Brass Monkey Number Three Is Great as Well as Painful!

From the Left - Brass Monkey One, Two and errrm Three!
It's easy to tell them apart from the etched marks on the ends

When Big Steve and his partner in puzzling crime, Ali (he of the stern finger warning!) offer me one of their namesake puzzles, the answer is "yes" and which account shall I PayPal to? A bunch of us got early access to them because we had bought the previous versions and anyone who has experienced the amazing quality of their work will jump at the chance of more. If you want to buy beautiful brass puzzles then go to their Etsy store (all 3 are now available) or you could buy from PuzzleMaster who have the first 2 so far (I am sure they will get the new one soon) and their amazing Hokey Cokey lock too. Go to the store right away and, as Allard said, "Get one - you will like it".

My usual adage of "wood is good" extends to brass and aluminium and steel and wire and string and plastic... Whack! Ouch! Sorry dear! There have actually been several Whack! Ouch!s yesterday when she caught sight of our credit card bill showing purchases from Eric, Brian, Shiro san and Calvin - I hate to admit it but this time I think I deserve it! I am out of control...yet again.

I left my lovely readers last time showing off the newly acquired Brass Monkey Three complete with an essential tongue depressor for which Mrs S gave me yet another dark broodingly violent look which told me that, if tongue depressors begin to multiply in the house, then I will find myself separated from various essential parts of my body. I think she plans to stuff those body parts, after chopping them into small pieces, into various cavities and openings in Big Steve! Remember, Steve, that she is Scottish, violent and has some serious training in the dark arts of hurting people. If you all think I married a professional dominatrix then think again, she has had nurse training in Scotland! Hmmm! Now, where would I find a dominatrix? Whack! Ouch! Heeheehee! Oops! 

After the puzzle had been unwrapped and the warning about tongue depressors issued, she caught sight of the large, heavy chunk of brass and realised that this was a risk to her (our... Whack! Ouch!... her) kitchen tiles and work surface. I was thrown out of the kitchen and started to play in the living room. I tried the trick that had worked for BM one and, of course, that failed. They would never repeat a trick, would they?

Now, there really isn't an awful lot you can do with these things but I thought I tried everything and got nowhere. It was time to cook and I left it being warmed by a sleeping cat and went back to it later. The second attempt at solving it, later that night, left me with a very sore finger! I did find something interesting and did it repeatedly until nothing happened. Lots and lots of fiddling with a large chunk of metal tends to leave your fingers in some pain and I broke a nail! The rest of the evening went without any progress and I returned the following day for more suffering. Mrs S again told me in no uncertain terms (Whack! Ouch!) not to bring it into the kitchen and I skulked away. Again, on my chair in the living room, I tortured my fingers and something new happened - I actually made it happen on purpose... I had actually had a thought© which is most unusual for a "bear of very little brain" like me.

Having made the new thing happen, I got stuck! Nothing else would happen and, to my horror, I couldn't unmake the new thing either! In a panic, I hurt my finger again trying to undo it. Damn! I am really not terribly bright! The rest of that evening was spent looking for something else and finally admitting that my first idea must have been worthwhile. Nursing my sore finger, I tried again a few more times and AHA! I had a pile of brass logs and a very upset cat who did not enjoy the sudden weight on his feet and back.

Of course, I will not be showing you the mechanism - go buy your own to find out.

Now that was very clever. In fact, there is even a further disassembly step possible which I did just to see how the puzzle had been constructed. The tolerances on these are amazing - just as good as Brass Monkey Two. The puzzle is a 6 piece cylindrical burr as well as a secret opening puzzle and, of course, I had dropped all the pieces without paying any attention to how they had been assembled. This meant that for little old me, who is rubbish at assembly, I had a rather prolonged (but fun) time trying to put the damn thing back together! It is not helped by the fact that the cylindrical nature of the pieces makes them rather slippery as they rotate on each other whilst you try to slide the pieces together. Poor Zachary had several thumps as it collapsed in a heap a few times. After another 20 minutes of swearing under my breath at Big Steve, I finally got it back together.

This is a wonderful challenge - just the right difficulty level. Even doing it a second and third time is not easy - the dexterity and arrangement is one that I struggle with every time.

Allard was right! Damn, I hate saying that! Go get one!

Both Metal and Plastic can be Sublime and Ridiculous!

The Two Brass Monkeys - they come with plastic feet covering the ends to protect surfaces

If you are wondering whether my pile of mixed puzzles is sorted yet then the answer is HELL NO! I managed to sort 3 of them out by wood type and was able to reassemble them but the 5 oak Happiness cubes continue to taunt me and make me very unhappy! Partly because I have had no time to even attempt the task.

At the MPP I could not resist picking up the latest 2 sublime creations from the deviant minds of Ali and Big Steve (yes, I chose that word appropriately). Their store on Etsy is called the Two Brass Monkeys and their creation above is Brass Monkey 1 and 2 (there is also the fantastic Hokey Cokey lock for sale as well - review here). These beauties are made of brass, are about 7cm around and weigh 800g each so postage outside of the UK may be a little high. Nick Baxter didn't have to worry about postage having received his at the MPP - unfortunately for him, he did not know that he had received it until he was frisked by the TSA and had to explain what this heavy metal thing was and whether anything was inside of it!

When I showed it to Mrs S the evening I got back from Birmingham she did indeed say that they were very beautiful. The following day, she seemed less enamoured of them when she realised just how heavy they were and what would happen if I dropped one on a large high gloss kitchen tile or the granite worktop! They were banned from the kitchen! I went to work on BM#1 on Sunday evening (in the living room whilst watching TV with the cats and Mrs S. I realised quite quickly that this was a lovely example of a classic burr puzzle. It is not terribly difficult to dismantle and the reassembly is only slightly more challenging. It is a wonderful example of the metal craftsman's expertise!

