Puzzle Master Trick Lock #1

Trick Lock #1 is the first in a series of five puzzle locks by Puzzle Master. They recently sent me all but #2 to review (which was out of stock). Thanks Puzzle Master!

This is a hefty lock and also fairly large, which I liked. They warn on the package that you shouldn't use it to lock up your valuables, but it does feel fairly sturdy! Of course, it probably isn't made of the same hardened construction as an actual lock, but it could deter folks somewhat.

Each comes with two keys that are on a string that goes around the shackle. This is handy, since the keys are not interchangeable. The string is long enough to reach the key into the lock, which was convenient. The quality of the string is a bit shoddy, however, so I may consider replacing it with a chain of some sort if I decide to leave these out for guests to play with.

Since the keys for the different locks are not interchangeable, you could add slightly to the difficulty by keeping all the keys on the same keyring and having the puzzler figure out which is needed for which lock. This wouldn't really be any harder than just going through each key to see which fit, but it adds an extra step.

The quality of the finish is a bit poor, with various gouges, rough edges, and other imperfections. Also, they had a bit of grime left on them from the manufacturing process, but that should wear off quickly or if I get around to rubbing them down with a paper towel or something. Given the price point ($30 each), I don't find the quality to be unacceptable, considering the complexity in producing these puzzles, but it does detract from the experience somewhat.

I found Trick Lock #1 to be the simplest of the series. It only took me a minute or so to solve, but it has a satisfying mechanism. Some folks who aren't as familiar with this type of puzzle may get caught up for a while, but if they stick with it for a bit should be able to figure it out within a reasonable amount of time. I had a non-puzzler play around with these locks tonight, and she thought this one was a bit too simple, and I'm inclined to agree.

Stay tuned, the next few posts will be about the other three locks in the series!

The Magic Hat

As is inevitably the case, there are always a few Karakuri Club Christmas Presents that I regret not having purchased. Fortunately, around March the Karakuri Club has a lottery where they sell off the remaining Christmas presents that were not purchased.

This year, Shiro Tajima created a cute box named The Magic Hat which I really liked the look of. Peter Wiltshire predicted that he would be using a rabbit motif this year, since last year was the year of the tiger and he did did a tiger theme, and this year is the year of the rabbit. Since Peter is a magician, he had hoped that Tajima would do something with a magic hat, and indeed he did!

On top of looking nice, my puzzle friends who had gotten this one seemed to enjoy it. They said that it had a unique movement, and was fairly challenging, so I was very intrigued. When I visited Brett's house for NYPP, this was one of the first puzzles I asked to try! I liked it quite a bit, and ended up being able to purchase one during the March lottery.

This is a fairly large puzzle at just over five inches high. The craftsmanship is very nice, as is the case for pretty much all of the Karakuri Club work. My rabbit has a bit of a darkness to his nose, it looks like a bruise but it is just a discoloration in the wood. Also there's a bit of tearout on the eye.

As I mentioned previously, there is a unique movement that you'll probably discover fairly quickly. However, what to do once you've discovered it is the challenge. I don't want to go into too much detail, since I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but the next move is pretty tricky. It somewhat incorporates an idea previously used by Akio Kamei, but I liked its implementation much better here since it is somewhat easier (in a good way).

At Brett's house, this one actually took me a good amount of time to solve, probably around 20 minutes or so. His version was a bit tighter than mine, so it took a bit more effort to discover the second move. I found it to be well hidden and unexpected, with an interesting trick as I mentioned before. When solved, there is also a little whimsical detail that Tajima added which I enjoyed. Very well done!

There isn't much in terms of downsides to this puzzle: it seems quite sturdy, has a great appearance and construction, and a clever solution. Overall, a solid puzzle that I'm glad to have purchased. If only I had bought it before Christmas when it was about half the price! Of course, I didn't know it would be so cool at that point. I'm definitely going to purchase Tajima's puzzle next year, because next year is the year of the dragon and I am hoping that he will do something with a badass looking dragon!

