An N-ary puzzle to N'd all other N-ary puzzles!

So exciting - N more N-ary puzzles!

Over the last 2 years I have developed a bit of an addiction to N-ary puzzles. Yes I know I have developed an addiction to ALL puzzles but I really am trying to narrow down my interests a little bit. I'm struggling but promise that I'm trying really hard. Certainly one group that I am particularly keen to get more of, is the group that are mathematically based - i.e. they are based on Gray binary code.

Ternary Burr

I have written about a few of them before - One of my all time favourites is the Hexadecimal puzzle which is still available and beautifully reproduced by Dave Janelle of Creative Crafthouse - I wrote about it here. It is particularly fun because it has several challenges to keep you going over a long time.  Here I wrote about the Binary burr, recreated by Eric Fuller from Bill Cutler's original design and along with Goh Pit Khiam's amazing Ternary burr which Eric also reproduced a few months later - these were also amongst my favourite N-ary puzzles, partly for the craftsmanship, but especially because they combined my love of burr puzzles with N-ary puzzles. So you see, I am particularly keen when one of these beautiful logical puzzles also combines aspects of another subtype too. I did mention a while ago that I had received another small [sic!] batch from Wil Strijbos - they were the latest designs from the amazing Jean Claude Constantin and I am really pleased to say that some of them are also available from Puzzle Master too.

Of course, some of the puzzles in this group are boxes, but many of my puzzle friends know that I don't collect boxes and so would never have one of the magnificent Kcubes in my collection! Would I? Of course not - I have 2 of them! ;-)
The KCubes MMMDXLVI box has such a small cavity that I decided that it wasn't a box and thus I was allowed to own one. It requires 3,546 moves and is made of Kingwood, Tulip wood, Mun Ebony, and brass inlay with Tulip wood. It usually takes me about 90 minutes to open it because I invariably get lost during the process. Mrs S has admitted that it (and it's smaller brother the K419) are so gorgeous that they can remain on show in our living room on the central coffee table.

I am not the only one to have a huge addiction to N-ary puzzles - my very good friends Michel and Goetz often communicate with me about these particular puzzles and I do get informed of new ones often before they hit the market and then we discuss them a little without giving too much away. For more information about this fascinating group, you really should visit Goetz' Compendium of N-ary puzzles - he has analysed many of them in great detail and also have a look at his treatise on the Kugellager puzzles here - these pages are a tremendous resource for us all.

Having received so many at once I did ask for advice about the order to start them in and I started working my way through them. The first one that I played with was probably the most attractive of all.

Arrow Dynamics plus a special N-ary puzzle

Arrow Dynamics

Just a short blog post today! This week I have been away at a medical conference for a couple of days and then off on leave for the rest of the week. You might think that this would give me plenty of time for puzzling and blogging but she with the 'cat-o-nine tails tongue' and the laser stare had other ideas! Every time I settled down to try and play with something, I was given another chore to do or some DIY! Finally towards the end of the week the cats went into the cattery (much to their disgust) and we headed off for a very nice relaxing long weekend in North Yorkshire where I proceeded to eat and drink too much and managed absolutely no puzzling whatsoever! I did take this one with me in the hope that I could solve it and write about it - but as you can see it might be called "jingly" and the fear of retribution came over and hit me with paralysing accuracy. I got home a while ago and having unpacked and had a refreshing (and finally non-alcoholic) drink and was given kind permission to play with this whilst she pottered out of earshot.

This is the Arrow dynamics puzzle from Puzzle Master's own range of wire disentanglements. I have almost the entire set now and I think this must be the last of the high level ones for me to try. It is a good price at $18 and is level 10 (Mind Boggling) at the top of their difficulty scale. It is clamshell packaged and the simple instructions are just to remove the arrow (inside it reminds you that no force or bending is necessary). It is made of beautifully anodised thick wire and is good and strong - dimensions are 35.6 x 10.2 x 2.5cm. No solution is provided but it can be obtained on request at this link.

MiBinity 1 - Allard Got There First...

And He Is Right Yet Again!