The attention to detail went even to having a sprung ball bearing to allow the key piece to click into place. Flushed with success, I went to work on Brass Monkey #2 and quickly realised that this burr was much more complex. There was pushing and pulling and lots of grunting and groaning as the weight of the bloody thing got to me! At the end of one evening, it remained intact and I remained frustrated. The next evening, I continued to play and again had no luck. I sort of ran out of ideas and put it down for the next few evenings. No inspiration occurred to me and I started on some other puzzles instead but always having it next to me on my armchair. I could hear Big Steve taunting me! I was on call on Friday night and it was a rather busy night in Sheffield so lost an evening's puzzling. The following morning, feeling rather jaded from lack of sleep, I was reminded by Steve that I needed to actually pay for the puzzle and at the same time taunted by him that George Miller had solved his copy in just half an hour! PayPal did its' thing from my bed and I suddenly had a brainwave - maybe if I look closely at..... At this point, Mrs S told me I had better get out of bed and get to the gym because if I get fat she will get rid of me! Thus I was unable to try out my wonderful idea. At the gym, I managed not to die on the Cross trainer and stepper and thought more deeply on the Brass monkey. Concentration is not my strong point and I quickly got sidetracked and gazed admiringly at the ponytails jiggling about when they turned around, they appeared to be blokes...this was a great disappointment! As soon as I got back from the gym, before breakfast could be made and consumed, I pissed off Mrs S by going straight to the puzzle and bringing it into the kitchen and tried out a new theory. Aha! Mrs S said that Steve and Ali were very "sleekit" (old Scots word c.f. Robert Burns) - yes, it is a very sly/cunning idea and I am slightly ashamed that I didn't solve it quicker.

Of course, I am not going to show the mechanism.

They will look great on the shelf but before I put them on it, I will need to flip it over because my shelf of metal puzzles is starting to bow under the weight!

Huge nail-ball-U - I have no idea whether it has a proper name!

Another really lovely bit of heavy metal came my way a month or so ago courtesy of the wonderful Wil Strijbos. His latest meeting with Jean-Claude Constantin gave him a bunch of new disentanglements which I was keen to try. JCC has been playing with the horseshoe shapes in quite a few of his puzzles recently and they have turned some easy puzzles into something absolutely horrendous. The monster above (it is 232g in weight and 15 x 12cm in size) must have taken quite some machinery to produce...the nail is the biggest I have ever seen! Looking at it, one immediately gets an idea for what one needs to do but, as always, that is blocked. Try it in the opposite direction and...nope! That won't work either. There is no way that you could ever flex it a bit to make something slip past - this requires exactly the right movements to make it happen. The jingling (more like clanking) got on Mrs S' nerves but it was worth it - 30 minutes of noise and my Aha! moment was there. Superb idea and so much better for being made large!

Such a simple design but not a simple solution!

Next up I have to show off what many might consider "ridiculous" - I am a huge fan of N-ary puzzles (something is on its' way over to me very soon) and also a huge fan of probably the greatest exponent of that group of puzzles, Namick Salakhov. Every year Namick enters some of the most incredibly complex designs into the IPP Design competition and I drool over them. He had several entries this year and this is the second of them that I have managed to get hold of. They are handmade from a kind of plastic and are lovely to hold and play with.

Loopy Lattice puzzle

This one is the Loopy Lattice puzzle with the aim being to remove the string...without scissors!

More detail of the lattice

So far the solution has eluded me but Nick Baxter assures me that it is solvable and the solution does fit on a single sheet of paper! Luckily Namick puts a small link in them that allows you to unscrew the loop and reset the puzzle. Without that, I would have had the most awful knot!! One feature that makes it even harder to solve is that every time I start to play, one or both of the cats decides that it is time to play with the string and tries to bite through it! I am determined to get it solved.

Before I do that, maybe I should get to work on my happiness cubes? Don't forget to go buy the Brass Monkey puzzles whilst you can.

Ali and Steve Annoy Mrs S...Again!

Brass Monkey #5

Just a short one this week - I am going to struggle to write much without giving significant clues. About a month ago, Allard posted his review of the 5th in the Brass Monkey series by Steve and Ali. He had received an early version to play with and had absolutely loved the idea. As soon as it went on sale, I couldn't resist and bought a copy - you cannot have too many burrs apparently and these are very nice heavy burrs...or are they? They certainly are burr-shaped but only number 1 is actually a burr - the rest unlock in a variety of different ways, each of which will leave you laughing out loud at the boys' cleverness and cheekiness. 

Brass Monkey #4 had me gasping in disbelief at what they had done - it was fabulous and beautifully implemented so I was very keen to find out what they could possibly have done to make yet another identical looking puzzle be fun. It arrived a couple of days later, much to the disgust of Mrs S, and unfortunately had to sit for a while before I could find some time from work to play.

It looks, as I have said, just like all the others. It's a cylindrical brass six piece burr with a circle etched into the end of each burr stick and a hole drilled into it. Each of them have slightly different variations of the hole and etching to set them apart from each other. It is a very significant chunk of puzzle at 70mm across each axis and weighing in at almost 800g - do NOT drop this on a tile, kitchen work surface or foot! Actually Mrs S has told me in no uncertain terms each time that if I damage any part of the kitchen then she will make me wish I had dropped it on my foot! 

