Bounty from the Midlands

Yesterday I attended the 26th Midlands puzzle party and caught up on puzzling, gossiping and the general teasing that always occurs when the bunch of us get together. Someone actually was hoping to meet the present Mrs S which I thought was particularly brave of them! They couldn't believe that I got away with what I write about her most weeks. I informed them that she never reads my drivel and that they were welcome to take her off my hands whenever they wanted! She even comes with her own shoe and handbag collection.

Having spent so much time puzzling yesterday, I feel that I ought to spend a little time with "the frightening one" today and will postpone the post I was planning on until next weekend. Instead here is a little summary of my purchases from the MPP.

The two highlights of the meetup was getting to see Laurie Brokenshire and Ethel again who was looking rather well considering all he has been through recently and also getting to meet the most famous puzzle pusher in the world, Wil Strijbos. I did purchase a few things from him (how could I resist?) the most important of which was his newest creation, the Revenge lock aka the Wanderer. Here's what he said about it:

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!

IPP34 - a meeting of friends OR "it's HOW big?"

I'm back from IPP34 and just about ready to give my little account of what happened. Although my mind is a huge whirl of occurrences and people and so this is a very quick and probably totally inaccurate account - do forgive any errors! The photos have mostly been scavenged from Facebook because I knew I would not have time to take lots of photos myself and thus didn't take my camera!

This year the International Puzzle Party was held at the Park Inn Hotel near Heathrow in London. Registration was on Thursday 7th August and after a rather long journey from Sheffield (I loathe the M1 motorway) we (Yes! The elusive, yet not imaginary Mrs S came too!) parked the car and joined the queue to check in to the hotel and then register for the IPP itself. Immediately whilst standing in the queue we were greeted by my very good friend Steve Nichols who exclaimed that he was surprised to see Mrs S as he really thought she was a figment of my imagination! Believe me, my imagination is not that good. In quick succession we met several others from the MPP and introductions were made with more disbelief!

The Chops were there!

Whilst Mrs S was unpacking, I headed back down to the lobby/bar to meet the boys and anyone else who turned up. We even did a little puzzling amongst drinking coffee and chatting. Gradually over the next couple of hours more people turned up who I had either corresponded with or knew from Facebook LINK. These first people included Goetz Schwandtner, Scott Elliot, Otis Cheng, Jerry Loo, John Haché and more. Believe it or not we didn't only talk puzzles - my abiding memory of IPP was really how nice everyone was and how interesting they were - part way through the afternoon I ended up chatting with Scott about different nation's TV formats and ultraHD TV! He has an amazing knowledge of many subjects - well worth a chat! He left me with a nice little printed plastic cube puzzle similar to the three card burr which I solved in my room before dinner.

Cross and Crown - mine is on the right

Also during that initial afternoon I gave Goetz a puzzling gift with a letter to mark the occasion and the look on his face was priceless - a mixture of confusion and horror! I was also confused as to why I got such a response until the following day. The Friday was the day of the puzzle exchange - it's an overwhelming experience where the participants give away copies of their own puzzle to everyone else participating and in return receive a copy of the others' puzzles. This year there were 102 people participating so everyone received 101 puzzles!!! You are ONLY allowed in the room if you are exchanging or if you are assisting the exchanger. Goetz had asked me to assist him - so my job was to keep track of whom we had met and to keep hold of his hoard, stash them away and get more out for him to give away. Goetz had taken a puzzle that was patented in 1913 and remade it in 2013 - this incredible Quinary puzzle was called the Crown & Cross and it require 1250 moves to solve and separate the constitute the constituent parts. Goetz' version was larger and smoother than the original (very very rare version). As you can see in the above photo, my gift to Goetz was a Septenary version of his puzzle! This had been designed by Michel van Ippenburg in secret and I bought 2 copies. Only when I saw Goetz' exchange puzzle did I properly understand the reason for his look! My gift requires 4802 moves to solve!

