Brian M, Brian Y, Stephan, Alfons and Eric, I have an inexhaustible supply of stunning wood to drool over and play with. Many would say that it's not good for a man to play with his wood so much and I heed their worries by intermittently playing with wire, metal or plastic. So far this has prevented me from developing hairy palms but the fear of going blind always keeps me on the lookout for more variety in my puzzling media.

It was with great 'relief' that I received a nice new newsletter from my favourite Dutchman giving notice of a new pair of puzzles that he had finally brought into production and luckily for my mental and physical health, these would take me away from my beloved wood! Above you see an ingenious new burr puzzle called the Heavy Metal Triangle designed by a Mr Gong (who I have not heard of before and who doesn't seem to appear on Ishino's site) as well as Wil's own Sweta cross. The transaction was organised with Wil and I expected to pick it up at the next MPP in February but a few days later a package arrived much to the disgust of Mrs S who is really getting a bit fed up with all the deliveries she is having to answer the door to. She knew immediately who it was from because of the enormous amount of parcel tape covering the box from top to bottom - it's a Strijbos signature!

Is this a new puzzle category?

Compressed (NOS1)

Round Trip (NOS3)

In December, Eric Fuller returned from his rather prolonged road trip and bamboozled us with quite a few nice new toys to choose from. I was just a bit cash strapped again, having been hit by several puzzler designers/craftsmen in a short space of time. I decided that I had to buy these 2 puzzles and pass on the others no matter how much I wanted them! At this point in time drooling was only going to make me dehydrated and not actually help me obtain more toys. Having spent the cash, I waited, and waited and waited for weeks. The tracking on the US post website said they were in the UK and the Royal mail site acknowledged it but did not say where they had gone. After 3 weeks, I got rather fed up and called them.  They were, I was told, being held by customs and they would only return to the website once released. So I waited and waited even longer. I'd more or less given up hope when they suddenly arrived in my mail with no final customs demand and no sign that they had even been looked at! Phew! They were entirely intact!

They came out of the packaging and posed for photos. Mrs S, quite rightly this time, said that they looked quite like several others I had and also looked like the ones I had been constructing from those 3 burrsets I had acquired earlier. Obviously Mrs S does pay some attention to my never ending stream of acquisitions. I could not do what she does when I ask if a pair of shoes or clothing is new! She always replies:

"oh no I've had this for ages - don't you remember that I bought it last year?"

I can't argue with her because there is such a continual influx of girls stuff that I have ceased to pay any attention to what it is! But she has answered the door to postie with my stuff and knows whenever I get something new!

She is quite right however to say that they do look suspiciously familiar - they look remarkably like 6 piece burrs. But I said to her and I say to you:

These are something TOTALLY NEW! They might be a completely new puzzle category.

The response was a snort and the comment that I always say that with every puzzle that arrives. Guilty as charged I guess - but I'm sure that I don't declare that they are a new category every time. To prove to her that there is something special - I just move a piece in Compressed and a few pieces in Round Trip and show her a hint of what is inside. There are some very odd shapes in there! I just get a blank look in return. I don't argue because the smell of burning flesh from the laser burning stare is becoming overwhelming and I don't want to risk a Whack! Ouch! until I have had a chance to play.

Beautifully Camouflaged

or beautiful AND camouflaged!

In which I describe burrs and twisty puzzles with a common theme and obtain more punishment from Mrs S.

Portico puzzles

I posted on my New additions page that on Christmas Eve I had just received a wonderful surprise gift from Jakub, the co-owner of Pelikan puzzles. He had sent to me an advance copy of two puzzles designed by Stéphane Chomine (note that after a small fracas on Facebook, Stéphane is not publishing new designs on Ishino's site). These two are the Little Portico and the Portico J and they look very similar to the Guillotine burr designed by the hugely talented Yavuz Demirrhan - they look to be a sort of mirror arrangement to the guillotine which fascinates me. These two puzzles are not yet up for sale on Pelikan's site but keep an eye out because Jakub did post them on his personal Facebook page as a preview of things to come. I always say, whenever I get something new from them that at this moment in time the Pelikan puzzles are the most perfectly made in the world - fit and finish is just superb.