So, what do you do to start with them? Well, they are burrs, so, despite the fact that you know they are not really burrs, you do the totally useless thing and try and push/pull each piece in each direction. By the time you have worked out how to keep track of all the possible moves, you have wasted at least a ½ hour. Now what? As you all know by now, I am a bear of very little brain so I move on to the next best thing to pushing and pulling and I start to shake it wildly in every possible direction. Aech shake has to be interspersed by pushing and pulling each stick in every direction before trying to shake in another direction. As you can imagine, the possible combinations mount up very fast and I take notes on my ipad for what I have done. In this fruitless way, I pass a very happy 2 or 3 days of effing and blinding and start to really get on Mrs S' nerves.

Finally I have run out of combinations of shaking and pulling and move on to swirling it in different directions and about different axes before pushing and pulling again. Yes, that didn't work either! After several days it is time to think© and it hurts! I go back to all the suggestions made over the years at MPPs about how to solve a puzzle - Mrs S stops me from submerging it in gin as she wants to drink the gin and that certainly calms her inner "savage beast" (she is Scottish and the savage beast is very close to the surface). I then put it down for a while and chat with Derek again. He hadn't solved his copy but had noticed something and suggested that I do something unthinkable to see if it would happen with my copy. Unthinkable? Very much so! I gird my loins and try it. Now that really gets noticed by Mrs S and she is very unhappy about it! In fact she tells me in no uncertain terms to "STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!" Gulp! I stop it...after cheekily doing it one more time just for fun.

Needless to say, it didn't solve the puzzle - apart from annoying "she who scares all living creatures", it  did nothing apart from to make me think© what else this particular feature might indicate. The only thing I could do was to look very closely at the puzzle and notice some unusual features. Aha! There is something odd that I had noticed when it arrived but only Derek's idea made me think harder about it. What if I??? Oh! That was unexpected! Quick, put it back and try again. Yep, not a fluke. Suddenly the burr come apart and the mechanism is visible - no I am not going to show it to you!

It's a six piece cylindrical burr.
No clues here!

So as a clue to you, you have to do something unthinkable and then think© hard before doing something even more unthinkable and try not to piss off your wives/husbands/pets in the process. Over the last week, I have been deliberately pissing off Mrs S because every now and then a bit of violence can be exhilarating! 😈

Yet again, I cannot believe what the boys have done! This is so clever and beautifully implemented. The engineering precision to make this work is tremendous. Don't hesitate, if you are a serious puzzler then this is an essential purchase - buy it direct from Steve and Ali at TwoBrassMonkeys (all 5 are available) or if you are in North America then maybe wait for it to be in stock at PuzzleMaster.

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Loki from Boaz Feldman

Boaz Feldman recently showed off his latest lock/sequential discovery puzzle on Facebook and I was forced to wait a little while for work to settle down a bit before I remembered to buy it. Like all of his (and his Dad's) creations, the aim is to "open the lock" and then "close the lock". So far I have done neither even if I have discovered a few peculiarities. With my puzzling skills, this could take me months!

Boaz is obviously a cat lover and he knows how much my boyz help me with my puzzling and he was very kind to provide a special Hanayama Cats puzzle in the package - thank you so much my friend.

Yummy!
The cats said that, not me!

The news has been full of the problems occurring in parts of Northern Europe with Covid19 with very high infection rates and the health services almost being overrun. The problems are occurring particularly in places that have poor vaccine uptake. The UK and Israel have shown that with high vaccination rates the number of people getting significantly sick and ending up either in hospital or worse, in critical care, is massively lowered by having a vaccine course (and booster). Yes, it is not 100%, but the only people getting critically ill in my own hospital (and others around the Western world) are those who have chosen not to get vaccinated (including young people) and a few of the vaccinated who have significant immunity problems. So my advice to you if you want to protect yourselves, your families and the population in general is to go and get a jab! Getting a bit under the weather for a day or so is nothing compared to the illness itself (I know, I have had Covid and the jabs)

Cleaning the Study One Puzzle At A Time

Feed the Monkey by the Two Brass Monkeys

16 small bananas and a giant one

I have been a bit busy recently. The junior doctors strike means I have to try and revamp our on call rotas to ensure all the gaps are covered plus "she" has made me do/attempt some DIY recently. The roof of our conservatory sprung a leak with the huge deluge of rain that the UK has suffered over the last 2 weeks (Global warming? It's been bloody cold here!) and I have been up a ladder in the rain trying to clear gutters, downpipes and see where the water is getting inside. She has been commenting that the silicone seal in the bathroom needs to be redone due to the inevitable build up of mould and after she trotted off up north to visit the outlaws, I spent a day on my hands and knees cutting it all out (along with a bit of grout) to prepare for a redo. This took me most of a day because I am too damn old to be down in that position for long and now I can barely move!

All of this has meant that I have not had much puzzling time after the huge effort put into the wonderful Pelikan puzzles that I reviewed last week (they are all still available now if you feel the urge to torture yourselves). For this reason, I have returned to a puzzle that I solved at the end of last year but did not get around to writing about. One reason to write about it is because it has been sitting on my desk to remind me and I really REALLY REALLY need to tidy up my desk before I get murdered in my sleep:

Houston, I have a tidiness problem!

It all sort of reached a head when I had to do my pre-op assessments on a Sunday afternoon after writing my blog and for that I have to use my work laptop. For....ahem, obvious reasons, I usually need to decant to our dining table only to find that it was occupied by "she who gave me a very burning look" when I turned up to find she had spread her stuff out over it. I was told to F... off/go somewhere else and I beat a hasty retreat to the living room and spread out there. I really do need to tidy the mess up and to start me on my way I could write about the Feed the Monkey puzzle and return it to the Two Brass Monkeys shelf upstairs. I am a little worried about how long that shelf will hold up - the brass is really quite heavy and I have quite a lot of Steve and Ali's wonderful creations. A fully loaded monkey weighs in at 563g and is 90mm tall, 32mm deep and wide.