Unexpected gift!

At the reception dinner, I received a very unexpected gift of a bottle of wine locked into a disentanglement puzzle from Brett Kuehner - one of the co-hosts of next years IPP. I'm always astonished that any of you read my drivel but I was even more amazed when Brett gave me such a wonderful gift purely for my efforts for the puzzle world with the blog and maybe also for helping people out as the "Trouble shooter" for Wil Strijbos. Thank you Brett, that really made my day - I was totally flabbergasted and to my shame, I have still not managed to open it! After dinner, Mrs S chatted for a while and we went to view the puzzles in the design competition room. I started to play and miserably failed to solve several of them. I always claim that I'm a poor solver and not terribly bright but solving puzzles in public can be very intimidating and especially tough when surrounded by the best puzzlers in the world and being challenged by the year's toughest puzzles! It did give me more ideas for puzzles that may become available in the future that I might just have to buy! I discovered that puzzling late into the night is not conducive to going to sleep and I lay awake for several hours before finally dropping off!

100 exchange puzzles!

The exchange took us 6 hours and at the end I had a list of puzzles that I might want to get a copy of - unfortunately that list was far bigger than my ability to pay but I did manage to get hold of a few that I had been particularly keen to play with. After that exhausting feat, it was time to go and watch some lectures on various puzzling topics including 3D printing, Peg solitaire and disentanglements. I may have to admit that I might have missed one or two of the lectures because of the overwhelming urge to have a quick snooze! Having had so little sleep the previous night I had to catch up.

The evening of the second day we had a great dinner and I discovered that I had committed a heinous crime! I had failed to notice and reply to an email from Laurie Brokenshire (the head organiser) about dietary requirements. Mrs S doesn't eat red meat and I had not requested an alternative. Luckily Laurie and the chef managed to win through for me and a vegetarian option was provided and my life was spared! At the meal, I played with Rox's Berrocal jewellery and maybe convinced Mrs S that a Berrocal might be a required addition to my collection! But with those prices it won't be soon! At that dinner I received more gifts! Yes! The kindness of puzzlers overwhelms me! It is a tradition that a "greenhorn" to the IPP is given a puzzling gift by someone they know who has been before and I received gifts from Nick Baxter (the IPP head honcho) and Neil - aka The Juggler.

More gifts!

I solved Neil's 3x3 interlocking cube at the dinner to find it had been signed by him - it is "3 easy pieces" designed by Richard Gain who was also at the IPP (it was great to catch up with him again having not seen him at the last 5 or 6 MPPs):

Signed - it will remain prominent in the collection

Sadly, I have gotten absolutely nowhere with the Lucky Find from Nick - it may take me weeks!

Just half the room and late in the day it had emptied out a bit!

Finally on the Saturday it was time for the "puzzle party" proper. This was an entirely new experience for me - the huge room was filled with tables at which many puzzle sellers had set up shop and people were buying away everything they could afford! I could have spent every penny I owned but had to keep to a budget! Now you are wondering why I had a budget! It's not like me is it? Well the previous few weeks had been expensive with the Strijbos egg, the Popplock T9 and the day before the IPP I received my Pirates wallet treasure chest - aka Stickman number 27.

I blew the budget a little but not by too much - my little haul was very nicely selected:

Small but select puzzles to take home with me

I hope to review some of these in the coming weeks!

Poor poor Gill!

But it could have been worse - Allard had participated in the exchange and then blew the budget of a small nation and has made me very jealous. Although I suspect his house is now a giant packing puzzle as I know he doesn't have the storage for that lot!!!

It's enormous!!! She's going to kill me!

