Trays and Trays of Thought

A Plethora of torture from Alexander

I will say it up front - Alexander Magyarics is one of the best puzzle designers out there. I don't say it because I consider him a friend, I say it because he has proven it time and time again! You all know it from the rather large number of his designs that have been created by Jakub and Jaroslav's Pelikan puzzles team that have made it into all of our collections. Quite a few of his puzzles have made it into my top ten puzzles of the year and they include 3D packing puzzles with incredible shapes (sometimes requiring rotations and sometimes just rectilinear moves), there are now even a few burrs under his belt which are not just a creation made using the Burrtoools software aimed at getting the highest level possible - the important thing about Alex's creations are that they are interesting and require the dreaded thought© to be solved. This requires something very special or very warped in the head - I leave it up to you to decide.

For the last couple of Xmases Alex has made me a lovely and not so little care package of puzzles he has both designed and 3D printed himself (Sigh! I wish I was allowed a 3D printer but if I wish to keep all parts of my anatomy attached then that is not going to happen). I received 14 of them this time and Mrs S was less than impressed (one thing about 3D printed puzzles is that they do look like child's toys and are not attractive i.e. no "wife appeal"). I reassured "she who frightens police officers to death" that they would be kept out of sight and not left on display anywhere and put them in my study in yet another box of puzzles to be solved - my goodness, I have a huge backlog just now!

This last 10 days "she who makes the sun hide in fear" was up in Sconny Botland visiting the outlaws and I was free to leave stuff lying around and play with them at my leisure. I actually did not have much time to myself due to work but the advantage of tray puzzles is that they take up very little space and can be carried around easily. I had some other toys in transit from various parts of the world and until they arrived had nothing that "had" to be solved fast. Time to play with the packing puzzles.

Rhinnocent

Alex had suggested that I start with this one (I had asked in desperation at preserving my ego for the easier ones). Place 5 of them in the smaller tray and then all 7 in the larger one. Usually I am truly awful at this type of thing and find that all I do is trial and error over and over again because after a while I cannot remember what I have tried before. I started in exactly the same way but within a minute or so, I was able to see some vague logic to them and was able to direct my approach. Wow! I had the small tray done in about 5 minutes and then the larger one in a further 15 or so. Amazing - a feeling of achievement and think©ing had occurred!

1 Billion

This was the second one he told me to do and I really wasn't sure about it. It is very attractive and quite clearly had been designed using Burrtools - how else could he know that there was ONLY one solution? I found initially that I began to place pieces randomly and quickly found myself blocked but there must have been a reason for suggesting this as an early challenge. Alex had asked me why I thought it was called 1 Billion? I suspected because that might be how many years it might take me and hopefully asked whether it was because there was actually 1 billion ways to solve it. I still don't know why the name! Having failed a couple of times, I realised that there are some very complex shapes for some of the pieces and they are very limited in where they can go. Why not start with them? Then move to progressively less complex shapes. After a couple of blind ends in the solve, I had it. Yet again, a tray packing puzzle that required thought© and very little random placement. This is sheer genius design!

Pieces of my Heart

I couldn't resist this one as my next challenge - it looked relatively straightforward - the aim being to create a full heart with it placed in the top left corner. This is Alex's first sliding tile puzzle. I usually find these unrewarding due to the large number of random moves to try and an enormous decision tree that eventually gets created. This apparently can be solved with 45 moves (I did not manage to do it that quickly). Having had such a great time with the previous puzzles I felt that there must be something special about this one too and I was not wrong. Unusually for one of these, the first bunch of moves are very constrained and there is only one path for quite a while. After that, I reached a decision point and took the wrong turn (as usual) but was not led up a huge long dead end with lots of other paths to rule out on the way. The blind ends are relatively short and sweet, requiring a backtrack and searching elsewhere. My memory is awful and this puzzle never required me to commit huge long sequences to memory. I found hot quite rewarding to finally reach the end point - I suspect that about 150-200 moves was used in the end after false paths and backtracking. I may even try it again to see if I can do it in a shorter sequence. Don't look if you don't want to see the end positions.

Possible in 45 moves? Not by me!