TBM Brass shelf (plus a a few of my N-ary puzzles)
I'm worried it might collapse

TBM 3D printed stuff

I received my copy shortly after it was released way back in March 2020 and immediately set to. I had bought the male monkey but they also had an identically challenging female version which has cute eyelashes. I removed the long banana that had been in the monkey's mouth and shook the bloody thing about to extract all of the small bananas as well. I was a little horrified to see that there were 16 of them and they all needed to be placed through the mouth inside the case.

It quickly became clear that the cuboid interior could only take 3 of the bananas across and "up" and therefore 9 in a layer. It was only 2 layers deep so should be able to take 18 small bananas or 16 small ones and one double length large banana. Yay! Easy! It must just be a dexterity puzzle. Or so I thought.

I spent over 2 years thinking that my dexterity was crap! I really could not arrange all the pieces inside. I shook them, I rattled them, I rocked them and rolled them! These bananas would not all fit in the monkey! He was always full before I reached the final one. This lack of dexterity was really worrying for someone of my profession - I have to prove my dexterity almost every day at work with cannulae, arterial and central lines, nerve blocks and intubations. I usually think I am not bad with my hand-eye coordination skills but this monkey was not getting stuffed by me! Over that 2 years, I picked it up and put it down again dozens and dozens of times. It stayed on that desk next to me because I could not solve it. 

Then my most heartbreaking moment - a certain blind puzzler (yes, he knows who he is and so does everyone else who goes to the MPPs) solved it whilst sitting opposite me and it only took him about 20 minutes. He solved it and couldn't even see it! Aaaargh! One thing that I did notice whilst desperately trying not to look at him playing with his monkey was that he was not doing any of the stuff that I had been trying. Hmmm. Maybe one of my major thoughts (my only major thought) was wrong?

I went back to it after that MPP last year and had another think© - What if I? OMG! I'm an eejit!

Finally!
I can now put the damn thing away

There are a couple of new puzzles on Steve and Ali's site which are well worth nabbing (once I have saved some pennies after my recent splurge on Cubic dissection and a few more from Aaron then I fully intend to buy their latest ones.

Don't forget to visit the Pelikan puzzle site as well - the puzzles from last week are still in stock.

Something Happy and Something Sad

Brass Monkey Number Four

Today, I am very happy to show off to you something wonderful! Yes, you all need one of these in your collections - it's not really tough but it is really well made and has a fabulous Aha! moment. I mentioned last week after Allard reviewed the fourth in Big Steve and Ali's Brass Monkey series that I had ordered my copy. It arrived on Tuesday and after Mrs S warned me that if I dropped the heavy object and broke a kitchen tile or work surface then she would "break me". As a Scottish woman with nurse training, I had to take her seriously (the violent tendencies and skills have to be seen to be believed) and immediately took it into the living room and forced myself to only play with it there. I have to say that she is not wrong - you could do some serious damage with this chunk of metal. At almost 800g (1.1Lbs) with each piece 70mm long and 19mm in diameter, it's a bit of a monster. You can always count on Steve and Ali producing something very well made and great fun in the puzzling. Despite fear of Mrs S, I was delighted with my purchase.

So, it's a six piece burr made of brass like all the others...except it's not! Only one of the Brass monkeys is a straightforward burr puzzle. The rest have all sorts of interesting locking mechanisms hidden in the depths of the metal. They all look pretty much identical except for the engraving on the ends of the burr sticks... number one has a dimple on each end, number two has the dimple surrounded by an engraved circle, number three has the same plus an extra circle. Number four must have...nope! It has a deeper hole drilled in each end. Is that significant? I'll let you find out.

How do you go about solving it? I have no idea how others do it but after looking and shaking whilst listening (no, that doesn't help me), I finally resort to pushing and prodding before finally just swearing at the bloody thing! As a man of a certain age who has got beyond the point of needing ever longer arms to read books with (especially when I found that my arms weren't long enough to place an arterial line I had to buy some multifocal contact lenses) I even resorted to using the magnifier function of my iPhone to look at the puzzle. Nothing helped. Apart from teeny tiny motion of the burr sticks, it stayed firmly in one piece - sigh!

This continued for a further two evenings with Mrs S looking at me with amusement as I continued to fail and continued to mutter swear words under my breath. Allard had said that there was something very subtle to be found. Those of you who know me are very aware that subtle doesn't work for me - I need to be hit with a brick before I notice anything. But you also know that I am very persistent. I have been known to keep trying with puzzles for months or years before eventually solving. I did kinda hope that this one wouldn't take that long but I was ready for it. Eventually, whilst using touch rather than sight, I had my first Aha! moment - man! that was hard to notice. Suddenly, things were changing and I had "stuff" to play with.

For an evening, I just went back and forth on this one discovery without working out how I could utilise what I had found. I pressed everywhere to see what would interact with what I had found and this was not helpful as always. I was four days in when I had one of my very rather Thoughts© and I went from back and forth, to what if I do this? to OMG! I cannot believe they are going to do that!

The final realisation of what they have done hit me hard and there was a laugh out loud moment! Stunning idea and beautifully implemented. No force required just a bit more exploration of the mechanism and it comes apart - just in time for a huge grin and a shout that annoys Mrs S! Yessss!

Don't be silly! No clues here - just a pile o brass.

