Angel's Wheel

Jerry McFarland Makes an Angel's Wheel

Classic Bits and Pieces version of Satellite burr

Jerry McFarland never stops thinking about new ways to bamboozle us! This is great for those of us who like new toys but not so great for the rest who are patiently on his waiting list for one of his previous puzzles. His boredom threshold is amazing - he starts making a batch of puzzles for people and then gets fed up and moves on to something new. Out of the blue, he emailed me to say that he had been making the Burrnova 3D but has found a way to improve it (version 3.0) and also still working on (and improving) the incredible Burrlephant for people but wanted to produce something for the next IPP. He has been thinking about a classic puzzle called the Satellite burr and wanted to improve it in the traditional McFarland magnetic way.

The original had been mentioned in the 1893 Hoffman book and has almost certainly been recreated many times. Jerry wanted to make it slightly more interesting with the addition of magnets and brass ball bearings. You know Jerry by now...Of course he did! Jerry also decided to use some rather gorgeous wood (Bloodwood and Jatoba) - I think he specifically does that to entice me - he knows I can't resist it. When he sent me the pictures, he seemed to think that it did not look like a classic McFarland puzzle. I had to tell him that the curved shape of the pieces was the only thing that might confuse people. As soon as anyone sees it, it can only be one of his creations - there is something absolutely unmistakeable about his creations. It is the wood used, the lacquer finish and of course as soon as it's played with, the "clack, clack" of the magnets pulling the pieces back together. 

He wanted to originally call it SatBurr but his grandson came up with the Angel's Wheel instead. 

"Inspired by the Ophanim—mysterious “wheels within wheels” described in ancient texts—Angel’s Wheel is a satellite-style burr that moves freely in all directions while guarding its inner secret."

The Ophanim - I find this image quite disturbing
Ophanim, or "wheels," are a class of celestial beings in Judeo-Christian theology described as wheels intersecting wheels covered in eyes, symbolizing omniscience and guiding God’s chariot throne.

The second copy was made for me and after a bit of PayPal moved across the pond, it was sent over. When it arrived, I was not disappointed with the beauty of it. Luckily there were no eyes in it but there was a fair bit of rattling inside. The secondary aim is to remove the brass balls from there cavity inside.

I had to spend a week or two working on the Pelikan puzzles before I could find time to play with the Angel's Wheel. All I was able to do during that time was marvel at the clacking noise - my goodness, he uses string magnets - don't put it near your pacemaker! Finally I found some time last weekend and immediately set to exploring. I have never played with a Satellite burr so had no idea what I was trying to do. Initially nothing slides or moves and it requires a little careful observation to notice something peculiar about the construction. Once you have noticed this then you can start to move the odd part. It doesn't really release much until you think© a bit and look in other places. There is a nice little Aha! moment and a little feeling that you might need more than 2 hands and at one point I found myself using my nose to push something. Luckily I have a particularly large nose!

Things were moving but it didn't seem to help much. I put it back the way it came with a very satisfying Thwack and thought a bit more. Eventually I realised that I was overthinking it and if I move certain parts in certain ways then it makes space for a really useful move. After that I was well on my way and dismantled all the curved sections. I emailed Jerry in triumph and he pointed out that it was not complete until the brass balls were removed. Doh! I had completely forgotten about that. 

I went back to it a day later and realised that an odd flaw that I had noticed on one of the pieces was not a flaw. It had been put there deliberately by Jerry and there were several of them. There had to be a jolly good reason for that. A quick experiment and I had a cat playing with my brass balls! Mrs S would have been very unhappy if one ended up inside the cat so I quickly separated them and took a photo.

Beautifully made - complete with brass balls!

Jerry has put his usual mark inside and mine has serial number 2 which I am very proud of. This will be taking centre stage in my McFarland display - it is very different to his usual.

This puzzle is very beautiful and fun to play with having its magnetic action but it is much less difficult than Jerry's previous puzzles. Jerry plans on making a few more for sale at the upcoming IPP. If you are interested and will be there then let him know and he might be able to reserve one for you. 

Happy New Year! My top ten(ish) puzzles of 2023

Finally cleared my desk

Cubes-a-fillin

Now I have a REAL puzzle room!