Now we come to the reason for the second part of the title of my blog post! I had ordered the Hexagonal Porcupine from Bill Cutler and he was kind enough to bring it to IPP for me and assembled it in his room. When I saw it, I got a bit of a shock! I thought it would be just a bit bigger than the hexsticks that I had bought from him a while back. I had not really looked at the size on the webpage and when I saw that it was 9" across I had a minor panic attack! I think everyone I met at that point had a really good laugh at me! You all know that I have turned my study into a packing puzzle and have more or less run out of room. I do occasionally manage to expand out of the room into the living room with particularly beautiful puzzles but this would NEVER fit in my study and I was convinced (and said to everyone) that Mrs S was going to murder me in and no-one would even find my body! I had several very helpful people offer to take it off my hands for free and someone (thank you Simon) offered to buy it at cost if she refused to allow it in the house! Luckily she took it very calmly and it will be the first puzzle allowed on display in our dining room (on the oak sideboard). Phew!!!

That evening we had the awards dinner at which we learned the outcome of the judges' and jury's decisions about the best puzzles entered into the design competition.

Top Ten Vote Getters:
Tetra Pack by Ton Brouwer
Pirate's Wallet by Robert Yarger
Infinity by Kirill Grebnev
Perplexing Pyramid by Simon Bexfield
Caramel Box by Yasuhiro Hashimoto
Conjuring Conundrum by Louis Coolen/Allard Walker
Golden Ratio Box by Peter Wiltshire

Honorable Mention:
Claws of Satan by MINE
Cassette by Jinhoo Ahn

Grand Prize: (from the jury - joint winners)
Cast U&U by Kyoo Wong
Six Locks Two Keys by Simon Nightingale

Puzzlers Award:
The Fairy's Door Puzzle Box by Michail Toulouzas - probably the most beautiful box I have ever seen!

Congratulations to all the competitors as well as the winners. I was very honoured to meet several of you.

The following day, it was time to leave and finish the weekend with a visit to my mother who lives in London. My overwhelming memory of the event (apart from the huge number of puzzles) will always be the people I met. There are so many with whom I have corresponded and now I can finally put a face to a name. I am very proud to have been let into the illustrious group and be considered one of you.

Thank you Laurie, Frank Potts, Duncan Ramsay & Jo Traynor and the rest of the team for a wonderful time.

Posted with Blogsy

It's good to be amongst friends!

A huge turnout for MPP 16

I apologise profusely to the photographers (Chris, Jeremy and others) for stealing these photos off of Facebook - I did not take any myself and so had to nick them! I am sure that most of you know by now that a rather large annual event is coming up and puzzlers from all over the world are converging on London for the 34th International Puzzle Party. This event is by invitation only and not everyone can get an invite. So for this reason, with so many visitors around Nigel organised the 16th Midlands Puzzle Party to be the weekend before IPP to allow non-attenders to meet up. There is so much going on that even Allard has given up the ghost and abandoned blogging for a week or so! Rox will probably post as she can. I suspect that I also will not be able to post much either but decided that I had to show off a little of the shenanigans from MPP and show the delightful swag I came back with!

Packed into a rather small room but still playing

The big hall in Warwick had already been booked by another party so we started off in the small waiting area - there was no room to unpack all our toys but we didn't let it didn't stop us showing off the most fascinating stuff we had brought! It was a great time for me to finally meet all those people from around the world who I had been communicating with via the blog contact page, via Facebook or via email. There are one or two people I have chatted to more than weekly for several years but never met - it is this community thing that I truly love. We had visitors from Holland, America, Canada, Israel, China, Hong Kong and probably several other places I don't recall. We crammed ourselves in and caught up and puzzled! I was in heaven. Of course, I had brought the Parallelogram and many many people had a try at it with surprisingly little success - Shane should be very pleased that some of the greatest puzzlers in the world failed to solve it!

The imp was there early and lived up to her boisterous reputation and thoroughly enjoyed her "boys and toys" weekend! Of course we all love her dearly and let her away with anything! I was pleased to be able to hand her a solved version of the Cast Galaxy puzzle which she had dismantled and failed to reassemble for 2 weeks! Needless to say I felt rather pleased with myself! In fact I solved quite a few that day which is very unlike me!

