He's so good that he can weave wood!

Woven Burr

Christmas this year was very quiet for me and Mrs S! We had a lazy day - after a small present opening ceremony which consisted only of 2 puzzles for me (Stifled Sob! Sniff!) Although, I did get some booze and goodies to eat too. We settled down to watch some TV and for me to play with my new and my old toys! I was very good and didn't touch anything that jingled and settled down with a new piece of wooden beauty from Brian Menold of Wood Wonders - this one I had been waiting for a few weeks. Brian has developed a sneaky habit of posting on his webpage about puzzles he plans to make and then allowing pre-orders! So a few weeks ago I told Mrs S that her Xmas present to me had just been announced. She was very good - she feigned interest  and grunted her assent. The puzzle arrived just before Xmas and was kept aside until the big day! I (and she) thought that was going to be it until Calvin from the HKNowstore announced the arrival of something new from Dayan - this is the Wheel of Wisdom twisty puzzle - it looked suitably horrific and so I had to have it! I'm a sucker for punishment!

L in Cage

Wheel of Wisdom

Christmas thanks and wishes

Just a very small part of the special toys I received in 2013!

Last year at Christmas I posted my special wishes for 2013 and am truly amazed that almost all of them came true! In the picture above you can see just a tiny tiny fraction of the wonderful designer's and craftsmen's work that I acquired for my now fairly impressive collection (if I forgot something then I beg forgiveness - I just ran out of space for the photo!)

I am very lucky that I am able buy so many wonderful toys every year and am extremely grateful to my very forgiving wife who lets me get away with spending all our money on such frivolous things (even if it prevents her buying one more Mulberry handbag for her equally important collection!) - she also seems to tolerate me clicking, jingling and swearing continuously beside her with only a mildly acerbic glare! My skills don't really seem to have improved much and I confess that I am still not very bright!

I also count myself very lucky that I have been asked to be a member of the editorial board of the CFF journal, the only print puzzle journal in the world. For me this allows my love of writing to continue on paper as well as on line. I am humbled to amongst some of the greatest puzzlers in the world on that board and to be allowed to edit and even write an article or two for them - I will try to be worthy.

My greatest pleasure has been to become part of an international community who share thoughts and ideas so freely and support each other with such gusto. I have a steadily enlarging group of friends whom I have mostly never met but with whom I communicate back and forth many times - this includes designers, craftsmen and puzzlers. These conversations can continue for weeks and are a constant joy to me. In fact last week I was amazed to find myself "chatting" with a puzzler in Hong Kong, a puzzler in China and another in America all as separate conversations but all at the same time. As an old fart, I have to say "Ain't the internet an amazing thing?"

I now find myself receiving up to 10 emails every day via this blog or personal messages via Facebook or the forums. These emails are from people wanting help to find a puzzle, advice for what to buy or even to track down a designer, they may be asking for help to solve something (I try not to give outright solutions, but usually find just a small nudge is all that is required) or sometimes provide support to fix something which may be faulty. I try to respond to everyone quickly but occasionally I may need to work first! But no matter who it is or what they need, it is always my pleasure to help them and the thanks I receive in return is a marvellous reward.

So my wish for 2014?
Well last year I wished for the incredible limited edition burrs from Brian and Sue Young (MrPuzzle) and actually got them! I have solved 3 and am spreading the experience out over the year! So obviously my wish for 2014 is to buy the next limited edition puzzles from them.

In my work I see an awful lot of pain, fear and suffering (and dare I say it death). Unfortunately with my current special interests I seem to see a lot more than my fair share of dreadful cases! Every day I count myself very lucky to be healthy and happy and able to pursue this wonderful hobby. As a result of this my real Xmas wish is for you in the puzzle community to have a great Xmas and a happy healthy New Year. As my friend Michel always signs his emails:

"Lets keep puzzling!"

Cast Medal

Cast Medal

Here I go again making excuses for the quality of my post today! I have had my mum staying with me for a few days. Her 5 year old laptop is showing the advanced age and is on it's last legs. I finally convinced her to buy a Macbook (as I can't support her on Windows with ease since I have barely used it in years) so we have had a few sessions of tuition and I am completely frazzled! This may make this post a little shaky!!!

Today I'm reviewing the Cast Medal - this one I saw a couple of years ago when a friend of mine brought it to work for me to play with it. I really struggled with it despite spending probably a couple of hours on it. So when my last puzzle order at Puzzle Master went in, I had to have one of my own.