MiBinity 1
A collaboration between Michel van Ipenburg and Jack Krijnen

Quite a long time ago, Michel sent out an email to a group of his friends telling us all that he has been working with Jack to create something that anyone with an interest in N-ary puzzles would be delighted to own: "would we like to buy a copy for our collections?"

I think that about a nano-second went by before I emailed back to say that I was in! As you know, I have a bit of an addiction to N-ary puzzles (I still need to order some of the latest ones from Stephan Baumegger but I have sort of run out of money recently for after my latest purchases). I also cannot resist anything made by Jack - he doesn't produce may puzzles but when he does they are amazing. There was a short delay once everyone had replied to Michel and Jack made the correct number. It arrived in a surprisingly neat little package. 

The original design remit was to make a 3-piece N-ary burr and just this description alone caught my attention - how can you make a significantly difficult burr with 3 pieces to be challenging? And how can you possibly make a 3 piece N-ary burr? Well, this combination of puzzlers made it not just possible but really good. 

The small leaflet included

Challenges listed

On the  other side of the leaflet was a list of challenges - who can resist?

The puzzle is beautiful to look at and very tactile - it is an interesting burr that only moves in 2 dimensions. I don't think that I have seen anything like it before. I am very used to pushing and pulling in 3D that this new idea must have upset me somehow because I found it a little confusing at first. The key to an N-ary puzzle is to find the repeating patterns and I struggled to do that with this one.

After a few moves

Each of the pieces moves along an axis back and forth along a track that Jack has cut in the inside. To make it N-ary there must be more than one track - there is indeed one on each side of the inside of the puzzle. Being able to see small segments of the tracks doesn't seem to help much with the solution - it's all down to exploration. I'm a little ashamed to admit that it took me 2 or 3 days to work it out properly.

Two different tracks show how the N-ary solution is created

Having worked out the correct repeating sequence, it gets much easier. At level 25.5, this is not a hugely difficult puzzle but it is very different from everything else in my collection. This is a delight and I am hopeful that there will be a MiBinity 2.

Have I managed all the challenges? I dismantled it, I found 2 maker's marks and mostly explained the name. Fab!

Finding the First Steps Usually Helps...

but not in every case!

Lock & Key

Always useful to have a diagram

Only level 7!

I seem to buy a LOT of puzzles from my friend Aaron Wang! I don't solve very many puzzles from my friend Aaron Wang! I put this down to a deficiency in my own brain because the puzzles are all very nicely made and well illustrated with an instruction diagram. Plus, I know that Aaron himself has solved them all - many of them he solves in his head. You would think that I should have no problem with these, I have had lots of practice and have a lot of empty space in my head (according to Mrs S) so there should be plenty of room for solving. Alas, that does not appear to be the case...not even occasionally. I think I have only managed to solve 1 of the previous batch which was allegedly a level 9. The MUCH easier level 7, Telescope (pictured right), still has me beaten. I keep all the ones to be solved in a little basket in the conservatory where I can idly pick one up periodically and do battle before putting it back having been humbly beaten yet again.

During the week, I had an idle 15 minutes with no assigned chores and some time to myself. I, yet again, picked up the rather beautiful Lock & Key puzzle, designed by the rather incredible DDK who is responsible for rather a lot of designs that I cannot solve. I keep returning to this one because it looks lovely and also there is a quick release in the string for the (frequent) occasion when a knot is formed. I have to say that I think that ALL string type puzzles should come with these as I have permanently murdered a few puzzles by getting into an awful tangle that I could not return from. It is hard to tell from the picture but it is not actually obvious how to start the puzzle solve - there is no direction to feed the string that screams go this way. In actual fact the first step on this one requires a twist of the loop which I always hesitate with. Eventually I bit the bullet and just tried a few different first steps and always ended up in either a knot or a dead end and had to restart. This time, however, I tried something and realised with a start that this puzzle is N-ary! I had had thoughts but wasn't really sure until this point. 

I lurve N-ary puzzles and this one is particularly fun - it is fiddly due to small rings and quite easy to get lost in the sequence and find yourself at an impasse or back where you came from. Having had my Aha! moment and made what looked like progress, I found myself at another spot where it wasn't really clear how to progress (another first step problem). This time I stuck with it and tried a few different "late first steps" and food what I was looking for - the N-ary sequence was underway again. After getting lost a couple of times I could breathe a sigh of relief and put it down ready for a new photo:

At last - 5 months of attempts!