Happy New Year to you all! I have no idea what happened to 2022 - it seems to have disappeared without me noticing.

Welcome to my customary end of year post looking back at how I did over 2023 and which were the best puzzles I managed to solve. As always, thinking about it was triggered by Peter Hajek's request for the top 3 acquisitions of the year. Peter wants to know the best arrivals in the collection and I always write about my best puzzles solved which makes it a little harder to come up with a good list. Whilst I have had a pretty good year of puzzle arrivals (much to the disgust of "she who must be feared"), it has felt like a bad year for me in terms of puzzle solving. I feel that I have worked my little arse off in the various hospitals and don't think that I solved very many. Except that after looking back through my archive of blog posts and my database, can I see that I didn't do that badly. 

Nowhere Near Solving!

I did purchase quite a lot of puzzles that I have so far completely failed to solve (some despite months of trying)! So here is a quick list of what look like absolutely fabulous puzzles purchased that I cannot solve:

Orbit by Dee Dixon (I've found nothing useful whatsoever!)

Uplift by Dee Dixon (It rotates and a button pushes but that's it!)

Burner by Dee Dixon (only arrived a few days ago)

Smack-N Moles by Stickman (gorgeous and I have no idea what is going on inside)

WDIGMI from Tanner Reyes (a gift that looks gorgeous and compelling and is completely beyond my meagre packing skills)

A whole bunch of N-ary wire puzzles from Aaron Wang - they should be lovely and logical and yet I am still stuck! Thank heavens for the quick reset!

Crazy Double Circle Cube - Encouraged by Jason Burgo to give it a try and was getting somewhere when the black version broke on me. I have since replaced it with a coloured plastic one and am too frightened to touch it again!

Free the Washer from Phil Wigfield. Phil is quite a character and creates some absolutely beautiful puzzles from brass and steel. He has got rather side-tracked on dexterity puzzles which I cannot do but also an SD puzzle earlier this year. I've been trying for months (9 of them) and only managed to find one move!! Aargh!

Euroka - stunning design by Juno. I dismantled it and it now sits in its' cloth bag in pieces because I cannot put it back together despite having a video to look at.

Almost there

In this section I always place a few fabulous puzzles that in anyone's year should be a top ten puzzle but because I am greedy and have bought more puzzles than Mrs S thinks are good for me, I have to place a few fab toys in this section just to highlight how great a year it has been:

Magyarics Amazement

Alexander continued to work with Pelikan as well as 3D print some of his own puzzles and they are all so SO good but due to some amazing challenges also produced this year, they have been dropped down to the "almost there" list and believe me, they really are almost there! It is a mark of how good a year it was that these are down in this section:

Captain Hook

I almost feel guilty that one of Alexander's puzzles is in this position. His stuff is all incredible and with Captain Hook, his entry into burr design has the usual Magyarics flair with some very unusual shaped pieces and a very confusing yet fun sequence to assembly as well as disassembly. In a normal year this would be right up there at the top.

Infinite

This is CLASSIC Magyarics design! A packing puzzle with restricted entry. Alexander has done many of these over the years and all are fun. Many of them (erm Tigridia) are almost too difficult for a [numpty](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/numpty) like me. The Infinite puzzle, however is just spot on! It is difficult but not impossible and supremely logical! It is possibly the best of Alexander's designs to date!

Stupendous Osanori

I received puzzles by Osanori-san both from himself as well as recreated beautifully by Pelikan. I am continually amazed at his design skills. There were some of the best puzzles ever from him this year

Gem

Gem was an incredible design both as an assembly puzzle when bought direct from the designer but also still fun as a disassembly puzzle from Pelikan. It is a remarkably simple design but the sequence to discover is fabulous.

 

Shutout

Shutout won a prize at the IPP in 2022 and for a very good reason. The version from Osanori himself as well as the Pelikan version is stunning and a perfect challenge for all levels of puzzler.

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Finally...On with my top ten(ish) puzzles solved in 2023:

12) Japanese packing delights

I have bought rather an embarrassing number of packing puzzles from Mine and have only managed to solve an even more embarrassingly low number of them. The tray packing puzzles are a particularly difficult challenge for me but there have been a few that were loved at MPPs and by a certain fellow puzzle blogger and so I worked extra hard on those.