Thought Outside the Box and.....Failed! So....

....thought back in it again!

Triagonal Agony

First new post of the year and this is a brilliant puzzle that really kept me going - proving that I am not terribly bright!

Back in November I had a little epiphany about packing puzzles....I needed to start thinking outside the box. One of the most important triggers for this was a brilliant puzzle that I bought from Eric Fuller - the One Hole designed by Bram Cohen. But even before this I had a trial run when Brian Menold sold me a beautiful copy of the L-I-Vator cube designed by Laszlo Molnar (apparently who is also known as Lacika Kmolnar). The L-I-Vator taught me that there were quite a few steps to be done between assembly of the basic shape outside of the box and the actual packing it in. The requirement for rotations of more than one of the pieces made it a really fun challenge and I loved it. It was not hugely difficult but certainly had a couple of brilliant A-ha! moments.

When Brian announced that he was producing another of Laszlo's creations, the Triagonal Agony, I promised myself that I would jump as soon as the went up for sale. I was actually on-line at the moment that Brian made his announcement that they were up for sale and quickly added my preferred one to my shopping cart along with another beauty (the Tropical Fish). There is an odd quirk of the shopping cart that Brian uses that allows puzzles already in someone's cart to be snatched out by someone else buying before the original purchaser gets to the checkout. This has happened to me several times over the years and Brian always tries to make good on it if you ask him about it. Apparently it was my turn to do the snatching! Hooray! I got there first! I ripped the copy out of someone else's cart when I paid. A day or so later Brian emailed me to ask whether I would agree to let that one go and he would make me another copy using the same woods as my L-I-Vator cube. Well I hate to disappoint anyone and I trust Brian implicitly so of course I agreed and a few weeks later I received my new toys with the Triagonal Agony being made out of Holly and Marblewood to match my other puzzle.

Happy New Year - My best puzzles from 2015

Happy New Year to all my readers - may it be a happy, healthy and successful year for you all!

Yet again, my study was in a huge state of disarray and I was forced to tidy it up last weekend and can now provide photos of the state of the study! When she who frightens me to death shouts at me again, I will try to tidy up the rest and take some more pics to show off. Here are the ones in my study for your perusal: (edited - she saw the nice tidy study and forced me to clean up the dining room and living room piles too - pictures added)

Above the computer we have some of my most prized possessions:

Ooh! Shiny shiny! And gorgeous wood!

To the left is my display of N-ary puzzles, Eyckmans specials, Fuller loveliness, Menold gorgeousness as well as Vinco's and Young! There are so many from Eric and Brian that they are getting intermingled!

Notice the bat in a privileged position 

To the right of my desk are hand made twisties as well as puzzle books and Interlocking puzzles from Bernhard (and a few others) Packed VERY tightly!

Katie watches my every move!

Finally in the study on display are my Pelikan lovelies and the incredible work (most of it) from Stephan Baumegger. Some are on display in the living room and dining room!

How much more wood can a man take?

Since I published this post at midnight she made me tidy up more and here are the results:

Larger and special puzzles in the dining room:

Stickmen, Hales puzzles, Heyns Puzzles, Burrsets, and a monster from Bill Cutler

On a lamp table are some gorgeous but smaller toys that Mrs S seems to approve of:

Specials from Brian Menold, Scott Peterson puzzles, KCubes and a beauty from Jakub

 Finally on a basket on the floor are my special burrs that meet "her" approval:

Fuller Burrs, Baumegger special 6 piece burrs and Arteludes beauties

For the last few years on New Years Day I have been posting a summary of my favourite puzzles that I solved in the preceding year. This always coincides with the emailed vote that Peter Hajek takes of the puzzle world for his End of year Puzzle Party (EPP) and publishes shortly after. However there is a major difference between the result that Peter seeks to mine - he asks for the top 3 puzzles that a collector has acquired in the previous 12 months and for me I only include the top puzzles that I have solved in that time. I use a combination of my database and my photo gallery to work out which ones were solved when. It is a lovely excuse to peruse back and drool over all the gorgeous toys I have played with.