This is BRILLIANT! Stop reading my website and go here to buy one! NOW! It will eventually be available at PuzzleMaster if you can stand the wait. It pains me to say it but Allard was right - the others are good but this is the best so far - I just cannot believe they did that!

Felix Chein - rest in peace my dear friend

Finally I have to finish off with some sad news. My good friend and puzzle mentor Tsy Hung Chein (aka Felix) has passed away a couple of weeks ago after a long and brave battle with Lung cancer. Most of you will have barely heard of him but he has quietly been in the background of the puzzle world for many many years, quietly influencing people and providing help and advice. He was a major player in the Taiwanese puzzling community for many many years and will be sorely missed by them all there. He had also been an attendee at the International Puzzle Party when he had kept better health.

Felix contacted me within a few months of my blog starting up and from the beginning provided fabulous advice. He helped me decide what puzzles to buy and many many times tried to stop me buying puzzles that he did not think were worth my money - he was almost never wrong! He sent me a huge pile of LiveCubes to make puzzles with and then encouraged me to buy the fight cubes too. After a little while he even sent me puzzles that he had made - they were a little rough and ready but the puzzling fun was always superb. When he said that a puzzle was good - it was bloody good! Felix was a master of wire disentanglement puzzles but always loved interlocking puzzles that had something special to them (not simple burrs). Like Bernhard, he was a huge fan of interlocking puzzles which involved either a dance of the pieces or rotations and boy, did he send me some wonderful toys! Looking back at my database, I must have 50 or more wonderful puzzles from him (either made by his fair hand or just gifted to me from his collection) - you couldn't hope for a better puzzling friend than him. The puzzle community are a wonderful welcoming bunch but such generosity was incredible. Felix was also a designer and his puzzles have been made by several craftsmen - one of my all time favourites was Castle made by Pelikan - it made it to my top ten that year.

Made by Felix

Made by Jakub

Over the years, I have shared nearly 1000 email conversations with him (each thread being 5 to 20 emails long) - it amazed me that he always had time for more questions and advice. I never actually met him in person but I consider him one of my very best puzzle friends and will miss him greatly.

It was not only me that he befriended and mentored - Felix was a major influence in the puzzling world. Here are a couple of tributes from two of my good friends:

From Christoph Lohe (puzzle designer)

"Four years ago I got in touch with Felix (Tzy Hung Chein), and we quickly became real friends. We exchanged emails almost daily, and discussed puzzling topics as well as things far beyond just puzzling.

Felix has been one of the most experienced puzzle collectors and designers I have ever met. His main puzzle category has been disentanglements, and he knew virtually everything about these puzzles. However, he had also a deep knowledge about interlocking Burr puzzles, TICs, and packing puzzles. Over the years I received countless puzzle recommendations from Felix, and he never failed. Without him, my puzzle collection would not exist as it is.

Felix was also my first contact for discussing new design ideas, and new designs I invented. As I have "two left hands" when it comes to building puzzles, Felix has hand-made various prototypes of my designs, and had sent them over to me in Germany. His comments and suggestions were always very valuable for me, and highly appreciated.

Felix was not a person who wanted to stay in the lamp light. He was well linked in the puzzle community, but he prefered to remain in the background. He has been engaged in the TPC (Taiwan Puzzle Community) which organizes regular puzzle parties. His focus has been bringing puzzles from his collection into the parties, and let younger members fiddle with them. Felix has been very aware of the importance to care about young puzzlers, and he guided them through the world of puzzles.

Even if I have never met him personally, I am very happy that I had found a close friend in Felix, and that I could communicate with him so often during the last years. Felix was a real gentleman, extremely supportive, helpful and kind, and I learned a lot along with him.

During the last year, Felix was patiently and bravely fighting against various health issues he had to deal with. That fight took most of his energies.Even then, he did not give up, and kept his optimism and open mind. He peacefully trusted in God. Felix was an amazing person, and I will miss him very much! Rest in peace, my dear friend!"

From Brian Menold (puzzle craftsman)

"Since entering the puzzle community several years ago, I have always been amazed at the wonderful people that make up this unique group of folks. One such person was Felix (Tzy Hung Chein). I became friends with Felix about seven or eight years ago and I’m not quite sure how we connected. But we did, and that connection quickly turned into a very strong friendship.

I call many people in the puzzle community my friends, and many of them, like Felix, I have never had the pleasure of meeting face to face. But the frequency and warmth of our conversations took this friendship a little farther than most. He became a mentor to me. I think it is safe to say that many of the puzzles that Wood Wonders produced over the past several years were made primarily because of his influence. His advice and counsel were invaluable to me. He would graciously send me prototypes that he had made for me to review and then he would explain why he thought it was a good puzzle to make. Needless to say, he was always right. 

I will never forget the man who encouraged me to make puzzles that were perhaps a bit outside my comfort zone, the man who shared his wisdom about what makes a good design, and of course, the man who, in spite of his own health issues, always helped keep my spirits up while my wife and I were fighting our health issues. This world lost a great deal with his passing and I lost a great friend. 

I will never forget you,

Brian"

 Rest in peace my friend.

Celebrating a Landmark With a Best of Year?

Brass Monkey Sixential Discovery Puzzle (aka BM6)

AT LAST!

I have absolutely adored the Brass Monkey burr series (which are not burrs) - I have reviewed them (along with a whole bunch of their other releases) over the last few years and some have been awkward to solve whilst others have made me laugh out loud as I did silly things to solve them. This one, the last in the series, made me frustrated, made me laugh and made me gasp in disbelief. It has taken me weeks and weeks to solve! 