The Cast Medal is only rated as a level 2 on the Hanayama 6 point scale or 6 (Tricky) on the Puzzle Master 5-10 point scale. I would suggest that this particular puzzle is actually a good bit more difficult than the rating suggests - I'd suggest that 3 (7) is a better rating. Two of the three reviews on the product page also agree with this assessment. The reviews have, without exception, been positive and mine will be too. Gabriel's review was positive here.

It arrives in the usual black Hanayama package and is really beautiful to look at being made of 2 disks of copper coloured metal joined together and with a partial ring attached to one, The aim is simply to remove the ring using the rough pathway carved into the surface of the disk and also making use of the holes in them to rotate the ring around into different positions. Initially it is not clear why there are 2 disks but quite quickly it becomes apparent that it requires you to utilise the path way on both of them at the same time. I am not particularly good at these dual maze type puzzles and this may explain why I had so much trouble. Construction quality is very high, it is 9.7 x 4.7 x 2.2 cm in size. No solution is supplied with it but it can be downloaded from here.

It's not just a "stack of sticks"

A stack of sticks?

Mrs S has a lot to put up with really! Unlike most men, I'm not out playing golf, watching football (that's soccer to the philistine Americans!) or even chasing women or doing drink and drugs! My horrible man-habit leaves me in the house most of the time! I'm either surfing the intertubes for more toys, purchasing more toys, unwrapping more toys, solving all said toys (sometimes noisily with jingling - gulp! or with lots of swearing) and finally spending hours on the computer writing about the toys after having taken obsessive photos of them on our nice granite kitchen work surface!! So this means that I am in the house a lot and not doing the chores that she wants me to do! Well as a bloke I can't multitask! I couldn't possibly do chores and puzzle at the same time - so puzzles take priority as I'm sure you would all agree is the correct choice.

Recently I received a few deliveries (those of you who visit my Facebook pages know that I receive so many deliveries that I am on first name terms with my postman!!) and I always show them to "her" hoping for a positive response. Most times I get the "that's nice" response without her even looking up at them. To get her proper attention I would need to announce that I had received a pair of shoes or a handbag! But my last delivery got a new response:

"They all look the same! It's just a stack of sticks"

Aaaaargh!!!!! How can she say such a thing??? Can she not see the beauty, the workmanship and the soon to happen fun? Obviously not! Sob!!!

The Anomaly

The Anomaly

Believe it or not - I still have a few puzzles left from my last order from Puzzle Master - I really outdid myself at my last shopping visit! I decided this time to go back to the last of my set from their own selection of Wire disentanglement puzzles. I think this is the final one in the set of level 10 that I had not done - it's called The Anomaly, although I'm not really sure why!

It certainly looks quite a fearsome puzzle for solvers and as I said it is at the top of their difficulty scale - yep, a Level 10 (Mind Boggling) on their 5-10 point scale. It combines a very complex set of interlocking rings, loops and also a medium length of string so what could possibly go wrong? To make it even more confusing there is a knot fused onto the centre of the piece of string which limits a ball to the top half of the string. At the far end is a large triangular ring and loosely on the string is the brass coloured ring which you are supposed to remove. As with this whole series of puzzles it is well presented in a plastic clamshell package which mercifully is made to open easily - I always seem to lacerate myself when I have to open this sort of sealed plastic pack! The puzzle itself is beautifully made with high quality anodised wire and good strong string. Due to the thickness of the wire you would need to be really quite strong to force it.

So just remove the ring on a level 10 puzzle involving string? Easy peasy!! Gulp! Hopefully there'll be no awful knots! None of the usual bloggers have reviewed it yet but there has been a single review left on the product page giving it 4 stars but claiming it was easy but fun! No solution is provided for you but it is available for download if you want it from here.

It's a twofer - puzzling for the family and puzzling for me!

Believe it or not this is my first jigsaw!

My puzzle habit has been a source of hilarity amongst my friends and colleagues for some time! They often wonder whether the present Mrs S and I actually communicate at all and what about. Their vision is of me jingling or rattling away with something annoying and her just glaring at me constantly! Now to a certain extent this is true - she has almost no urge to participate in the puzzling but does actually sort of enjoy the notoriety I have achieved. Occasionally she has been known to solve something but if it takes more than 5 minutes then it get's handed back with a pained expression and the words "show me how it's done" and heaven help me if I try to force her to work on it for longer! If I show her a twisty puzzle then she immediately says they're all the same puzzle and definitely won't touch it.