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Mirror blocks

Boy, I have been so busy recently - work keeps me going, then there's surfing the internet for toys, buying toys, taking photos of the toys, solving those toys, keeping in touch with puzzlers around the world and then we have those amazing but very time-consuming Midlands Puzzle Parties! I attended number 15 yesterday and had an absolute ball! More puzzles were bought, some were solved and I learned NEVER to trust a magician!

Another nemesis!

Laurie Brokenshire (one of the greatest collectors and solvers in the world) was present, as well as the incredibly prolific mathematician cum puzzle designer, Dick Hess and I realised that previous puzzle party attempts to make me look foolish were as nothing compared to the combined efforts of these two amazing gentlemen! They made me into a nodding donkey, doing contortions with my thumbs and having a guessing game on what was the purpose of a plastic thingummy! I have not had such a laugh in a long time - my only consolation was that everyone fell for their pranks. I was also humbled by watching them quickly solve puzzles that I had spent months on and failed - Rox had given me a copy of the Squared Fish puzzle and after year I had singularly failed - it took Dick less than 15 minutes! There are some of my correspondents who think I am an experienced and skilled solver but I am nothing more than a rank amateur compared to them! I did not take a camera so you will need to watch one of the other blogs for that. I've had my little MPP fix of Puzzle boxes so yet again I have no need to buy any myself - Phew cos Mrs S would be very unhappy with me if I started on that route.

We even had some Koala porn!!!

OMG!!!

So I'm left rather late on a Sunday afternoon wondering what to write about and not an awful lot of time. I therefore decided that after a sublime MPP, I would write a few lines about my ridiculous fascination with twisty puzzles and in particular about a few brilliant ones I own or have played with.

The circle, the MPP and the Aftermath!

My MPP display

I need a small catharsis here! I do apologise, but it's necessary for me to get it off my chest! Recently you have read a fair bit about Shane's latest puzzle 'The Circle'. I mentioned here that it took me over a week to find the first two moves! I worked and worked at it for absolutely ages and earned a 3rd degree burn in the centre of my forehead from the laser stare of the present Mrs S because there's a significant amount of metal inside the circle and it doesn't just jingle - it clangs....very loudly!!! I then read that Allard (who is MUCH older than me.....in the puzzling sense!) managed to get his copy solved in just about 1/2 hour! In tears I huddled in a corner and rocked myself to sleep muttering to myself that despite practicing my puzzling skills for about 4 years, I was obviously still rubbish!

Now Shane and I have been communicating frequently for nearly 18 months and when he mentioned that he was qualified as a Master cabinetmaker and was interested in making puzzles himself, I provided lots of encouragement and just hoped that he'd let me buy one of his masterpieces! Over the months we became really good friends and it transpired that not only is he a Master craftsman, he also owns and runs a huge (yes HUGE) building company. As well as that he has a family to maintain too. So I am really flattered that he makes such an effort to communicate with me and has even said on several occasions that I (little me!) am the only reason he wanted to have a go at making these puzzles and this is why I always receive puzzle number 1! So why was I so much slower than Allard? Surely Shane wouldn't have made mine much harder? He's much too good a friend for that...isn't he??? Well it transpires that Shane had moisture problems and not the kind that can be fixed with a prescription deodorant! My puzzle was made to MUCH tighter tolerances than the subsequent copies and this was the reason for my slow progress! That IS my story and I am going to stick to it! Having been told this I was very keen to compare them at the upcoming MPP (Midlands Puzzle Party).

They look identical - mine is on the right - tighter!

Some history..... The Block was shown at an MPP where it went down a storm and even bamboozled Louis (The puzzle solving machine) and Wil Strijbos (The pusher). So it was very fitting that we take the Circle to the next one and test it on the "Machine" again! I also wanted to convince myself that I wasn't a total failure!