I am delighted to be able to show this one off on the same week that my pageview count topped the 3 million mark! I find it totally unbelievable that anyone spends the time to read the rubbish that I write. It even continued and got more popular after my mother died (so it couldn't have all been down to her). Thank you for coming along for the ride and allowing me to justify my "little" hobby to the present wife!

Main site

New additions site

Total page views now 3,017,111 - thank you so much!

If you buy this then you probably should own the set - they are all fun to solve and look great on display:

Six wonderful challenges

They all look the same as six piece burrs with only the markings on the ends of the pieces showing a difference between them. Each of the previous versions have had a significant nod to different puzzle genres and this last one is the most enjoyed puzzle type of all the sequential discovery puzzle. If that is your thing then this is the amongst the best SD puzzles I have ever tried. Go BUY IT!

I was lucky enough to get one of the first of them to be released and set to straight away. The first thing I realised was that nothing moves...nothing at all! I poked and prodded and peered inside the holes that were in the ends of some of the burrsticks. I used a torch and all this told me was that I couldn't see inside. I pushed and pulled and wiggled and found absolutely nothing. Yep! Not terribly bright as always.

I then noticed some movement with something and, as this was the only thing I had found in a day or so, I persistently wiggled and poked it. Suddenly it wiggled more! Hooray! I carried on doing the only thing that worked and after about an hour something came loose. I had found something special! But this just proved that I was an eejit! I should have realised that this wasn't right because Steve and Ali would never have a puzzle that solved that way. Having found something which did not give me any tools, I then inverted what I found and pushed it back only to have it go in and then go rigidly solid and not come out again! Oooh! that's not good, is it? Time to contact Steve over the interwebs and sheepishly admit what I had done and ask whether it might be irreversible. I was reassured that what I had done was not irreversible but I should not have been able to do it in the first place - I dare say that Steve sheepishly admitted that something hadn't been tightened adequately. He would make sure that all the others did not have this move possible.

So I had found a thing, returned the thing and jammed that bit in so that I could no longer retrieve the thing. I hope that you all find that description helpful enough to avoid doing the same "thing"? I guessed that after having my hopes and dreams dashed like that, I should return to solving. My problem? I had pushed and pulled and poked and prodded everything I could think of. Apart from a slight general wiggle caused by the interlocking burr pieces not being too tight, I could find nothing. This state of affairs persisted for weeks! Every day I would risk sanity, kitchen tiles and worktop playing with my very heavy metal paperweight. I kept getting looks of impending violence from Mrs S when she thought I might drop it and crack something. After about 3 weeks, whilst chatting with the genius (yes, Derek Bosch strikes again) he suggested that instead of pushing and pulling and prodding, I should actually look at the bloody thing! Now, why didn't I think of that? The next day, I sat down with it and a nice bright light and properly examined the whole puzzle - if I was a good puzzler, then I would probably have thought of that already. After about 15 minutes, I noticed a detail that I had not seen before - what if I??? OMG! Aha!

I suddenly had a "thing" and from here on progress was a lovely sequence which started with:

1. I have this - what can I do with it?
2. I tried that and it didn't work so maybe I could try this?
3. Aha!
4. I have another thing
5. Back to step 1

This 5 step sequence happened over and over and over again. Almost every time there was a new item. I have never seen a puzzle with so many pieces and so many steps. It was totally logical and required a nice bit of think©ing to manage each step. One or two of the tools needed to be used more than once but  mostly there was a new tool for each step. I was having a ball! After 6 or 7 steps, I stopped returning back to the beginning each time I stopped playing because there were just too many pieces and steps to keep reversing.

After another few of evenings of play, I managed to retrieve the part that I had mistakenly freed and then re-trapped in my first attempts. I had a monkey!

I thought that this was it - I'm an eejit!

This was the place I had been at last weekend when I went to write about the puzzle. I did have a sort of nagging feeling that there were pieces that I had not yet explored but I suppressed those doubts and when I sat down to start writing, I looked at Allard's wonderful review and saw his solved picture and also reread the announcement page on the TwoBrassMonkey site. Oh NO!!! I had not completed the puzzle - the ultimate aim was to find the bananas and feed them to the monkey. This seems to be a theme for Steve and Ali. There was obviously at least one more step and I had no idea what to do next.

I could see that there was something inside that deserved attention but I did not have a tool that would fit. Yet again it was time to think© and it hurt. I spent another 5 days looking for the right tool and moves only to not find anything. I then had to look at what I had and realised that there was something that was peculiar about one of the pieces I had. A sneaky idea occurred and I said aloud "what if I do this? Much to the disgust of she who who is thinking violent thoughts about big Steve and Ali (run guys, run!) my thinking aloud led to an Aha! shout! which really upset her. I then had yet another thing to explore and finally after 35 separate puzzling steps (give or take a few) I had my puzzle solved!

The BM6 dismantled and I have bananas for the monkey
No spoilers here

There are a serious number of pieces here! I have never seen anything like it in the 14 years I have been puzzling. It is incredible that the boys managed to fit so many parts and so many steps into one epic puzzle. Not only is this likely to be the best puzzle of the year - you have another 10 months until my 2024 top ten(ish) but this may well be the best puzzle I have ever solved! It is right up there with the Angel box, Opening bat, Katie Koala and Mittan puzzles.

Of course, having dismantled it and spread all the pieces out for photos, it was time to put it all back together. I had enough memory of the steps to not find this too hard but the big challenge was how to place the burr sticks so they could assemble into a six piece burr again. I am not good at burr assembly and this took me a little while to work out.