I will be using the clasp to reset it and then solving again before attempting the reverse assembly process.

Having solved that one which I belatedly realised was N-ary, I had yet another try at the Ratchet puzzle (bought in September 2001) which quite obviously was N-ary:

Ratchet - beautifully made in steel

Diagram less helpful?

As soon as you look at it, you know that it is N-ary. The initial step in the solution was also not immediately obvious to me. There is a tiny clue to the first step in the wiring diagram but it is very subtle and I had missed it for 5 months. I should have found it much sooner but being made of steel, this one is not just jingly - it clangs and clanks! If you think that jingling upsets Mrs S then you should see what clanging does! The bruises were visible from a distance! I could only play with this infrequently when I was properly alone. After solving the Lock & Key and filled with N-ary strength, I started on Ratchet (this one had been entered into the 2022 IPP design competition) and for the first time had an Aha! moment - I found something special and then was able to see it on the diagram. Progress at last!

And that is where it stopped. Having found an obvious first step, I cannot convert it into a second step! The string is quite long which will almost certainly be deliberate and unfortunately there is no quick release mechanism so when I try a few things, I quickly get scared of a knot and return to the beginning. To be perfectly honest, all the possible second steps that I have attempted have not really led to anything good anyway.  

Alas, just because I find a first step does not necessarily mean I can find the next. It has gone back in my naughty basket of puzzles still to be solved - Sigh.

If you would like to be tortured by Aaron then he shows off his creations on his Facebook page.

A Chance For You to Win and Perseverance Pays Off...

MiSenary Box from Michel van Ipenburg and Robrecht Louage
It's being auctioned for charity on Puzzle Paradise

OK! Normal service resumed! My first week back at work was fairly horrific! I had got quite used to getting up at 8am instead of just before 6 and definitely got used to having a very leisurely start to the day! After 7 weeks off for recuperation (including a week of annual leave) I got thrown in at the deep end and had to sink or swim with 3 of VERY big complex cases! Luckily, after 25 years as an anaesthetist I had not forgotten everything and the patient survival rate was 100%!! I, on the other hand, was absolutely shattered! I was so tired and haven't been able to solve anything all week! Thank goodness I have a few things saved up to write about.

I'm going to start off with a lovely little puzzle which I bought from my friend Michel van Ipenburg and which you now have the chance to win in a charity auction. I have communicated with him for several years now and know he is one of the foremost puzzlers in Europe with tremendous skills at both solving as well as design. I got to meet him for the first time in person at the IPP in Paris last year and enjoyed playing with his latest design in the design competition. The MiSenary box has a strange name which I did not fully understand at the time (partly because I did not realise it was Michel's entry). It is a box....yes I know! I don't collect boxes, but I DO collect N-ary puzzles and this is a Box AND N-ary. In fact, being 7-ary and made by Mi-chel, it is actually MiSenary. Get it? Yeah! It took me a while.

I first picked this up at one of the design competition tables and had absolutely no idea what was going on inside (the description did not hint at being N-ary). There are things sliding around inside as you rock it back and forth and sometimes it opens a bit and other times closes a bit. Occasionally it seems to close all the way and others it won't. I was totally confused and expressed this to Goetz, who was sitting next to me playing with something else. It was he who finally told me that it was N-ary and he finally had pity on me and said that someone had left it at a midway point of the solution. He gently took it from me and using what seemed to me to be a fantastically complex sequence of moves with multiple turns and twists, he reset it to the beginning and handed it back saying it was ready for me to solve. I am sure I must have looked rather foolish looking at him with my mouth agape but he was polite enough to not mention it. I played again for another 10 minutes or so before it was time for another event and needless to say, being not terribly bright, I got absolutely nowhere with it. I just had no inkling of what was happening inside.

Over the 3 days of the IPP I kept going back to it (it was usually partly solved when I picked it up) and at no point did I manage to understand it. Mental note to self.....buy one of these after IPP if Michel makes them available.