Cast Coil

Cast Coil is the latest puzzle released by Hanayama and I was quite eager to give it a try since I'm a big fan of the Hanayama Cast Puzzle series. Puzzle Master sells it  and was kind enough to send me a copy to review. Thanks! It was designed by Edi Nagata who I had the pleasure of meeting in Japan last summer.

It has a distressed, aged appearance which is similar to Cast Enigma, though rather than bronze it has silver and gold tones. You can't tell from the photo, but upon playing with it briefly, you'll see that there are two pieces. I think I prefer the shiny finish over this type of finish personally, but that's a matter of taste. This type of finish feels a bit dirty, but some may like the fact that it looks like an ancient relic or something. Plus, you don't have to worry about fingerprints! It has a nice weight in your hand, though isn't quite as hefty as something like Cast H&H or Cast Marble

This one is rated a three out of six in terms of difficulty. I actually spent longer than I would have expected on this puzzle given the rating, though I feel like my mind hasn't been particularly sharp recently. Not enough puzzles! Anyways, I think it took me about 20 minutes to get this thing apart for the first time, and another 20 minutes or so to really master it to the point where I could do it reliably.

It requires a total of about seven moves to disassemble, most of which are rotational moves. People are more accustomed to linear movement, so it is the rotational aspect that makes this one difficult. Also, there are a lot of dead ends and I found it difficult to keep track of what I had done before. The pieces are practically identical, but they are different, which also plays a role in making this one challenging.

Unlike puzzles like Twist The Night Away or The Tangler (both are awesome puzzles by Tom Jolly), which are based on a proper cubic geometry that happens to have enough room for certain twisting movements, Cast Coil has some material removed to enable certain twists. This adds to the difficulty, since it moves in ways you would not expect, since it is hard to see and remember where these notches are.

The first move was a bit tight when I first started working on this puzzle, which was somewhat annoying. It took a good amount of effort to get the pieces moving, but after I made that move a few times, it loosened up. Not a big drawback but something to be aware of.

Overall, I think that Cast Coil  is a solid puzzle and would  recommend checking it out. Not one of my absolute favorites in the series, but definitely one that is worth getting.

2011 New York Puzzle Party (Part 5)

After a lovely time at the New York Puzzle Party on Saturday, I spent most of Sunday morning and afternoon at Brett Kuehner's house solving some puzzles. Rob Stegmann was there, and Ken Irvine also stopped by.

This puzzle kept my attention for a good while. It is called "The Five Minute Puzzle That May Take a Little Longer" by Andy Turner. Interesting name! I was intrigued. This puzzle was made by Eric Fuller and entered into the IPP 2009 Design Competition.

I started to type a description of the pieces, but it is a bit hard to describe. Instead, check out this photo from Rob's site. Two of the pieces are two units long, and the rest are all one unit cubes. The pegs must be in the correct orientation relative to a hole in the adjacent piece. The correct solution has no exposed holes or pegs.

The box is mainly just decorative, though it also serves the function of keeping the pieces from falling apart if somebody idly picks it up. It looks nice too!

I spent a bit of time on Saturday evening, but didn't have much luck since I was getting tired. Sunday morning I took another crack at it with renewed vigor. The interesting thing about this puzzle is that the obvious solutions don't seem to work. I sat there and tried all the permutations I could think of, but oddly none of them worked! Clearly I wasn't approaching it correctly. I tried a few things that I thought make be the trick, but they didn't work either!

Eventually, I had a revelation that led me to the solution, and was quite impressed. This is a very cool puzzle design. I didn't think I would like it, but I was mistaken. You really need to go through the process of solving this one to appreciate it though. It definitely took me longer than 5 minutes! Probably closer to 45 minutes.

I was pleased to try a few boxes by Kim Klobucher as well. Check out his website Kcube Designs. The first one that I tried was his 419 move box, shown here.

I had tried his MMMDXLVI box that requires 3546 moves to open while at IPP30. Check out this entry if you'd like to read about my struggle with it. The 419 move box was a piece of cake by comparison!