So I had been wondering if there was any way I could turn some aspect of the puzzle habit into something we can do together. I have never held out any hope for this - even Rox can't really convince "Mr Man" to participate! In fact he only tolerates her habit (which is worse than mine) because she lets him keep "man tools" in the apartment. But I know that it is possible to have puzzling become a family affair when I spoke to my friend Andrew from Singapore (aka Bob Cubes after Bob the Builder). He has convinced his adorable family to join in with his madness and they each worked together to be the first to complete the then record-breaking 24,000 piece jigsaw and documented their achievement here (it has even been hung on the wall of their living room!) Later on they did it again with the current record holding (32,000 pieces) by Ravensberger and documented it here. This one is so huge it comes with a trolley!!

Now there was absolutely no way that I was ever going to attempt one of those monsters! Firstly I don't have the space, secondly I have cats and thirdly "she" would never participate. I also have been scarred for life when, as a child, our family did second hand 10,000 piece jigsaw. It took weeks and weeks, we had to eat on our laps because the dining table was out of commission and at the end of it all there were 3 pieces missing! In fact I have never seriously considered jigsaws much at all despite my current "try just about any puzzle" fetish. My good friend Nigel (the organiser of the Midlands puzzle parties) does do them - in fact he has been working on the 32,000 piece monster for at least 2 years! So I have been thinking that maybe I could give it a try. Then recently Mrs S made me stop cold in my tracks when she asked about doing them and I agreed wholeheartedly and even bought a jigsaw board to store and solve on. But nothing was done about it.

Cast Cricket

Cast Cricket

I know! I know! I'm late and it's not good enough! Yes I've even had an email from an expectant friend. He'd come back from Sunday lunch and was settling down for a rest and a read of my latest post. He was most disappointed to see that I had failed to provide but I reassured him that it would be coming soon and here it is.

I'm late because of this!

So why am I a day late? Well last week, having freed my angel, I said that I'd need her help to solve Eitan's star, the 1st ever icosahedral and the hardest mass-produced twisty puzzle ever produced. Having scrambled it last Sunday, I'd been working at it all week and only just managed to complete it late on Sunday afternoon and much too late to write this post. Certainly it was too late if I didn't want to get in trouble with Mrs S! How do you go about such a horrific twisty? First I knew that the Eitan's star is the geometric dual of the Bauhinia dodecahedron (a vertex turning 12 sided puzzle) with the turning vertices coincident with the faces of the icosahedral puzzle. So starting at one corner, I was able to solve half of it using intuitive moves alone, then the thin internal triangles of the top half were solvable from the equator up using nothing more than the 4 move edge piece series.

Can you see the similarity?
Neither can I but it is there!

At this point it started to get challenging - with the vertices requiring a 3cycle but lots of setup moves to match the 5 colours up. The 2colour edges were next - there are 60 but I had 32 to solve and these require a much more complex series of moves just to cycle 3 of them and place just 1 at a time. My own algorithm was too difficult to translate so I borrowed a nice 20 move sequence from my friend Rline's video series. This section of the solve is really arduous and took hours and hours. There's no room for error and you have to pray that you remember all the setup moves! A small rest was required to calm my nerves and finally a simple set of corner piece series were required to place the large triangular centres! As of this moment, I am the 11th name in the list of solvers on the Twisty Puzzles hall of fame. If you want a cheaper but still pretty tough twisty puzzle then definitely try the Bauhinia dodecahedron - it is a tremendously fun puzzle and will set you up nicely for the Star's challenge.