At the beginning of November Michel let me know that he had made a second batch of the box and offered me a chance to purchase one. Needless to say I practically bit his emailed hand off! The whole world knows that I am a sucker for N-ary puzzles and having struggled so much during IPP I could not possibly resist (Mrs S says I seem unable to resist any puzzles and she has a point!) Just before Xmas a nicely packaged copy arrived - mine is no 1 out of 10 from batch 2. It would appear that Ali had also got one and promptly opened his so I set straight to it. This time I spent time looking through the slot at the front at the grid and tried to imagine what it was. I slowly experimented and got things moving. An small inkling began and I made about 10 moves before having a minor panic attack and back-tracking and failing to manage it! Aaaargh! I was stuck part way into it. Yet again I had moved without really visualising what I was doing. Mrs S told me in no uncertain terms that I had to put it down because it was Xmas eve and I had to cook - it was cheese fondue (yummy!).

After dinner and having eaten more cheese in one sitting than I should have eaten in 2 or 3 months, I settled down with Mrs S in front of the TV and made more attempts at the MiSenary box. In my cheese induced hallucinating state, I suddenly had a vision of what might be inside the box and what was happening as I made various moves. With lots of annoying muttering and counting to upset Mrs S I finally managed to open it. Very clever idea and beautifully made.

Solved! Michel and Robrecht say "Well done!"

This puzzle is a delight and you now have a chance to get hold of a copy for your own collection. The very last one in batch 2 and the last one that will ever be made has been put up for auction on Puzzle Paradise. It is 125x50x60mm in size made from Tropical hardwood, Trespa and Steel - Michel says that the copy for auction is the best looking of them all. If the price goes particularly high then Michel has said that he may add a bonus prize for the winner. The important thing is that the auction is for charity - the beneficiary will be The Antoni van Leeuwenhoek foundation / Netherlands Cancer Institute. This is a very worthy charity so please bid high and often.

---

Keep on trying.....

Back in March last year I showed off a nice big batch of puzzles designed and made by my friend Aaron Wang. I managed to solve a few over the subsequent weeks and one of those (Santa's socks) even became one of my top puzzles of 2017. The Clover was Aaron's entry into the design competition and was one of the most complex puzzles to solve from that batch but still possible for me within a reasonable amount of time. There were, however, 3 puzzles in the group that I struggled with....for months and months and months! I really don't know why they took me so long but I just could not seem to get my head round them at all.

Balance

Between Christmas and New Year's eve I got the 3 remaining puzzles out again - Mrs S was feeling mellow after Xmas and I decided to risk jingling a bit in the hope that firstly I might have a moment of genius (or more likely, luck) and secondly that I might get away without a Whack! Ouch! I was lucky on both counts. The aim of the Balance (and the theme of this bunch) is that the balls must end up grouped together on one side of the puzzle. The idea should have been very similar to the Wedding Vows puzzle from PuzzleMaster that I reviewed way back in May 2015. The Wedding vows looks impossible but with a bit of fiddling with the loop in the middle it quickly becomes clear what to do. I was certain that the Balance was a variant of this but for some reason I just could not see the trick to it. I went back to it on and off for 9 months without finding that breakthrough Aha! moment. I spent a whole evening fiddling with this and developing a knot in the centre of the puzzle around that pesky ring. After a couple of hours of back and forth I noticed something familiar. I must have been at exactly that position many many times over the 9 months and just not recognised what was going on. Having noticed that familiarity I knew what to do and a few minutes later I had this:

OMG! It took 9 months!

Balance IS very similar to the Wedding Vows puzzle but has just enough difference to it that it confused me a lot and took me such a long time. I am sure that most of you would be able to solve it within an hour but I, being not terribly bright, took a while! This one is not currently for sale as yet but a decent collection of Aaron's puzzles (he is also known as Wang Yulong) are available from the Felix puzzle company.

Elephant

The Elephant was immediately attempted after my success with Balance and again it kicked my butt! Just like Balance and Wedding Vows, the aim is to arrange the rings next to each other on one side of the puzzle. I thought that the same things I had done with balance would help me with Elephant and I set to. Oh boy! I was seriously wrong! I'm sure that you geniuses out there can see straight away that this one does not share much in common with Balance. The central loop is trapped but doesn't form the same string configuration as the previous 2 and again I got stuck! There was a fair bit of effing and blinding before Mrs S gave me "the look" and I put it down again.