This puzzle is just plain epic! Don't hesitate - just buy it. I am sure that you will find the first step much quicker than me and not need a genius to help you. But once you have found that first step there is a marvellous journey ahead of you.

Thank you guys! I very much doubt that you can ever top this but I am waiting with bated breath to see.

Noisy is OK in a Conference

A Nice Quiet Puzzle?

Helical (L) and Hellical (R) burrs

Last week I wrote about the Brass Monkey 4 and raved about it (have you bought your copy yet? Hurry up!) but what I didn't show off was that in the same package Steve had sent me the latest 4 piece burr design from the genius that is Derek Bosch. Yeah! I know that 4 piece burr doesn't sound like much but this is one of those Helical burrs - in fact it is the "Helical burr 2" which they have decided to call "He'll lick all bare, too" - a name which makes me shudder ever so slightly and I cannot bring myself to enter it into my database like that. 

This new design is not currently on the Two Brass Monkeys store but I am sure will be there at some point - if you are in a hurry then it is available from PuzzleMaster whilst stocks last. It looks just like the original Helical burr and the name sort of sounds like it too but, believe me, it is NOT like the original puzzle! I enjoyed the original puzzle a lot and even used to use it as a worry bead. Even Derek describes this version as a BEAST - although I always thought that I should take that statement from him with a pinch of salt...Derek often admits to me that he is completely unable to solve his own designs! However, in this case the numbers tell all - Helical burr requires 11 moves to remove the first piece whilst v2 here requires 39 moves! OMG!

Just 3 moves!

I should have realised how tough it was going to be early on when after just 3 moves thisgs had moved a very long way. But I didn't get much chance to work that out early on. After my initial failure with the Brass Monkey 4, I did my usual "put it down and stare blankly at it for a while" before deciding to have a try at the Helical burr. After approximately 1.2seconds Mrs S stared at me with daggers, or maybe I should say sgian-dubhs as she is Scottish (I actually wore one of these on my wedding day as I got married in a kilt). Straight away she warned me that there was no way I was going to play with this puzzle whilst we were watching TV - it is too noisy! The 3D printed plastic is quite smooth but they layers do scrape on each other quite loudly and was making "she who scares the bejeeeezus out of me" ever so slightly annoyed. Gulp! I put it down and went back to BM4.

I do the vast majority of my puzzling in the evenings in front of the TV with Mrs S...when was I going to be able to play with this? Luckily, last week I actually managed to get some study leave approved to attend an anaesthesia conference (now that Covid seems to be improving in the UK, we are being allowed time for annual and study leave in limited numbers). Things are not quite so great here that we are all heading to hotels and attending meetings in person but quite a lot of conferences have moved to a virtual format. It's not as much fun but certainly is convenient and slightly cheaper. 

Aluminium washer cylinder

I therefore spent two days last week sat on my bum staring at a computer screen for 8 hours! Lord, that is bloody tiring! In fact the only way I could stay awake at times was to pick up various puzzles that are around me and have a fiddle whilst listening to the lectures and watching the slides. I worked my way through almost my entire Strijbos collection and even managed to solve the Aluminium washer cylinder which gave me so much trouble all those years ago when I initially bought it. Yay! The conference was proving very worthwhile! Eventually, after I ran out of Strijbos puzzles, I picked up the new Helical and figured that noisy would be OK in a virtual conference.

I knew this that this puzzle was going to be tough after Allard showed off a picture of it half solved and the comment that it was never going to go back together again. This was a little worry as I have had a similar issue with the very difficult TwiddleDum (or is it TwiddleDee?) - one of those is currently in 4 pieces and has not returned to assembled puzzle in nearly 5 years! The Helical burr 2 has a very interesting loop in it's early pathway. At least I found it interesting for the first few hours. It kind of got a bit boring at the end of my first conference day as I had traced the same path many hundreds of times and not found a way out of it at all. On day two of the conference, whilst fully fortified with coffee and a rather sugary breakfast, I listened avidly to a discussion on the effect of anaesthetic agents and pain killers on cancer recurrence and restarted the Helical with little hope.

At some point during the first couple of hours, I had had no complaints about the noise and looked down to see that it looked different. What had I done? Could I return it to the beginning? Cue slight panic... my usual modus operandi is to go back and forth and effectively memorise the moves of most burr type puzzles. I had not been paying attention and had no memory of what I had done. I tried to backtrack and realised I had an "Allard situation" - this was only going in the forward direction! Oops. I resigned myself to adding another 4 bits of plastic to my 'pile o pieces' in a box but at least I could say I had dismantled it if not actually solved it. Even having found that hidden move it was still not an easy progression to the end. I continued to be noisy for a large proportion of the rest of the conference before I had this:

He'll lick all bare, too solved
I might as well lick it as I stand equal chance of reassembling it with my tongue as my hands!

The puzzle is a beast. I have spent several days trying to reassemble it and can't even get to the place where I had my unfortunate realisation. I contacted Derek and he sent me a nice little pdf. Apparently big Steve is a dab hand with the OpenScad software and has created a step by step reassembly diagram in it. I can barely draw a cube in it and yet he is performing miracles. I am going to try and reassemble the beast after I've uploaded this blog post.

You are all MUCH better puzzlers than me! You definitely should buy this one - it will be a nice challenge for you and I know for certain that you will manage it in just a pleasant couple of hours. Go on I dare you!
 

I have received a new batch of puzzles from Jakub and Jaroslav - I am going to power my way through as fast as I can so that they can be put on sale soon!

Cast UFO - Level 4? Maybe not! And Some Monkeying About.