Finally, I couldn't resist one of Alex's multiple challenge puzzles. The fun thing about a huge number of his packing puzzles from last year as well as this year (and even some of the Pelikan puzzles like Sliders) have multiple challenges to them. I decided to strat with the rather beautiful ICEbreaker:

The pieces look simple (3 copies of the word ICE) and the first challenge had 256 solutions. Now, that is my type of puzzle - even I can solve it (hopefully). Again, this has been created with the aim to make you think© and it worked! My first trial and error attempts failed and I had to look at how the letters interacted with each other. This made it much easier and I quickly found one of those 256. I have not searched for lots more as I won't be able to remember what I have done before. The next challenge with the constraint of having alike letters touching was much more difficult but still a pleasurable experience. Challenge 3 nearly had me giving up - fill the tray leaving gaps in two diagonally opposite corners. I tried to be clever and look at the best way to pack tightly and leave a voxel free in those corners. Well, me being clever usually ends in disaster and I was not disappointed. I spent a good 45 minutes trying the same thing over and over again and it would not work. I then tried something else that was much less clever and this ended in the solved puzzle. I retrospectively entered the pieces into Burrtools to look at the solution set for this challenge and was interested to see that the tightest interaction that could leave a corner empty is not one of the solutions - have I said that this man is a genius? He perfectly led me astray and made me waste my time on something impossible! Challenge 4 was going to be impossible for me and I decided to try for the anti slide challenge. Take 2 sets of ICE and put them in the tray in such a way that none of the pieces can slide.

I have only played with a few anti slide puzzles before and have found that I just do not have the skill set to solve them. Many people at IPPs have loved them and a few have been entered into the design competition. I have played and failed before. But Alex has challenged me and I had to at least try. The problem here is that the pieces are all quite open and the tray quite big when you are only using 2 sets of pieces. I was very surprised at how much fun this was. I initially had pieces freely sliding in an ocean of space and then worked to get them tangled. Progress is very much stepwise as I found that changing positions of some pieces sort of locked bits up but not enough to prevent them all from sliding. I gradually worked my way through moving more and more pieces until there was a big Aha! moment. I had solved my first anti slide puzzle and it was good! I doubt that this will become a favourite genre but it's definitely worth a try and a big bonus as an additional challenge in a tray packing puzzle.

I still have a whole bunch of these to try and a few will always be in my work bag to be taken out during a quiet time. Thank you Alex for a wonderful gift and restoring my faith in my abilities!

---

Brass Monkey Sixential Discovery Puzzle (BM6)

Yes, it has arrived and the preorders close today. If you want the chance of a slightly early arrival and free shipping then get to the Two Brass Monkey site quickly and place your order. Allard loved his experience of solving the prototype. I have spent a several hours on mine and have not even found the first step (sigh, I am not very bright!) There is a lot of interesting stuff to be seen and it is going to be a huge challenge.

If you wait then it goes on sale formally on February 4th.

Gravitational Burr

A Burr That’s Also a Maze

Gravitational Burr by Junichi Yananose
Gorgeous wood!

Well, what a way to start the year! First, I start on the amazing PicoLock and now I have a stunning and fun chunk of wood sent all the way from t'other (getting in touch with my inner Yorkshireman) side of the world.

This beauty has been made from a rather gorgeously grained American Black Walnut and Juno has mixed and matched the light grained pieces with the dark to make something arrestingly beautiful (I am a sucker for lovely wood) and the fact that it is a fabulously tactile 117mm across in each direction makes for a really nice thing to play with. The only downside is that my Juno puzzle collection is currently stuffed into 2 shelves of my Billy bookcases and this (plus the equally stunning Dual Meanders Box I also received) will now no longer fit in that space and I will need another reconfiguration.

Looking at it, you would think: "so what! It's just another 6 piece burr. Surely everything interesting has been done with this type of puzzle?" You might be right about that as I have multiple burr sets and am always on the lookout for more but this is NOT "just" a 6 piece burr. Juno has added a ball bearing inside and a track for it - therefore it is a 7 piece burr and the seventh piece needs to move around inside to allow the other 6 to move.

In fact, it is even more amazing than that. It is actually a level one 6 piece burr with a solid key piece which Juno has made into a level 2 one by having a tiny locking move that needs to be pushed to allow the key piece to slide. The locking mechanism is held firm by a pair of magnets. Once the key piece is unlocked then the first movements are possible and it quickly becomes clear where the name Gravitational burr" came from. You cannot initially see the ball bearing but you know it is there and the only way to manipulate it is to rock the puzzle side to side or turn it over and over. It is clear when the bearing has moved because you can hear it click to a new position. It is only after 4 moves that you can actually see the ball bearing and at this point a small part of the track/maze that it is in can be seen.

