Dee Makes Me Dizzy - Vertigo

He Also Reminds Me Not To Solve On A Sofa

Vertigo from DEDwood Crafts

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

Instructions are quite clear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The DEDwood logo at last!

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

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

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

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

Angry Walter from DEDwood Crafts

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

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

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

Dee says on his site:

"He's back...

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

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

That is usually quite painful!

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

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

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

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

DOH!

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

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

"Be brave!"

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

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

The green power cell has been removed

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

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

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

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