Over the next few days I tried again and again to understand this damned puzzle. In the end I gave up on my thinking that it shared anything in common with the Balance and had a good look at it. Unfortunately looking doesn't help! It took me several hours before my Aha! moment occurred and it was fantastic!

At last!

It has a totally different solution path to Balance and is really clever! Unfortunately I am not really clever.... I couldn't reset the puzzle to the beginning. Luckily Aaron has started using these nice little catches on his puzzles to allow quick reset (especially if you have a big knot). I cheated with the catch and started again...it took me another 24 hours and I finally properly understood the puzzle. This puzzle forced me to think© and it hurt! Absolutely brilliant and finally time to crack the last remaining puzzle, Pinocchio.

Pinocchio

This puzzle again is similar in basic shape and premise to the antecedent but, with the extra ring and the loop in a different place, it was a significantly tougher challenge. Just like before I was filled with hope at my success at the Elephant and I immediately tried the same type of moves...I got a knot! Quite a big knot! Thank heavens for the catch again. Clearly this puzzle is totally different and I should have realised that Aaron would not release 2 puzzles with identical solutions at the same time!

I played with this one for a couple of weeks again and failed repeatedly. One morning in despair, I actually emailed Aaron to ask for just a small clue. Yes it was that bad! That very evening I had not had a reply and I sat down again with the puzzle and had a proper think. Something began to filter into my dense skull and I had an idea, tried it and failed but noticed something else. I tried something counterintuitive and AHA!!!!

My goodness! That was difficult!

The general technique is similar to the Elephant puzzle but the new morphology changes the exact sequence of moves. Half of it is quite simple and then it requires some fairly complex reorganisation of the string before the next critical move is possible! I was able to email Aaron back and tell him that no help was needed even before he had responded - Phew! That is one VERY clever puzzle.

All of these share a basic idea but have radically different solutions - they all need one to Think© which is something I am not good at.

Thank you Aaron, I cannot wait for some new ones from you!

Don't forget the auction on Puzzle Paradise everyone - bid high and often for charity!

What A Mammoth N-ary Effort!

Brass side

Steel side with monkey

The Blind Panic puzzle was Ali's IPP exchange. I received a copy at the MPP

It ooks and feels wonderful and is effectively a Panex (with one difference discussed later).

First of all, a little note to inform you that the OPUP remains packed and the Dovetail bar 2 remains a single piece! maybe I need another hobby?

I am having to work this weekend yet again and so only have a quick update on last week's challenge. I do maintain that I definitely am an eejit! I decided to finally work on the two puzzles that I own that are effectively Panex puzzles. I had thought for a while that the Panex was a "simple" N-ary puzzle and it "just" needed me to work out the pattern and then slog through.

Damn! That wasn't very bright! I should have realised that any so called N-ary puzzle that is more complex than the basic Chinese rings is not necessarily going to be straightforward. The clue should have come from the incredible puzzles sent to me by Aaron Wang over the years. I don't buy everything he has to sell because a. I can't really afford to buy them all and 2. some of them look impossible for human beings to solve! However, I have bought quite a few of his fancy N-ary designs and have solved very very few of them! Even the ones that are "just" N-ary have some very complex sequences that I often seem to get lost in and most of them remain unsolved and in my pile of puzzles reminding me of how rubbish I am at puzzling and, more importantly and dangerously, they are annoying Mrs S and tempting the cats into string swallowing. 😱

Street Lamp

Golden Gate Bridge

Both of these were bought last summer and both have ended up with me completely stuck.Thank heavens for the quick reset that Aaron installed. This should remind the unwary puzzler that many N-ary puzzles have rather a lot more to them than one might expect.

The Bell
Unsolved for several years!

