IPP33: Puzzle Party and Awards Banquet

Today was the day of the puzzle party, where folks buy and sell puzzles! It is always a bit frenzied when the doors first open and everybody rushes in, trying to figure out what they want to buy before it is gone! Here's a scene from a table selling a bunch of Karakuri Club boxes: it was pretty nuts!

I poked my head over the crowd enough to see that there wasn't really anything I could live without, which was fortunate since it would have been tough to actually snag it! Here's the rest of the room, which had three aisles of tables, a bit smaller than last year.

I like to walk up and down the aisles trying to figure out what I'm interested in: so many puzzles and a limited budget! Here's a neat puzzle that wasn't  for sale: it is a reproduction of an ancient Roman puzzle lock. It takes about five steps to open: pretty amazing that it existed so long ago!

Here's my haul for the day, plus some puzzles I was given on Saturday. I'm in the hotel lobby so I'm not sure of the names of everything, but I'll summarize as best I can. In the top row, Allard's Magic Briefcase exchange puzzle (thanks Allard!) and two of Stephen Chin's exchange puzzles (thanks Chinny!). Next row has Tea for Two 3, a great puzzle from the design competition, Peter Hajak's puzzle box exchange puzzle, an interlocking cube puzzle, a non-puzzle koala clip from Brian Young, and two geometric assembly puzzles from Osho (the pink and blue) (thanks Osho!). Rhombic 9L, an interlocking puzzle from Vesa Timonen (thanks Vesa!), and three Hanayama puzzles I didn't have (Cast Harmony, Cast G&G, and Cast Delta). Finally, a two piece take-apart/put-together puzzle, another cube puzzle, ,and Tea for Two 2.

After my bag was full and my wallet was empty, I headed back to the design competition room. There were just a few more hours to play around with the puzzles and submit my ballot for the Puzzler's Choice award.

I had tried every puzzle at this point, so I just spent my time trying to solve some that I hadn't been able to complete or hadn't spent much time with. Alas, there's never enough time and soon the puzzle room was closed.

I forgot to write about it earlier, but there was a neat display in the design competition room with various Hanayama Cast Puzzle prototypes, which was neat to see. Here's part of the table, they had started to clean it up by the time I remembered to take a photo.

There were also display of impossible objects that were created by combining multiple Cast Puzzles. Pretty impressive!

After the design competition room was closed, there was a talk about the history of Hanayama Cast Puzzles. There were three speakers, the first spoke about old cast puzzles from the late 1800's that some of the Cast Puzzles are based on. The second speaker was Oskar van Deventer who spoke about how he worked on the Cast H&H puzzle. Finally, Teddy Sakamoto talked about some interesting facts about cast puzzles, such as which countries have the most sales, both overall, per capita, and per square kilometer!

After the presentation, we had a bit of downtime, but at 7:00 the awards banquet began! We had another great dinner, followed by the presentation of the thank-you gift to Hirokazu Iwasawa the IPP host. It was a neat looking curved surface puzzle by Wayne Daniels.

After that, I actually had the privilege of announcing the location of IPP35! It is supposed to be secret, so I can't actually publish it here, but is was a lot of fun getting to reveal the location. Brett Kuehner and Rob Stegmann are the co-hosts for IPP35, but neither of them could make it so they asked me to give the presentation. Thanks guys!

Next, the IPP34 host presented some details about next year's IPP. Again, no details here since it is supposed to be a secret from non-invitees. It was a great presentation, it even had a bit of magic in it!

Finally, Nick Baxter revealed the winners of the 2013 Puzzle Design Competition! Here are the results (I'll provide more details on each puzzle in a later post): (Photos by Nick Baxter)

Top Ten Vote Getters: (who weren't otherwise recognized)

Tri-Triangle - Takuro Kowasaki

Bucolic Cube - Yashuhiro Hashimoto

Tetracubed - Robert Reid, George Miller, Stan Isaacs

Tri symmetrics - Vladimir Krasnoukhov and Irina Novichkova

Snake Case - Hiroaki Hamanaka

Symmetrick - Vesa Timonen

Honorable Mention:

Slide Twist Twist Slide - Tony Fisher

Galaxy - Bram Cohen

First Prize:

GEAPPLE - Andras Zagyvia

Grand Prize:

Helical Burr - Derek Bosch

Puzzlers Award:

Dancing Shoes - Goh Pit Khiam

A hearty congratulations to al lthe winners! That brings us to the end of the IPP 33! After the banquet was over, we all hung out in the banquet hall and then the lobby. What a great time, I'm sorry that it is over so soon! I'm already looking forward to IPP 34.

I'll be continuing to travel around Japan with Kellian for the next week, so check out my travel blog for that. After I return, I'll run through all the design competition entries with a mini-review of each.