Visit to Brett's House (Part 1)

They day after the puzzle dinner, Brett was kind enough to invite me to his home, which was on my drive back, the following day to check out his collection. Brett told me that Rob Stegmann would also be there with a bunch of puzzles from his collection. As you can imagine, I was very excited. So excited, in fact, that I dragged my poor girlfriend out of New York at 11:00 in the morning so I could get an early start puzzling.

On the drive, I was eagerly watching the ETA on my GPS and counting down the minutes till when we would arrive at Brett's house. When we got there, I could barely contain my glee at the amazing feast of puzzlement that Rob had laid out on Brett's dining room table. Akio Kamei, Eric Fuller, Stewart Coffin, Rocky Chiaro, and even a Berrocal! I recognized them from all the pictures on Rob's site, and here they were! I hardly knew where to begin!

I sat down at the table completely dumbfounded for a moment. I couldn't decide which of these amazing puzzles I would try first. I decided to start with some of the puzzle boxes by Akio Kamei, since I love puzzle boxes and he is one of the best puzzle box artists around. I started with Cube Box II, which is on the left in this photo.

It was flawlessly crafted and looked very nice. It took me a little while, but eventually I started to figure out how the panels slid. Similar to the less expensive small boxes, the best approach on these was just to try sliding everything in every direction that it could slide. This box was tricky because every outside surface moves, so it became tricky to hold it without inadvertently closing it back up again. Finally, I managed to carefully pull it apart. I admired the amazing precision with which it was crafted, it was very elegantly designed both inside and out.

Next, I tried Cube Box I, which is similar but has a somewhat different mechanism. Since it is similar, I'm not going to go into detail, but suffice it to say that this is also a very nice box.

After that, I tried Twin Box 3, shown on the right, which was also created by Akio Kamei. This one was a bit larger than the previous two and had a nice weight to it. The craftsmanship was superb with nice light inlays on the dark exterior panels. The mechanism to this box was very interesting: the panels slide, but not in the typical way. It was only moderately challenging, but I really enjoyed the way the mechanism worked.

After trying these three great puzzle boxes, I briefly tried Impossible Lock by Rainer Popp. I think I discovered the first move, but quickly realized that this would probably take me all day (and more) to solve, so reluctantly abandoned it.

Brett brought out a small lock from PuzzleMaster called Broken Heart. I fiddled around with it for a bit and was amused to find that what I hypothesized was the first move on Impossible Lock was the solution to Broken Heart. Not too tricky, but it could stump you for a while if you didn't think of it. Definitely good value for the money.

When I walked in, I knew that I couldn't leave without taking a look at Miguel Berrocal's Portrait de Michele, so I decided to try that next. Berrocal is a Spanish sculptor born in 1933 who was known for his puzzle sculptures. Portraite de Michele is a sculpture in his limited edition 'mini' series.

I took it apart very carefully, laying the pieces down in the same orientation that I took them out. I also kept them in order so I wouldn't get confused. I was intrigued to find that it didn't come apart as easily as I expected. Once the base was unlocked, the pieces came apart in a specific order, sometimes requiring one or two sliding moves to release it.

The eye of Michele is actually revealed to be the "stone" of a ring that is hidden within the sculpture that is released about half way through the disassembly. You can see the ring in this picture that shows the pieces disassembled (from Rob's site).

Even keeping careful track of how I took it apart, it was a bit tricky putting it back together. A few times a piece wouldn't fit like I expected and I started to worry, but eventually I figured it out. I hate not leaving puzzles the way I started!

I would imagine that it would be quite challenging to assemble after scrambling the pieces. In addition to being an interesting puzzle, it is quite nicely made and a beautiful sculpture. It had a great weight to it and was beautifully polished.

There are a bunch more puzzles that I saw, so I'm going to have to continue this entry tomorrow since it is getting late. Stay tuned!

Update: Check out Part 2!