4 Moves in and the BB with some maze is revealed

Having found the bearing, I return to the beginning and try it again - it is weirdly satisfying just rolling the ball around and controlling where it goes by holding the key piece tight and clamping the ball in place and not allowing it to roll or fall until I was ready. I found a choice at the 5th move and I carried on deeper into the maze. After a few more moves I lost my courage and returned to the beginning again...except I couldn't get back to the beginning! GULP! Lost already? I knew that I was in good company because Goetz had got himself into the same difficulty. It was a little early for a full on panic and I just wiggled it about in every direction I could whilst manipulating the movable piece and, after a rather fraught 10 minutes, it was back at the beginning again. Phew! I was unable to play with this whilst Mrs S was around. She often takes the piss out of me for listening to puzzles and she very rarely will sit in silence - there is always radio or music or TV on around her and if it's too loud or too distracting then I cannot tell where the bearing is going.

I carried on with my exploration and found another pathway and all of a sudden my ball bearing was peeking out at me in a different part of the maze on a new section of the puzzle. How on earth did I get there? Back-tracking was really hard as I hadn't been really paying attention to orientation as well as piece position and I must have missed an opening. It took me a whole evening to return to the start.

Time to think©! Ouch! I could see that this was going to be rather complex and maybe I was going to have to draw a maze pathway. I started off doing just that and quickly came to the conclusion that my mapping skills weren't going to work. The problem for me and the fun part of this puzzle is that it is not just a burr...it is a maze and to make it extra fun it was a dynamic maze because the pathways moved with the key piece and parts that are blocked become available to explore only at certain positions. On top of this, the bearing needs to be moved by gravity making it impossible to randomly find your way through. I would go as far as to say that randomly exploring will get you into trouble as you will almost certainly get lost and then be in trouble.

Oh, the think©ing hurt me bad this time. I suspect that designing a hidden maze inside a burr using Burrtools might not be that difficult for an expert but that would almost certainly lead to a puzzle that required a lot of random moves and luck to get through - it would not be a good puzzle. Here Juno shows his true genius - with the Gravitational burr, Juno had designed the maze in such a way that once the initial confusion of manipulating the bearing and it popping up in odd places has been overcome, then the think©ing makes you realise that he is showing you different bits of the maze as you go. First you see the top of the key piece, then you see the sides of the key piece and later, a bit by surprise, you get a peek inside the body of the burr and see pathways on the fixed walls of the cavity. Each time you see a bit more it opens up a possible section for use. 

In the end, I actually deliberately worked my way through the pathway section by section until all of a sudden the key piece is in a very extended position to allow the extraction of other parts and full disassembly of the burr. Again, the genius of Juno is shown by the presence of a magnet which holds the ball bearing in place so that it doesn't fall out and get lost in the furniture or swallowed by a cat. In retrospect, I realised that magnet also held the bearing in place at the start of the puzzle - there is no rattle if you listen to the closed puzzle.

All 6 (7) pieces and Juno's stamp is revealed.

Once the puzzle is in pieces then the true genius is on show and you can look at the complexity of the pathway. Not really a spoiler but if you don't want to see the key piece detail then don't click the show hide.

Only half the key paths shown

Now it was time for reassembly. Juno has provided a quick assembly method which doesn't use the maze at all - there is a big cavity in one of the pieces where you can store the bearing and just assemble the 6 piece burr without it.

Ball in the hole and then assemble the burr for a level 2 puzzle

As usual, I had not paid attention properly to the positioning of the pieces and which order they came out in. Have I told you before that I am truly awful at assembly puzzles? To my eternal shame, it took me several hours to reassemble the burr without using the maze. Blush! 

Once I had worked out the burr assembly I was then able to deliberately work out my sequence of moves whilst able to see inside the puzzle and plan out the true reassembly. It took me about an hour to work it out and be certain of the sequence and orientation. Such fun even when you can see everything in place.

This puzzle is a masterpiece! It looks gorgeous, it looks simple and has layer upon layer of complexity and is definitely not solved by chance. It requires initial blind exploration followed by a reveal or 2 or 3 and then definite planning of your moves. Finally the reassembly is not just a simple backtrack - I wanted to truly understand it in its' entirety and that took some time and a lot of fun. Thank you Juno!

The Dual Meanders Box is waiting for me and after just a tiny bit of exploration, I have to say that it frightens me a lot - there are 506 moves to open it!