Chained Lumbars looks so easy with identical sized sticks held together by a chain - that chain really gets in the way so you have to work out how best to use it.

Coin Wallet - Piles of coins to be inserted through a limited opening into a plastic wallet. Can it be that difficult? I spent quite a long time working on it and really loved the final sequence - I keep it in my work bag to torture colleagues with.

Karakuri packing - Allard loved it, Michael Q loved it and I couldn't solve it! Finally, I had to impress a young lady at work and worked on this during a very long boring operation in the angio suite. I amazed both myself and my colleague by doing it within an hour or so. The required moves are beautifully hidden!

11) Peanut puzzle

The Peanut puzzle is an incredible design by the Puzzle Master himself, Stewart Coffin. I have never managed to get a beautiful wooden version but was sorely tempted when I saw the cast resin versions created by Lewis Evans. They look amazing and he has recreated Mark McCallum's work as a ring bound booklet giving a whole lot of wonderful challenges. I am terrible at this sort of puzzle but absolutely adore playing with these amazing designs.

10) Parasitic Burr

The whole puzzle world was shocked when our dear friend Eric died so suddenly and unexpectedly. We mourned him and we even mourned his business as many thought it would go with him. I was delighted when Steve, Tom and Jeff decided to continue his legacy and create beautiful puzzles with incredible precision and also choose designs that are so much fun to solve. I could not resist the Parasitic burr by Tyler Hudson (who has designed some really fabulous puzzles) and was delighted to receive something not only beautiful but also a lovely fun challenge that took me nearly a month to solve without resorting to Burrtools.

9) TIC Food

I was delighted to receive 6 food based TICs designed by Laszlo Kmolnar and made by Jeff Baz in the spring from a new friend of mine (Neil Seidlitz) and spent a very happy month working out how to put them together. Even though I am terrible at assembly puzzles, I seem to be getting almost "fair to middling" at these TIC puzzles. The wonderful assortment of shiny woods makes them particularly wonderful!

8) A whole bunch of animals

Jakub, Jaroslav and team have had a tremendous year in 2023 producing some absolutely stunning puzzles for us in multiple different genres. The thing that has stood out this year for me has been the sudden arrival of Kumiki themed puzzles either of their own design or designed by some other fabulous designers. They were all gorgeous and clever in their own way. I think my favourite has been the crab but it is very hard to choose just one.

7) Amazing Twisty Puzzles

I know, I know! Most of you are not that interested in Twisty puzzles but you really should be! They are relatively cheap, have some incredible geometries in them and, once you have gained some experience with them, can be reduced to relatively simple ideas requiring only the use of rather basic techniques and often a lot of intuition.

The Crazy Pyraminx crystal looks horrific but literally can be solved using the old up, up, down down sequence in creative ways. It is almost solved by intuition alone. It is fabulous!

The Son-mum 4x4 is another tremendous puzzle that looks horrific but again is almost entirely solved by intuition until you then have to solve a standard 4x4 cube. It is wonderful and fun.

The Master mixup cube type one looks even worse than the others because when scrambled it looks like a Porcupine. I was worried that I would need some fancy commutator (which I am not good at finding) to solve it but yet again, that was not the case and it solves mostly by intuition - amazing!

Finally I have to shout out the creators at Sengso for producing various crazy cubes. I thought they might be relatively easy but have been delighted to see internal bandaging which adds a whole level of complexity to the solve process. They include the Crazy 2x2 plus set, the crazy 4x4 versions and on my list to buy is the Crazy 5x5 versions too

6) Handy Burr

Jerry McFarland makes it into my top ten pretty much every year! His brain is just not normal - he seems to discover something new and beautiful to do with wood and magnets every year. People do complain that he doesn't manufacture enough to keep up with demand but that's because his attention span is just too short to stick at any one thing for very long. I am always very grateful when he contacts me to sow off a new creation. The Handy burr made me laugh out loud when I realised what he had designed and seemed to be wanting me to do. Fabulous!