How does that relate to the Panex? Well, I am not certain but I think the Panex is sort of N-ary but with patterns within patterns and the challenge is to find an approach in stages. It is not a simple thing to do and took me a week to complete a level 5 version. The Bell from Siebenstein Spiele is a very similar puzzle but has the advantage that the 3rd column is visible. I decided to solve the two puzzles in stages side by side. I started on the level 3 solve. It is trivial to move 3 disks from one arm to the empty arm like a Tower of Hanoi puzzle and then move the ano0ther one to where they came from:

⅔ of the way

Done it!

This was done fairly trivially on the Bell and then also on the Blind Panic. Success! I think must have taken me about 60 moves. Time to move to level 4 and OMG! it was not trivial. It can no longer be solved by using simple Tower of Hanoi sequences.

The first sequence is Tower of Hanoi and transfers one arm to the gap

It looks as if being able to do the sequence above is possible then all that is required is to do it again with the dark set of disks. But and it's an enormous BUT the way the Bell and Panex is constructed requires to use the top pathway as temporary storage as the disks are slid from one leg to the other. The problem when attempting a level 4 is that having moved the first sequence across to the middle leg the temporary storage that would be used is above that middle leg and it subsequently blocks movement of disks across the top to the other leg. It took me absolutely ages to realise that the Tower of Hanoi approach is impossible with this puzzle. The interesting thing with Ali's Blind Panic is that the path at the top of the puzzle is circular and also that the temporary storage is above the pile of pieces in an arm and not in the top path! 

This end result of this is that the two puzzles are not actually the same. They are almost equivalent but the crucial difference makes the Blind Panic much more approachable and more like a multi-layer  Hanoi puzzle. After a couple of days of play I solved the level 4 on the Bell and convinced myself I had a reasonable approach. A level 4 Panex should take 174 moves - I must have been several times that many:

Level 4 solved - this almost killed me!

Time to strat on the level 5 Bell and simultaneously solve the Blind Panic. It was more of the same but to me did not feel very logical. It took me a lot of back and forth, getting it wrong and starting again. I did the Blind Panic at the same time. My hands were rather sore but the end of another few days of work:

Level 5 solved!

Brass above the monkey

Apparently the level 5 Panex takes 461 moves as a minimum to solve but for me it must have been thousands and thousands as I made mistakes and had to backtrack or got lost and had to start sections again. I was mentally and physically exhausted after doing that and despite being elated, I have absolutely no plan to undo it and go back to the beginning using the same approach - I think it would kill me! The Bell puzzle can be unscrewed and this is exactly what I will be doing! Then there is the thought of completing the entire Bell puzzle (level 6) - OMG! NO! It should take a minimum of 1170 moves but I suspect it would be 10's of thousands for me and most of the rest of my remaining hair and my life! I'm afraid that the final solution to the Bell will never happen.

There has been quite a lot of mathematical analysis on the minimum number of moves that are required to solve the Panex puzzle and I don't really understand any of it. I do know that it is a LOT more moves than you would expect and the logic is really not obvious! Have a look at the papers linked from Nick Baxter's site - I did and it didn't help me much at all! 🤣

What about resetting the Blind Panic puzzle? There is a screw on top which I suspect can be undone and the puzzle pieces removed and replaced back in the start position. BUT, I am fairly convinced that that a simple Tower of Hanoi approach is possible for this puzzle because of the circular top pathway and the extra storage position in the top of each column. I am going to work on that for the next day or so and will report back to you next week!

Wish me luck!

I'm Rubbish at Puzzles!

A Week of Failure

Res Q

Over the last couple of weeks I might just have annoyed the hell out of Mrs S by taking ownership of a rather large number of additional beauties. I have photographed them all, catalogued them using Airtable and put them onto my dining room table for future play. This is because my study has turned into a shithole and there is literally no room to put more until I find time and energy to tidy up:

This is out of date - it's even worse than this now

Also my living room pile o' puzzles to play with has reached the point where it might fall over and Mrs S has threatened to commit mayhem upon my person if I muck up the living room any further. Unfortunately, with my work commitments (clinical and administrative) I seem to have very little time to actually play with my precioussss beauties. When I get home I either have to talk to "she who is so ferocious that I have been known to hide under the bed from her" or do various chores or cook. I do also like to read some sci-fi occasionally and am trying to keep to my year challenge of 15 books. 