So you see I do have a good excuse. I was therefore needing a fairly quick puzzle to solve and write about for you. In my last batch from Puzzle Master, I had ordered a couple of the easier Hanayama cast puzzles, so I fetched one to solve as quickly as possible for this blog post. This one is the level 2 out of 6 (or 6 - Tricky, on the Puzzle Master 5-10 point scale) which I think is a reasonable assessment. Opening the usual beautiful packaging reveals a really lovely metal puzzle in an antique brass finish. It is 6.7 x 6.7 x 2.5 cm in size and seems rather finely made. The name Cast Cricket obviously comes from the fact that it is formed from the major parts of the game of Cricket. It consists of 6 cricket bats joined at the handles in an odd star-shape and linked into a wicket structure complete with Bails preventing it lifting out the top. For the Americans amongst you, see this article for a description of cricket. The aim is to find a way to remove the 6 bats from the wicket. Preventing it are a number of knobbles on one side or other of each bat (one of the bats looks like a skateboard with wheels on it at both ends) but to help you there is a gap in the central wicket and a notch in the centre one. Like all the Hanayama puzzles, it does not come with a solution and if you want one then it can be downloaded from here.

This puzzle only has an average rating on puzzle master of 2 out of 5 stars but I think this is due to one particularly scathing (and unfair) review of 0 stars from one person who felt it was too easy and fragile. The other reviews were much more favourable. This is an easy puzzle but not everyone wants something that takes months and if you don't want an easyish puzzle then why are you looking at a Hanayama level 2? Gabriel reviewed it back in 2012 and really enjoyed it whilst acknowledging the difficulty level.

I freed my angel and I need her help!

Help me! I'm trapped in this prison.

There's a man out there in puzzle world and he's a verrrry bad man! His name is Strijbos, Wil Strijbos! You all know of him as my puzzle pusher! He is the facilitator, the enabler of my addiction and I love him for it! He also is the kind of man who would take a cute little angel and lock her tightly in a metal prison and then leave it to his unfortunate customers to try and work out how to free her!

I look forward to meeting Wil at the Midlands puzzle parties that he occasionally attends and unfortunately I missed out on meeting him at the recent Dutch Cube day! Most of all, however, I love it when he sends me his emails! Every 2-4 months a note drops into my Inbox telling me of his upcoming designs and what he has newly available - and he knows full well that I cannot resist his wares! In fact an email arrived this weekend and he has separated me from yet another large chunk of my money!

Back at the end of August one of these emails arrived with news of something we all knew he had been working on for a considerable time. He finally had it finished and was ready to take orders for the first 27 that were available. We all read with great eagerness about it and all of us then took a huge GULP! when we saw that it was to be €390 plus P&P. But did this faze us at all? Heck no! Within 5 minutes I had responded with a resounding YES and apparently within a few hours another 26 suckers ahem puzzlers had also signed up and Wil had a waiting list of another 22 within days! This shows how good a pusher he really is! There will only ever be 99 of these which you might say will make them an investment, but a few of us discussed the likelihood of this being something that will make a profit in the future and the consensus is that it is not likely at this price to be something that will appreciate in value much! So therefore you can conclude that this is a puzzle for the truly addicted or as I like to put it - "The Connoisseur". And this really is a truly fabulous piece of engineering and puzzling.

Those of us who bought it then received an email with basic instructions - the aims and then the do's and don'ts. Basically it is like most "sequential discovery" puzzles - you need to discover what is possible and find tools along the way that can be used at later times in various places. As with many others the important rules are "NO Banging, No Shaking/spinning, No external tools". The aim in the very first email was:

Challenge: Take my HEART 

Mine arrived just a few days later and the excitement was palpable in the puzzle world as we all scrabbled to open them at the same time - emails were shooting back and forth like wildfire! Wil always packs things very well and this time was no exception - it requires good knife skills to get into the cardboard box and then through the lovely gift box it had been sent in. Lifting the puzzle out came as a bit of a shock and did explain why the price was so high - it is HUGE and VERY heavy!!! Dimensions are 16 x 7.5 x 11 cm and the weight a staggering 1.89Kg (that's 4lb 2.25oz for you Americans!) - even just picking it up now to weigh it I get a shock. This huge weight plus the fact that it is all metal (steel and aluminium) means that you do NOT want to drop it - if it lands on a foot then you will be needing an operation (trust me! I have seen lots of these operations and they are not very nice!) If it lands on your wooden desk then you are going to have a very big dent - the puzzle, on the other hand, will be fine!