It has a regular pattern to it based on a trinary gray code, so it is mainly just a matter of keeping track of where you are in the pattern. It isn't too hard since you can really only go forward or backward in the pattern, but sometimes it is easy to get confused and start going the wrong direction. I think it took me a good 30 minutes or so to open and close this one, maybe a bit longer.

I really liked the appearance of this box, but I don't think it is something that I will be purchasing, since it is such a pain to open. It wouldn't be much fun to give to folks to try since it is so difficult, and I probably wouldn't repeat solving it often (if at all).

Personally, I preferred the next box that I tried "The Void", shown here. It looks quite similar, but is somewhat larger and has an interesting feature that I will attempt to describe.

Most of Kim's puzzles have a pins moving through keyways such that the keyway is just as wide as the pin, like in this small maze (source). In The Void, the pin moves through a void in the path (like a big room in the maze), and you need to find the exit on the other side. This is harder than it sounds, but I can't tell you why without spoiling some of the fun. Notice that the brass inlay on the top depicts the process of travelling through a void.

I spent a good while on this puzzle before I started to figure out what was going on: the first few moves come quite easily, but eventally you hit a dead end. Nothing that you would expect works, so it really makes you think about what is going on inside the puzzle. Eventually, I figured it out, and was quite pleased. I do hope he makes some more of these!

The last puzzle I'll write about is a clever design by Tom Jolly called The Tangler, made by Eric Fuller. This puzzle consists of two complex pieces that are intertwined: the goal is to separate them. It soon becomes obvious that the solution involves rotational moves, which are fun.

I think I spent a good 10 minutes on this one, and enjoyed solving it. At first, it seemed like only one path was possible, but then I hit a dead end. After puzzling over it for a bit, I discovered the solution. Pretty tricky, but doable in a reasonable amount of time, which I liked.

That brings me to the end of my series on my trip down to New York for the New York Puzzle Party. Thanks again to Brett Kuehner for inviting me to stay in his home, and to Tom Cutrofello for organizing the event. I'm looking forward to it again next year!

2011 New York Puzzle Party (Part 4)

After a long night of puzzling on Friday, we headed in for the puzzle party Saturday morning. Brett's car was packed pretty full with Tanya Thompson, Laurie Brokenshire, Rob Stegmann, me, and a bunch of puzzles! We didn't hit much traffic on the way in, and were soon at the puzzle party.

When I arrived, I was glad to see Daniel Deschamps and Peter Wiltshire, both of whom had come down from Canada. Daniel brought some puzzle boxes he had built using kits from Myer's Crafts based on designs by Bruce Viney, which was great: I had been wanting to try some of these designs! If you'll remember, one of the first puzzles that I made was a Bruce Viney design. Bruce has a ton of designs on his website, but unfortunately you'll need some sort of woodworking tools to build them. Most of these designs are just cut out of plywood,  so they lend themselves to laser-cutting. Myer's Crafts noticed the same thing, and started offering kits that have all the pieces laser-cut for insanely low cost! I think Bruce gets a portion of the sale as well. Pretty neat!

The first one that I tried out was Zig-Zag Box, shown here. It doesn't look like much, since it isn't finished yet. It is made out of plywood, so the best way to finish it is probably to paint it, which will hide the plys. Still, it was an interesting puzzle!

I spent a good 10 minutes on this one, and it has a pretty unique movement. Check out the link above for a video if you don't mind spoiling the solution. If you are used to more traditional puzzle boxes, this one will give you a good surprise!

Of course, the fit and movement isn't going to be quite as nice as a Karakuri Club box, but it seems that Myer had the measurements dialed in quite well, and Daniel did a good job assembling it.

Daniel also brought Tik Tak Tok, another design by Bruce Viney and kit by Myer's Crafts. This one was nicely painted by Daniel, and also had an interesting solution.

The nine squares on the top shift around in various ways until the top unlocks. It takes 20 moves, and I found the sequence to be pretty tricky. I think it took me about 10-15 minutes to figure it out, and I don't think I could easily replicate the feat again without more practice.

One thing I would recommend if you are to build this one is to put a good bevel on the squares. You need to press on the sides of them to shift them around, and I found my fingers got a bit sore from the edges. The box itself is quite large, with a nice big compartment on the inside.