After a small chat with Andrew (he who designed and created the fabulous Lock Out puzzle, I decided that I should try again to solve the ResQ that he had lent me. This wondrous creation was made by Eric Fuller (and design in collaboration with Frederic Boucher). I had wanted to buy my own copy but whilst logging in to PayPal and choosing a postal method it sold out from my cart and I missed out. A few weeks after Andrew had solved his copy (lucky bastard!) he offered to lend it to me because he felt it was something I should be reviewing on my site and he seemed not to want to write his own review and post it as a guest post here. He sent it to me way back in June and I set right to it and found something straight away (Yay!) and then hit a brick wall.

I played with it every evening for 3 weeks or so and never found anything else (shaking it gently certainly revealed that there probably was more than just a bunch of wooden blocks inside). In the end I put it down for a while to have a rest from it and to play with other toys - I desperately needed to solve things for the blog! True to my usual modus operandi, I would pick it up every week or so and play, get nowhere and put it down again. Recently Andrew nudged me and so did Derek so I tried again. The first play had found the first tool(s) but nowhere to use it/them. I have put this down to me being a man of a certain age and needing multifocal contact lenses to be able to read/puzzle as well as see the TV. Despite these wonders of modern science and the fact that the living room doesn't have blindingly bright light in the evening, I really couldn't see well enough to work out my next step. I told Derek, that this weekend I would take it into the conservatory and play in nice bright natural light. I did that both Saturday and Sunday and.....

NOPE!

Not got anywhere - I am rubbish at puzzles!

Then I moved onto some of the wonderful new designs that Aaron sent me - Many of his string based puzzles are ferociously difficult and frighten me to death but the wire only puzzles are less scary (I buy both types anyway). if you want to buy them then either contact Aaron via facebook or look at PuzzleMaster for them (I am sure that the latest ones should be in stock soon). I thought that I would start with one of the easier ones - Dig ears is a level 9 on Aaron's scale (which I really don't understand) and to my very gullible eyes, looked really quite possible to a puzzler of very feeble brain.  Dear Lord! I was terribly wrong - if this is an easier one from the batch then I am in serious trouble! I have greatly upset Mrs S by jingling away every evening for a week and then swearing aloud when I got nowhere - at least it doesn't get tangled into a knot! I must keep trying! 

I cannot seem to do it!

Not got anywhere - I am rubbish at puzzles!

Thinking that maybe Aaron had just rated it incorrectly, I moved to the first one from the Sax trio - a level 10 but I have done others of that difficulty:

These look absolutely fabulous and should be as much fun as the Scissors were. They had taken me quite a while but I did get some good Aha! moments fairly early on. I have played with Sax 1 and 2 and managed...

Absolutely nothing!

Not got anywhere - I am rubbish at puzzles!

What about some N-ary puzzles? I can hear you say that you are quite good at N-ary puzzles. I should probably see someone about these voices that keep appearing in my head. I had received a few rather beautiful N-ary puzzles in the batch and usually, once you have worked out a rough system then the solution is quite logical. I started with probably the most beautiful metal N-ary puzzle I have ever seen - Hippocampus.

Yes it is wonderful! Yes, it is easy - I should imagine that on Aaron's difficulty scale of 1 to 10 it must be a minus 52. It's a lovely little thing and having solved something, I moved on to another of the N-ary puzzles. These are rather special and come in a lovely box:

Nice box for storage and protection in transit

I picked what I thought might be the easiest of the 3 complex N-ary puzzles, Cableway. Goetz has done a preliminary analysis which looked promising and sort of confirmed that the others would be MUCH more difficult.

I have spent an hour so far and, to my eternal shame, have not even found a vague idea of a pathway/mechanism. The vertical rods attached to the base really get in the way. I had sort of hoped that it might be a variant on a Chinese rings but alas, no.

Failed again! 

Not got anywhere - I am rubbish at puzzles!

I really must try harder or this blog is going to end up very very boring!