5) OMG Packing Heaven or Hell

Almost every time I type Dr Latussek's name I have to comment on his incredible (warped) mind! Volker has had an amazing year with multiple designs produced absolutely beautifully by Jakub and Jaroslav's Pelikan puzzles. There were so many to choose from and all have differing geometry and difficulty levels. I have to stress that some of the ones I highlight here are the ones that were not too difficult for me but I am so delighted to have a good collection of them. My utter faves from 2023 were: 

Tube in cube - the use of cylinders with slanted cuts in a cubic packing puzzle was bamboozling for me but very rewarding when I finally worked it out

Ode to the Bevel - was not terribly difficult to work out various assemblies but all but one was blocked. It had such a lovely move to get that last piece placed.

Fritz Flop - The Flop series are really very difficult and most required me to head to Burrtools to find possible assemblies (I really loved Tetra flop despite having to use BT) but the Fritz flop has a more restricted set of pieces and was actually solvable by me within a few hours. Three of the set are still available now and Fritz flop is on sale!!!

4) Bad Moon

Another incredible creation from Dee Dixon! His craftsmanship is stunning and choice of woods inspired. His puzzles are all nice and chunky which makes them a tactile delight to play with. The logic is superb and great fun to work through. I particularly loved the use of curved surfaces and tracks in this which confused my usually rectilinear brain. In fact I got myself into some trouble and had to use my anaesthetic skillz to get myself out of trouble (Thank heavens for the Glidescope!)

3) Dial Case

Juno has had a relatively quiet year this year but his foray back into SD puzzles was not a disappointment. In any normal year, this would be my absolute number one puzzle of the year but there were so many incredible puzzles to choose from that this amazing creation came 3rd! This was a significant challenge with multiple steps and as always, all pieces beautifully made from wood. The sequence of Aha! moments was marvellous and some of them really quite hard to find. I also really love how Juno always teases me about boxes!

2) Walter's Radio

Yes, Dee Dixon has two slots in my top ten this year!

Last year Angry Walter only made it to number 4 in my top ten. It was an incredible puzzle and the amazing thing is that Dee managed to surpass even that this year. It was less beautiful than Walter had been with his gorgeous cacophony of wonderful woods but the puzzling steps were very complex and confusing. This one took me 3 months to find all the steps - it was stupendous!

1) TIC Vault

I heard about the TIC Vault at last year's EPP and contacted Andrew Crowell as a result, shortly afterwards. Boy! I was not disappointed! A combination of sequential discovery puzzle and difficult TIC is very hard to beat! The only possible way this could have been improved would have been to have been manufactured from wood. The puzzle was/is a masterpiece of design in multiple genres and made me laugh out loud as I completed all of the complex sequences on the way to finding my way inside. Andrew is the master of the TIC and also becoming a master of SD puzzles!

Do you agree with my top 10? If you have any different thoughts then please comment below or even use my Contact page to tell me how wrong I am. I look forward to your thoughts. 

Happy New Year to you all!

I really hope that you all have a wonderful year in 2024 with good health, success and plenty of wonderful puzzling. I look forward to entertaining and maybe helping many of you in this year. Hopefully there will not be any skipped blog weeks either (I've had enough of being operated on now for quite some time 🤞🤞🤞).

It Would Be Nice To Have Enough Hands For This Burr

Handy Burr by Jerry McFarland

Jerry McFarland has an attention span problem! He makes fantastic puzzles which are always immediately recognisable - I am sure that all serious puzzlers could look at the photo above and know the creator without reading the caption. He gets inundated with requests to make his toys by the puzzling community and happily starts manufacturing puzzles and earning some money and then he quickly gets bored and distracted. Before he knows it, he's thinking about something new and abandons his order book to play with his beautiful wood and, if you've been following his creations from the last few years, his very strong magnets. 

He contacted me a few weeks ago to ask whether I would be interested in looking at his latest creation - the Handy Burr and I practically bit his keyboard off and sent him a bunch of PayPal. The puzzle winged its way across the Atlantic faster than I've ever seen and I got my grubby hands (due to DIY) on it in just 4 days! I did not get much chance to do more than fiddle and admire for the first few days because of said DIY but I could tell straight away that the magnetism was strong in this one.