After greeting everybody, the lectures began. First up was a presentation by Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen about Chinese Puzzles, which was pretty interesting. The puzzle party itself was held in a the Museum of Chinese Art in New York, and they actually had a Chinese puzzle exhibit currently, so they gave some background on the various puzzles in the exhibit.

Next up, Rob Stegmann talked about a virtual puzzle he created for Halloween. You can try it out here, it is a lot of fun. In his presentation, he gave a walkthrough of the solution as well as his thoughts on the various components of the puzzle. I had tried it when he originally created it, and had a pretty hard time with it! I got all the way to the end, but the last clue really stumped me. I also needed a hint or two along the way.

The last presentation before lunch was by George Hart, who recently left his tenured position at Stony Brook University to join the team creating The Museum of Mathematics in New York. George also does some very interesting geometric sculptures. George talked about the museum, and it sounds spectacular! I'm really looking forward to seeing it, but it probably won't be for another year or more, if I remember correctly.

After those first three presentations, we had a lunch break. I headed over with some folks to get Chinese food, which seemed like a good idea given our location. Somebody suggested a place where you pay $5 to pick out 4 items from a buffet, which was quite tasty. I sat at a table with George Hart and Peter Wiltshire, it was great having a chance to speak with them.

After lunch, there was a period of puzzle buying and selling. As I expected to be the case, there wasn't a whole lot that interested me: I'm pretty focused on puzzle boxes right now, so I've been conserving my funds for those. Still, it was nice seeing all the other puzzles that people were selling.

Tim Rowett of Grand Illusions was there, and he was kind enough to give me a copy of this neat Optical Illusion Ring. If you twist it one way, it will look like the ring is growing larger, and if you twist it the other way, it will look like it is growing smaller. Check out a video at the link above, or click here to open it up directly. That's Tim in the video demonstrating it. Thanks Tim!

After the buying, selling, and trading was complete, we gathered again for two more presentations. First, Tom Cutrofello went through some of his favorite iPhone puzzle apps. He has a blog of them here, in case you have an iPhone. I don't, but it was still interesting to hear about what is out there.

Finally, we were treated to a presentation by Oskar van Deventer in which he revealed publicly for the first time ever, a 17x17x17 Rubik's cube! Here's a photo of me holding it.

His presentation walked through some of the history in cube design, and his attempts to overcome the barriers that had prevented such large order cubes from being created previously. The cube is fully functional, but the movement is quite rough due to the friction between the pieces because it was created on a 3D printer.

If instead the pieces were cast out of smooth plastic, it would probably work much better. I got the chance to turn it, but you have to be very careful to line the pieces up correctly or else something may break, which would be a huge pain to fix. As you may imagine, it took Oskar many hours to put this together! Just sorting and keeping track of the different pieces was a big task.

We all stuck around chatting for a while until the museum kicked us out. After that, we headed to dinner, which was also quite enjoyable. When we returned home to Brett's house, we still had a bit of energy for puzzling, though my mind was a bit dull after a long day. It was great talking about the events of the day with Brett and Rob while fiddling around with puzzles late into the evening.

Australian Flood Relief Fundraiser

Just wanted to announce a special puzzle auction at Puzzle Paradise that is running through March 12th for the purpose of providing disaster relief to Australia. 

Australia's Great Barrier Reef was recently hit by brutal flooding that wiped out many low laying communities. Those who survived were again hit with extensive damage from Cyclone Yasi the following week. The entire region is in a very desperate state, with very little in the form of relief from the government or even insurance because the majority of damage is due to flooding.

Puzzle craftsman and collector Dave Cooper was caught in the thick of it and has received substantial damage to his home and community. His job as a police officer puts him in the perfect position to help out those who are in the most desperate of needs, and any spare time off duty has also been spent out with a chainsaw helping to clean up debris.

Unfortunately, Dave has been hindered in the amount of aid he can provide due to his own home and family being affected by this crisis. All proceeds from this auction will be going primarily to Dave Cooper to provide him with the bare essentials necessary for him to focus on a community that desperately needs his service without him having to continually address the concerns of his own family’s needs. Excess funds will be given to his community in whatever way that Dave feels would best provide the most relief.