I have received the latest puzzles from Jakub's Pelikan puzzles. There look to be some fabulous creations there and they should be available quite soon - keep checking their website. I have put my initial photos on my New stuff page but in the meantime they have put a book up for sale. Peter Hajek is the host of the New Years puzzle party in London every year and many of my friends attend to show off the best puzzles they have acquired the previous year (I have not managed to attend due to the distance involved and work commitments) then Peter creates a book of everyone's favourites each year. Peter is also one of the most knowledgeable puzzle collectors in the world and a true connoisseur (unlike me who will buy whatever is shiny!) He has written an incredibly beautiful book about the history and secrets of Puzzle boxes - it is a stunning creation. It is now on sale from Pelikan puzzles here and in a few weeks a special locked version will be available with a new lock designed and made by the incredible Shane Hales (I don't know how he finds the time to do it!) - I have not seen the lock/locked version but if it is made by Shane then you know it will be fabulous.

A simply stunning book by an authority!

Hey Bud! It's Time to Be N-ary

B-Nary

The title of this blog post is a little play on words to introduce a couple of puzzles I have played with over the last month or so. Late last year a few of the guys who got to go to the Dutch Puzzle Party managed to come back (as usual) with lots of new toys and the B-Nary puzzle by Jean-Claude Constantin particularly caught my eye. Several people were very enthusiastic about it but unfortunately there were none left for me! Sob! It was a particularly big birthday for me when the DPP was on and I could not attend - I could not risk the wrath of she who must be feared and obeyed. I did ask Mr Strijbos about obtaining a copy of the B-Nary puzzle and he worked his magic on JCC. My copy arrived about 4 weeks ago.

I love these puzzles! Not only are they N-ary puzzles based on Gray code but they also smell nice - I lurve the laser burnt wood smell that arises when you open the package. This puzzle may be called B-Nary because of the shape (B on the front and N-A-R-Y etched on the sliders) but I discovered straight away that there are 3 positions for each of the sliders and hence it is not binary, it is ternary as confirmed by Goetz' list.

It's an 'L' of a Burr

The L Burr

A few weeks ago I posted that my Christmas wish had come true and a series of really beautiful burrs had arrived Chez Sadler. This blog post is going to describe my struggles with the gorgeous 'L Burr'. Why such a delay? Well, I have been busy at work and those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will have seen from my steady stream of photos posted that I have had quite a lot of new toys delivered recently! I have been going hell for leather with the N-ary puzzles and was pleased to read Allard's recent post about them and hopefully between the 2 of us we can get you hooked on them too. So it took me a little while to get around to writing about this one!

Recent deliveries have included:

Some N-ary and sequential movement puzzles

My puzzle pusher managed to get these for me. Here we have the amazing Kugellager 7 (a 7-ary version requiring 4082 moves to open and again to close - or even more after you get lost half-way through!) The 250 move N-ary lock by Jean-Claude Constantin and a small lock puzzle. The bottom puzzle is the IPP31 "Lager" but not as in beer! I haven't managed to come even close to solving that yet! All great fun!

Master Curvy Copter

HELLLP!!

This is a 4x4 version of the Curvy copter. The curvy copter was one of the first twisties I reviewed on this blog and it managed to get me completely hooked on twisty puzzles (in fact on my recommendation it has gotten quite a lot of people hooked on twisties). As I have gotten better at twisties, I have started to lust after the more complex challenges. This was designed by the amazing Eitan Cher and is available from his Shapeways shop. A discussion on the Twisty puzzle forum revealed that a friend, Burgo, who is a puzzle solving wizard considers it one of the hardest puzzles he has ever solved! This sort of tells me that I might have met my match!!! Gulp!

Oh Eric! What have you done to me!!!

After finally bribing HMRC to return these to me, I have taken delivery of a few more from Eric Fuller. Here we have 4 constrained burrs, a very nice copy of Kevin's burr - yes, named after me and designed by the amazing Jose W Diaz. Plus.... yes, more N-ary puzzles - by another fabulous designer, Goh Pit Khiam, we have the Tern key II and Binary key.

Houston, I think I have a problem!!!!!

So with the new deliveries and quite a lot going on at work recently, I have actually managed to control my urge to dive into doing Brian's masterpieces all at once! One of the puzzles I was really pleased to receive was the L Burr. It was originally designed by Junichi Yananose (one of the most prolific puzzle designers ever).