---

Are you a Brass monkey fan? You should be! The BM puzzles are amazing. The 6th Brass monkey burr has just gone up for preorder/early bird sale! The previous 5 were amazing and this is set to be the very best yet. Go buy it now.

Brass Monkey 6 preorder information

PicoLock

Definitely Not a Trillionth (10^-12) of a Puzzle!

PicoLock from Boaz Feldman

It's beautifully presented

Ouch! Allodynia after surgery is a bit of a bugger! It is not helping me solve puzzles! It is very hard to prevent clothing touching your groin whilst sitting or moving or doing much of anything. I'll leave you with an image of me maybe solving puzzles naked to try and decrease my pain! 🤣🤣🤣😈

I watched as a bunch of people picked up the latest locks from Boaz Feldman and always intended to buy them for myself. This was especially reinforced when Allard reviewed both Loophole and the PicoLock and really seems to enjoy them. But with me being me, I kept buying gorgeous wood and kept running out of money before I bought the new shiny locks. Eventually, I managed to save up enough cash and quickly sent it to Boaz before any more wood showed up and both the latest puzzle locks arrived at the beginning of December. I took my customary photos and set to work on the Loophole first (encouraged by Allard's review) and having failed to turn the key I looked elsewhere and, you guessed it, failed to find anything else! Yep so far I have found NOTHING useful. I put it down and played with a few other shiny things that had arrived at roughly the same time and then, having been coshed by Tramadol, stopped solving anything for a little while. I put the locks aside on my newly cleared desk for later investigation.

Then, just before New Year's eve a bunch of us attended Peter Hajek's End of year Puzzle Party (EPP) and had to show off our favourites from 2023. A few people did mention the PicoLock as in their top three from the year and with the sheer calibre and experience of these puzzlers, I was very quickly enticed back to the locks. This time I decided to try and decrease my frustration and try the PicoLock. I had been Think©ing about the Loophole but my mind was blank.

PicoLock is a standard Nabob padlock from Israel which has been obviously tampered with. There is a hole in the side through which you can sort of see into the keyway and on the opposite side something has been drilled and filled. Boaz always provides the key on one of those wire keyring things keep it safe. 

Yes, I know that it won't be helpful but I have to do it - I put the key into the lock and turn. We all know that it won't be helpful but if we don't do it then those pesky voices won't stop muttering in the back of your head ("maybe it might to something or maybe you might learn something"). I probably should worry about those voices in my head! I turned the key and.... it wouldn't turn! Not entirely unexpected. Time to inspect it properly and see what you can see/do. I often use the light on my phone to illuminate holes etc and as a man of a certain age, use the magnifier function of the phone to be able to properly see inside said holes. Not terribly helpful. Poking at the holes with the tip of the key and my fingernails is not helpful and I'm beginning to worry that it will be another total failure. 

As is pretty common for me, I completely ignore what I have already learned (Mrs S says it is because I am not terribly bright and I can't argue with her) and I reinsert the key into the keyway and this time it turns. Huh!!!! Why now? Some further fiddling revealed something interesting and gives a hint of what Boaz might have done. He's a sneaky bugger! This interesting thing starts me on some of my usual tricks to try on locks and for a very long time, I couldn't to anything until, Aha! I could do something. It was only a small thing I did but it opened up a very unusual step. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen a puzzle lock do that before. After this unusual step, I received a tool and had no idea what to do with it. I was stuck for a while. Time to Think© yet again... Ouch!

At this point, I realised that something special might be possible (no clues here!) The next part of the sequence was classic Boaz - stuff was hidden from you in very clever ways and only Think©ing would find it. I then found another wonderful thing which led to a really clever manoeuvre - in fact, I really cannot believe that he managed to do what he did. After the best part of a day of play, I had an open lock and a huge grin on my face:

There really are NO spoilers here

I can see why this was in the top three puzzles of 2023 for several puzzlers. It is fabulous! I was significantly helped by buying and paying with two at the same time. There is a subtle difference between them that gave me a little clue for one of the steps. You definitely need to buy two puzzles to help Boaz and definitely help yourself with a clue.

I think this might be one that I might take to work to show off to colleagues. I think the orthopods in particular might appreciate the metalwork that has been created here.

If you live in the Americas then it may be easier for you to buy it/them from PuzzleMaster here and here.

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.

---

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 🤞🤞🤞).