Cast News

Hanayama Cast News

Phew! I'm running late! The trouble with weekends at this time of year is that there are just so many "end of year chores" to be done. I've spent all day in the garden, clearing up and doing an end of year prune of many of the shrubs. At the end of the day, I suddenly remembered that I haven't published my customary blog post! But, never one to disappoint, I have managed to produce a quick review of yet another Hanayama Puzzle from my latest batch from Puzzle Master. This time it's the Hanayama Cast News - I had saved this for a while because it is a level 6 on the Hanayama 6 point scale and was, therefore, supposed to be a real challenge (on the Puzzle Master scale it is said to be a level 10 - Mind Boggling). The puzzles at this level are supposed to be a tremendous challenge to newbies and even pretty tough for wizened old puzzlers like me - I can't believe I am calling myself that after just 4 years as a puzzle fiend!

The reviews on the Puzzle Master product page for this are quite mixed with a few complaining that it was actually very easy! But the majority of reviews have been 3 stars and above (with an average of 4) and that was good enough for me to choose it. Plus I got it because this is it is the last one in the group of level 10 puzzles in my collection. Gabriel reviewed it here and really enjoyed it.

This one arrived in the usual immaculate Hanayama box and was nicely wrapped. The instructions are simply to take it apart and put it back together again. The box gives a little spiel from Nob Yashigara who designed it and quite a few other puzzles from Hanayama. Apparently the key word is "Needle"! I have no idea why they put that on the box because no-one pays any attention and it is not in the least bit helpful. There is no solution provided but if you find you need one then it can be downloaded from here.

I'm a puzzler on the edge!

The Master Curvy Copter
"HELP! I need someone!!"

Introduction

It has been quite a while since I have posted anything about twisty puzzles and I have recently managed something REALLY special so I thought I would discuss it and also try to give enough information about the process to hopefully entice a few more of you into the wonderful world of twisties! My aim is to talk about edge turning puzzles, a bit about jumbling and then give away "the secret" to twisty success!! Read on!

I started it!

The fearsome looking puzzle pictured at the top is the Master Curvy Copter - it was designed by one of the great twisty puzzle designers, Eitan Cher. It was first announced in June 2010 when Eitan posted about it on the Twisty puzzles - "New puzzles" forum and even though it did not turn very well in version 1, there was a lot of interest in it and then it all quietened down. Subsequently he produced a version 2 which solved all the initial problems and put it up for sale on his Shapeways store where it is now available for a very reasonable €180 in Black. Now mine cost a bit more because I got mine ready made from Eitan (I'm not allowed to dye plastic in my new kitchen on pain of torture!) I chose it because I had absolutely adored (and still do) the original Curvy Copter (pictured left) which I wrote about almost at the beginning of my Twisty puzzling career. I still maintain that it is a fantastic puzzle even for people who are not into twisties. Obviously when you have finished the 3x3 cube then the next step is a 4x4 - so I figured that the step up from the Curvy Copter would be the master version.

This gorgeous puzzle arrived in May this year and I fiddled with it a little and marvelled at how complex it was and yet how well it moved - even the jumbling moves were really easy! I then put it on the shelf next to me where it stayed for a month or so. Yes! it's the "puzzles to be done" shelf and it has quite a few on it! It screamed obscenities at me for weeks but I was far too frightened of it to scramble it and try a solve - partly because I seriously doubted that I had the necessary skills to solve it and also because it is so rare in the wild that no-one has posted anything on-line at all about how to go about solving it - meaning that I would not even be able to look at a tutorial if I got stuck! I believed I was on my own!

Yeah! I can hear you all screaming at me that I'm a puzzle wimp and I freely admit it! Strange that I keep hearing these voices! But..... Just look at it! It's horrendous!

It looks so innocent like this!

So nearly 4 months ago, I finally succumbed and decided to do what I had done with it's daddy (the Curvy Copter) and did a scramble without any jumbling or shapeshifting and did not take any pieces out of their orbits. I recalled when I did the same thing to the Curvy Copter and that I actually managed to solve all but the last corners by intuition alone and then, using some very simple series of moves, I managed to solve them too. I remember how great it felt and what a phenomenal puzzle it was - it ended up as my second ever twisty blog post. If you don't have the Curvy Copter yet, then BUY it.... NOW!

Having done the most basic of scrambles on my new monster,  I set to work and........
I couldn't do it! I spent a week trying everything I could but nope, I didn't have the skills. I couldn't, to my shame, even do the first face. I tried reducing it to a standard curvy copter and failed at that too. So I put it back on the shelf where it looked quite pretty in the scrambled form but every time I looked up it made me feel guilty. I would take it off the shelf and try again every week or two and fail again!