There are some incredible puzzles listed at the auction, including puzzles by Robert "Stickman" Yarger, Stephen Chin, the Pelikan Workshop, and more! Items were generously donated by members of the puzzle community.

All the money is going to a very worthy cause, so bid generously!

If you have any puzzles to spare in this effort, their contribution would be greatly appreciated. Pictures and descriptions of such puzzles can be e-mailed to John Devost at johnandbarb@eastlink.ca and will be applied in your name to this auction. To make things easier to process, those willing and generous enough to part with any of their puzzles for this cause should also consider absorbing the shipping costs to the highest bidder, or at least make arrangements to receive a separate payment for shipping costs. 

2011 New York Puzzle Party (Part 3)

It was getting pretty late at this point, but I still had a bit of an urge to puzzle, and there were plenty of puzzles to choose from! One that caught my attention was The Wave, by CMC Puzzles. Unlike many puzzles which have a lot of right angles, this one has nice curves.

The object is to get the balls from one side to the other and back again. It is a bit hard to describe, but the balls interact with both the curved grooves as well as the straight grooves below, and you can slide the panel with the curved grooves up and down in the frame.

In the photo, the top ball prevents the slider from moving any further down, but it can make it over the hump and move to the left, while the other balls keep to the right.

This seemed very similar to the classic binary puzzle (e.g. Patience Puzzle), but it didn't work quite like I expected. I'd need to study it a bit more, but I think it is somewhat different.

I had a good time with this puzzle, it was much better than my experience with their puzzle boxes. I think laser cutting lends itself more readily to puzzles of this type. The clear acrylic top was nice, and I liked the curved design. It is a fun puzzle to fiddle around with, though pretty challenging. It took me maybe 10 minutes to solve, but it could take a bit longer if you're not as familiar with this type of puzzle. Laurie Brokenshire also did it quite quickly.

Up next, I was excited to try a type puzzle that I had seen a lot of photos of recently on the puzzle forums. This is a Coin Jigsaw Puzzle by Jeremy "Grin-an" Barret". Check out his website CoinCutArt for lots more photos and to purchase these remarkable (and inexpensive!) hand-made puzzles.

Cutting coins to make interesting designs is not a new art, but Jeremy decided to take it to the next level by cutting the coins into jigsaw puzzles. This requires an extraordinarily thin blade (half as thick as a human hair) in order to minimize the material removed. Jeremy developed a special technique to reduce the number of blades he breaks, but he still goes through several on each coin!

I found the story behind these puzzles to be quite interesting: after developing his technique, Jeremy tried selling these puzzles at a craft fair disassembled in small jewelry boxes with pictures on top, just like a regular jigsaw. Unfortunately, buyers didn't believe that the puzzle would actually assemble! It seemed impossible that the pieces could be cut so small out of an actual coin.

After an unenthusiastic response by buyers, he reassembled some of the puzzles and put them in transparent coin flips. He noticed that now the puzzles looked like coins again, so perhaps buyers would be more likely to purchase them. Indeed they were: customers were amazed and baffled that such a feat was even possible! Jeremy quickly sold out, and now coin puzzles are his most popular item.

You can get all different coins and numbers of pieces: dimes are 12 pieces and the silver dollar above is 25 pieces, which take between one and three hours to make. Jeremy spent 18 hours making a 52-piece puzzle out of a 1921 Silver Morgan Dollar!

I guess that's enough background: on to the puzzle! Most people will be content just marveling at how these coin jigsaws were crafted, but I wanted to see how hard it was to put it back together. Brett was kind enough to let me disassemble one of his, and I decided to start with a large one, the silver dollar shown above.

It was very neat seeing the tiny pieces as I scrambled them up. I quickly realized that one of the main challenges is recognizing the front and back of the pieces! Both sides are silver, and since they are so small it is hard to see patterns. I started out with the edges and any words I could find, since those were easier. I think it took me about 15 minutes to get it back together. Probably not something I'd do over and over again, but I was happy to see that it was doable! Some folks may prefer using tweezers (particularly on smaller coins), but I liked using my hands.

