Rainer Nearly Killed Me...Again!

Popplock T14

T13 unsolved

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Self, that cannot be possible!"

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

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

There is absolutely nothing given away in this picture

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

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

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

Rainer Nearly Breaks a Table!

The Popplock T12

This blog post very nearly didn't happen - I lost a lot of hair trying to get this post up and I don't have an awful lot left to lose! My poor 2006 iMac is struggling...it sometimes takes a minute to type a single sentence. I am not sure what is happening but it seems to get sidetracked and goes off doing other things whilst I am trying to type a coherent sentence. This can mean that words and sometimes even letters get jumbled up during typing. Then the trials and tribulations of photo editing are particularly bad for my poor frazzled nerves! In the end, I managed to cobble something together and am going to need to think about alternative methods for the future. Now on to the topic today...

Still unsolved!

Late last year I got a heads up from Shane that there might be something coming up that I would definitely want to save up for. He is very good friends with Rainer Popp and seems to get advanced notice about upcoming releases in Rainer's Popplock range. Now, I have a few rules and firstly it says pay attention to Shane - he cultivates the appearance of being a poor puzzler and a "bear of very little brain" but I know him very well indeed now and there is very little that is mechanical or practical that he doesn't know or understand very quickly. As far as puzzles are concerned, if Shane says that it's good then I get my credit card out and ask questions later. My second rule is that I buy whatever Rainer produces - they are always amazingly well made and always a tremendous challenge. In fact the T10 remains on the shelf in front of me entirely unsolved! Shane said that the T12 would come out early this year and I put in a request with my usual puzzle purveyer/pusher and received assurance that one was mine if I wanted it.

It was duly released and then this bloody virus hit! I was due to pick mine up in person at the MPP in March and abruptly all travel and fun was cancelled. Thinking that it might not be long, we all waited and eventually we realised that the post was the only way. Luckily for me, the post was still working - I am aware that a few that were destined for the USA seem to have been trapped in limbo for quite a long time. I am sure that they will get there eventually but this is a VERY expensive puzzle to have apparently disappear.

When it arrived, Mrs S duly put it in quarantine in the porch with all the other post and I was forced to wait...impatiently! There is no arguing with a Scottish nurse...she has the genetics for violence and the training to make it really painful. I waited for 48 hours! My package eventually was opened and a rather heavy box was emptied in the kitchen. I put it down a little too hard on the kitchen granite and the bang nearly earned me a night sleeping in the garage! I quickly examined the work surface and breathed a sigh of relief - intact with no crack or dent! This lock is a rather solid lump of brass and steel - it's not quite as large and heavy as the T11 (2.5Kg) but not far off it - the T12 weighs in at a solid 2.05Kg (that's 4.52lb for you Yanks) and is really dense with dimensions of 80x45x99mm (3.15x1.77x3.9in). Whatever you do don't drop this - it will hurt either you, your table or your floor...badly!

Back view with Rainer's logo

Things were getting rather busy at work with many extra hours trying to buy ventilators and also write up new rotas as people were shunted off to work in ICU. I finally got some time to play in the evenings and first read the rules provided with the lock:

"No hitting, shaking, force or gravity needed 

Do not use the key until you have found the key hole 

No random movements like turning the key indefinitely or rattling 

Do not use the key to push buttons - you scratch the lock! If your fingers are too think then you may use a match or similar as an aid"

As you can see from the photos, there is no obvious keyhole (a hint of where one should be) and a number of potential buttons - not all of them are actual buttons! Where to start? Push, pull or twist everything you can get your fingers on! Nope, no use! Go fetch a wooden chopstick for the buttons smaller than my fingertips...no help! Bugger!

I spent several evenings annoying Mrs S whilst swearing under my breath about Rainer's and Shane's parenthood. After nearly a week, something occurred to me and Aha! I found something very useful - only 4-5 hours of trying on the first step. Remember that I am not very good at locks and really not terribly bright. Having found the first step, there was a whole lot more investigation to be done and I quickly got lucky. The second step lead to a third and a fourth step...I was on a roll!

No I wasn't! Having done my 2nd third and fourth steps, the whole thing stopped moving. I could backtrack but not advance any further. Looking at the design of the lock, I really thought that I had been making progress - I had sort of worked out how the shackle would open but the steps I had taken were not enough. True to my idiot self, I continued to do the same few steps over and over and over again for quite a few days! I knew that my friend Nigel and solved his copy (he was one of the first to receive one) in just 5 hours of work - I was already much more than double that and was completely trapped in a vicious circle. Time to Think©...again.

I thought back through some of the earlier Popplocks and something occurred to me that I might have been missing. I tried a few ways to achieve something new and failed again and again. Another thought occurred to me and that didn't work either. Maybe my copy was broken? It seemed unlikely that such a sturdy object would break in the post. As is my wont, I went back to doing the same thing many many times and suddenly something new happened! How the hell? Looking at what was in front of me, I realised that whilst I had been doing the same thing multiple times, the lock itself had changed configuration by accident and suddenly the correct configuration had been achieved to allow "new stuff". Literally and figuratively there are multiple layers to this puzzle! Now I could achieve my first few steps but also a few more. Progress at last - it is almost logical if you are a warped mad tricklock designer.

After 2 weeks I had reached a point where my initial surface look at the puzzle seemed to have led me. BUT still not there. The final steps were pretty obvious but didn't work for me until I found the correct directions for 4 movements. It took me 3 weeks of work and many more hours than Nigel but my Aha moment led to an open lock. The photo below has a very very minor spoiler so don't look if you want no help at all.

Solved it at last! Absolutely stunning puzzle.
Maybe time to try the T10 again?

The high cost was well worth it - Rainer has made something challenging again, beautiful again and fun again! I am already looking forward to the T13 - will it be unlucky for me?

Now I need to find a way blog more efficiently on a bloody old computer - sigh!

Keep safe everyone - if where you live, the lockdowns are being gently loosened then please be careful! Don't go crazy out there, don't go mixing with lots of other people. Keep protecting yourself and your family. This is a very nasty and unpredictable virus - just because you are young and healthy does not mean that you won't be hit badly - I have seen quite a few unpredictable deaths.