Hanayama Cast UFO

Something has definitely changed with Hanayama recently. Their puzzles seem to have become MUCH more difficult than ever before and I am not really sure that you can trust the difficulty level on the box. I struggled with the Cast Trinity for months and months before finally solving it and a part of that eventual solution may well have been luck (I do still thank that one is a really good puzzle) and the Cast Hourglass has confounded me for several months so far and is currently locked in an almighty mess which I cannot get out of.

The Cast UFO was released in Japan a month or so ago and it has just reached Europe and North America in the last week or so ago; it is also available from my friend Tomas at Sloyd if you live in Europe. I had placed my order with Nic Picot's Hanayamapuzzles store based in the UK a good few months ago and it arrived at the Sadler loony bin on Wednesday this last week along with another rather special puzzle from Big Steve. I started playing at first with the Brass Monkey but after an hour or so it had hurt me quite a bit and I was forced to put it down and play with something less painful.

Cast UFO

Lord! These things are hard to photograph! The Cast UFO is labelled as a level 4 out of the Hanayama 6 point scale (and PuzzleMaster call it a Level 8 (Demanding) on their rather odd scale of 5-10. This one should be a nice pleasant challenge without hurting my head too much. It was designed by the amazing Finish designer Vesa Timonen who has shown himself over the years to be rather prolific.

Made from their usual cast metal, this is a lovely thing measuring 4.8 x 4.8 x 2.7 cm and looks exactly like what the Sci-Fi movies of the 50s thought a UFO would look like. There is an inner ball made from 4 equal quarters which can rotate around inside and about each other - they are slippery little buggers which makes this one really quite infuriating to play with - every time you think you might be getting close to a conformation you want, the little buggers slide out of the way. The outer part of the puzzle (saucer) is made from 2 pieces which have been painted/anodised a shiny black colour. With the coolness of a metal puzzle to the touch, it really is a nice worry bead...as long as you don't try to solve it!

It looks pretty straight-forward what the approach should be - line up the quarters with the split in the outer saucer and slide it apart. Hahahaha! You don't really think that our clever Vesa would design anything that simple do you? Slightly ashamed of myself, I have to admit that I really did think that and I spent 2 days moving the inner pieces about into different positions to try it. On several occasions, I achieved a tantalising sliding of the saucer halves and I frantically tried to manipulate pieces to allow the slide to continue. Of course, it didn't work and for a couple of minutes, I even locked it up and spent a rather panicky time frantically trying to push it back together! Eventually (after a shameful 2 days) I conceded defeat with that approach and had to do some serious thinking© - Allard would have been proud of me! The important thing to do first with this one (and you could argue that it should be done with them all) is to really LOOK at the puzzle. What do you notice that is odd/interesting? Try to look inside as well for another clue.

I had an epiphany/thought which pointed at a new approach and I fiddled around with it for another couple of days. This is one tricky little sucker. Every time you think you might be achieving something the little internal pieces swivel around and nothing is in the right position anymore. There's nothing to grip hold of and I was reduced to wildly shaking it about which never seems to work.

Whilst watching TV, I wasn't really trying very hard and just managed to achieve something new. I tried to go further by grabbing at a piece and returned it to the beginning...Damn! But now I knew what was needed and another 20 minutes later it was dismantled:

Removed the ball from the UFO

4 sphere quarters and 2 saucer halves

There are quite a few really fiddly parts to the disassembly so this would qualify as a dexterity puzzle as well as a disassembly puzzle. Having taken it apart, the cleverness of the design can be examined and then put it back together. Again, that can be quite a feat of dexterity but eventually, everything is in exactly the right place and, clink, it is a UFO again.

I would estimate that this should be reassigned to at least a level 5 and more likely level 6. It really is quite a difficult puzzle to work out what is required and also to manipulate properly - even knowing what is required, I still find it quite tough to dismantle.

All in all, this is a fairly enjoyable puzzle and well worth a place in your collection (if you are a serious collector then it is essential). If you are new to puzzling or Hanayamas then it will be too difficult - I suggest that you buy a collection from PuzzleMaster and work your way through them from easier to harder.

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Big Steve and Ali Do it Again

I mentioned earlier on that I had received a puzzle from Steve which hurt me. The pair of Brass Monkeys have produced the third in the series of their brass burr puzzles, suitably called Brass Monkey 3. Those of us who had bought from them previously were allowed the opportunity to buy early and, of course, I jumped at the chance. The new version should be coming up on their Etsy store very soon and will also be up for sale in PuzzleMaster if you are located over there.

There appears to be something extra

Steve said there would be something extra especially for me in the package. I was rather excited that I might be getting something as a bonus but when the inner box was lifted out of the postal packaging, there was a small clue what had been included - Damn, I was going to have to find a way to give it back to him...maybe at the next MPP?

Oh no! I won't be able to return this one!

Mrs S was very unimpressed at the arrival of part of Steve's tongue depressor collection. Unfortunately, this one had been personalised and therefore I was going to have to keep it - if Steve makes a habit of this, however, I will have to find somewhere to put it...maybe where "the sun don't shine" and he won't be able to see it? I have a certain set of skills that come with my medical training even if I went into anaesthesia to avoid that end of the patient!

Plastic caps removed - Mrs S is very worried that I will damage the granite.
2 engraved circles plus a central hole means it's number 3 - obvious isn't it?

Allard has solved his copy and has raved about it here - he says that you should definitely get one - in fact, he wrote that many many times so it must be true! So far I have found one thing of interest and hurt myself on it! Hopefully, I will find the solution without further damage to me or any damage to the kitchen. I'll let you know.

In the meantime, you should definitely buy this series of puzzles.