It is a beautiful cuboid containing 23 pieces of wood and an unbelievable 32 magnets (16 of which are in the key piece - Jerry says this must be a record). There are 2 obvious pins in the puzzle too with some obvious tracks for the pins visible in the key piece. The wood choices are stunning - Mahogany, Bubinga, Walnut, Cherry, Maple and Bloodwood.

Jerry had been initially working on a 3D coordinate motion puzzle but this did not work out so he moved on to a springy puzzle with magnets and this is definitely that.

I started work after I had finally finished constructing my cabinets (still empty) and found that there are 6 pieces that can be pushed in varying directions and need quite a bit of pressure to push them - those magnets are STRONG! If you loosen your grip even momentarily then it all springs straight back into the original shape. Having played with quite a few of Jerry's creations over the years, I sort of had an inkling what to do and managed with 6 fingers plus holding on to various other bits of the puzzle for stability and suddenly the key piece sprung upwards. Progress!

It only sprung up one voxel and the magnetic pieces stabilised. I was then able to work on manipulating the pieces and getting the key piece extended further and further until it stopped dead. Time to explore and find the release mechanism. Here I got stuck for a while and in the end I reset the puzzle by pushing it all back to the bottom and manipulating the magnetic sticks as I went. The final push of the key piece flush with the top releases the magnetic pieces all together and there is a truly wonderful CLACK! as it all reset.

I got stuck here for rather a long time - back and forth to the almost released position and stopped dead in my tracks each time. I couldn't seem to find the correct path - Jerry had hidden it all just out of sight inside. Despite doing this dozens of times, I never tired of the wonderful noise of the reset (this is a feature of a few of his magnetic puzzles).

After a whole day of trying the same thing multiple times, it was time to think© which did hurt quite a bit. I know that Jerry is quite sneaky and I got wondering in the evening whilst watching TV. What if I??

I tried my new idea and found that I needed more than 2 hands - Jerry had sent me a couple of little envelopes with clues in it and afterward I had finally saved it, I opened the envelopes and had a proper laugh out loud moment. I had looked at she who must be feared during the evening whilst wishing I had more hands/fingers/useful body parts. Each time I thought of asking her, I decided that was probably not a good idea. 

😱😱😱

Eventually after I dislocated a digit moving it into an appropriate place, I suddenly had the key piece free and I could see how well disguised the path had been.

Key piece removed (JM mark revealed with serial number on other side

The cat was not impressed with me dropping more wood on his head but he puts up with it. I put it back together immediately and then found that I could not repeat the process - that will teach me to watch TV at the same time as playing with something complex.

The following day, I managed to work it out again and was delighted with how it resisted solution but when you do the right thing it shoots out. I couldn't resist a full disassembly:

Awesome puzzle!

After taking the above picture I did scramble all the pieces and then attempted the reassembly - Jerry very helpfully writes the frame piece portions on them to ensure that the fit is good when reassembled and then I got a bit stuck on the assembly of the mechanism and had to create it outside the frame before attempting the final assembly - picture of mechanism is hidden behind a spoiler button:

A

This is a very satisfying solve and after reading the supplied solution sheet, I realised that there is another aspect to it that I had not seen. I tried the suggested approach by Jerry and this was even better and adds more understanding to the name. Jerry will be making a few more of these in the future and it will be worth while contacting him to ask to reserve one.

Stealthily Lined Up by Alexander

Stealth by Alexander Magyarics (made by Brian Menold)

It's my birthday today (no I am not saying how old but it's an embarrassingly high number) and I am not using it as an excuse not to post on the site. I would have hoped to have something written in advance but I didn't manage to solve anything until yesterday because I am rubbish at puzzles and these were a bit of a challenge for an ageing puzzler like me.

I haven't bought anything from Brian for a while. Mostly that is because he has been living a real life and enjoying himself which has meant less puzzles produced and also because the few that he has been making recently were already in my collection. However, a couple of weeks ago he showed off a few new ones that were released and rapidly snapped up by me and lots of other delighted puzzlers. This sneaked across the pond very quickly and through the customs without raising an eyebrow or a bill and even managed to get into chez Sadler despite frequent Royal mail postal strikes.

The first one (pictured above) was another fabulous packing puzzle by the incredibly talented Alexander Magyarics (someone I am lucky to chat with on a regular basis and consider a friend). When Alexander produces yet another of these packing puzzles I almost always jump at the chance. They invariably have only a few pieces to place but the requirement to leave no visible holes and the interesting piece shapes makes for a really fun challenge. I am less keen on the packing puzzles with lots of pieces because of the random trial and error nature of the puzzling. When there are so few pieces and with complex shapes and other constraints, this forces the puzzler to use thought© and logic to solve them. I was not let down with this one at all.

It is absolutely gorgeous made with a Wenge and Bocote box and having beautiful bright white Holly pieces. It is chunky at 3" in each direction and surprisingly heavy. This was the one I started with because it looks the most solvable by me whilst tired and not good at puzzles. The disassembly level is 11.2.2 meaning that the final insertion was going to be fairly tough to find. As usual, I worked outside the box and found several shapes that would meet the assembly criteria but mot of them could be quickly excluded as requiring rotations to get them past the limited opening of the box. I settle on one that looked good and proceeded with logic and thought and ignored Mrs S laughing at my muttering. She finds it funny that I can't think without muttering to myself! I got stuck for a while as I could not find the correct move and when I thought I had found the removal sequence, I could not remember it for long enough to reverse it! Eventually, I learned the sequence in reverse and managed to place all the pieces. I hate to think about what other facts I have pushed out of my feeble brain in learning something new!

Everything in place

I admired it like this for a while and left it overnight and then couldn't remember the disassembly. Taking it apart required me to visualise what was happening inside and was also fun. This could be an assembly puzzle for some and for less experienced puzzlers, just as good as a disassembly puzzle.

Line Up

How gorgeous is that? This boxed burr puzzle is also designed by Alexander and made by Brian. I chose the Mansonia box with the Chakta Vita and Holly pieces. I particularly loved the checkerboard top and bottom face as well as the lovely curved corners of the box. This is another relatively "simple" design with just 4 pieces to remove and replace from the square tube box. The level (24.3.4.2) is getting up quite high but because there are only 4 pieces, it is perfectly doable for an average puzzler and very much an enjoyable exploration.

I started work on it during the week and found a lovely little starting sequence with only a few blind pathways off the main one. Unfortunately, I struggled to advance more than about 10 or 12 moves before finding myself back at the beginning or stuck with nowhere to go. I was missing a turning somewhere. I played every evening this week whilst watching TV with Mrs S and kept going around and around in circles. What was I missing? During the disassembly the pieces get very well separated but still linked together and it is easily possible to see inside. Despite this, I just could not spot the required pathway. Finally yesterday, I spotted something and tried a new move which opened up a new set of pathways. From this point on the solution is logical but still a bit of a surprise in the direction that the pieces come out. I had my 4 pieces for the photo:

Line up with pieces lined up

I was almost certain that I would need Burrtools to reassemble the puzzle after that (especially as I had scrambled the pieces up for the photo) so I just left it for a couple of hours until a suitable time to get to my computer. It kept calling to me, though and I couldn't resist picking it up and trying to assemble it from scratch with only a very hazy memory of the solution. I wondered whether the checkerboard might help but, surprisingly, it is of no significance at all. The pieces cannot be assemble incorrectly and the placement of them within the box is very logical indeed. I tried a few alternatives and it was immediately apparent that it is impossible to place them incorrectly. Having worked out the placements, the actually assembly was quite fun and did not take me much more than 30 minutes. The cat was unimpressed when I shouted and showed him what I had done and Mrs S just rolled her eyes.
If you get a chance to play with these then go for it, they are beautiful, tactile and designed at just the right level for a puzzler to solve in a reasonable period of time. Even I solved one in an evening! Thank you Alexander and Brian.

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One of my friends (Ross) on Facebook asked about buying some of my Jerry McFarland puzzles from me. I haven't yet ever sold a puzzle (I cannot stand the thought really) but it did make me think about how many I had accumulated from the master. I brought them down yesterday and took a photo. It was so impressive that I thought I would share it with you:

Now that is something to be proud of!

and lets not forget the rather special Caramel case that he produced as well in very limited numbers:

I cannot resist a burrset! This is the 42 piece burrset

Now those definitely take pride of place in my collection!