If you're ever trying to solve one of these, I would suggest assembling it in the case it came in! I did it on a table and it was a pain getting it back in the case! I tried to just move it, but half of it fell apart and I had to put it back together. The second attempt, I was smarter and used a piece of paper to make the transfer. Phew!

I think the last puzzle I accomplished Friday evening was an exchange puzzle that Laurie Brokenshire brought, named CuBeAll. Laurie had exchanged it (I think) at the IPP two years ago in San Francisco, and it is designed and crafted by Vaclav Obsivac (a.k.a. Vinco).

The objective is to create this cube shape. There are eight pieces, one of which is a hexagonal loop! The others are either three balls in a row, or three balls at an angle. Laurie told me a clever story about how pool cues went through the set of balls and got stuck, but some ended up getting bent. It was fairly elaborate, but that's all that I remember!

As a puzzle, I found it to be top notch! I was puzzled for a while, but eventually I figured it out by using logic, which is the most satisfying type of puzzle. I have a really hard time with puzzles constructed using spheres, such as George Bell's designs, and this one was no exception. I've found that it really helps if I look at a picture of the completed puzzle. Even though it is just as "simple" 3x3x3 cube, it helps me to be able to look at the completed form and visualize how the pieces can fit inside it.

It is expertly crafted by Vinco to have a nice tight fit. The final piece snaps into place and holds the whole thing together. Very cool! Once I had solved it, Laurie cruelly informed me that I didn't have the checkering pattern! Fortunately, it turned out to be a fairly easy thing to fix, and as you can see in the photo above I got it!

At this point, it was well past midnight and we needed to get to sleep for the puzzle party, so folks headed to bed. Next up, I'll cover the actual puzzle party!

2011 New York Puzzle Party (Part 2)

While hanging out at Brett Kuehner's house before the New York Puzzle Party, I also had the chance to try a few puzzles made by Brett's brother and son! His son Kai Kuehner is a Lego master, and he created some interesting puzzles out of Legos. They're not quite puzzle boxes: each one has a goal of revealing a jewel/shiny part of some sort.

This first one had a pretty simple appearance, and the goal was to reveal a jewel. You'll immediately notice that there's a little rod that can be removed on the right. Perhaps it is a tool! I do like puzzles with tools involved.

The solution is fairly simple, but satisfying. There is a spring-loaded mechanism: I always like it when something pops into place, quite satisfying! This was also the sturdiest of the three Lego puzzles, which I liked. You don't want to be afraid of breaking a puzzle while you're working on it!

The next one I tried is very unusual looking! It looks like some strange machine of some sort, with struts for support on the right hand side, and a spring-loaded mechanism on the left. The goal of this one is to reveal some clear green pieces.

I studied it for a bit, wiggling things here and there, and eventually found the solution. It is not too hard to find, but the mechanism is clever. Kai removed a panel so I could get a better look at the mechanism: he said he was most proud of the mechanism for this one! I agree that this mechanism is the most interesting of the three, though all of them are cool.

The last one I tried had a cute appearance, it reminded me of an elephant, though I guess the ears are where the eyes are supposed to be! This one was fairly fragile, but I managed to solve it without breaking it.

The solution for this one is a bit simpler mechanically than the others, but it was more like a puzzle box mechanism than the others. In fact, it is a bit similar to one of the Karakuri Creation Group small boxes. Very cool!

I hope he keeps it up! It is always exciting to get to try a puzzle that is one-of-a-kind! You never know what to expect. While I'm on the topic of Lego puzzles, you should definitely check this out. It is a multi-compartment Lego puzzle box that used about $800 worth of pieces. Incredible!

The next Kuehner creation that I tried was a puzzle made by Brett's brother, Soahn Kuehner. It is a beautiful, large, egg-shapped puzzle with a stand. It had a great finish on it, and the grain of the wood was very nice. Since it is mostly solid wood, it has a hefty weight as well.

The goal of this puzzle is to open the egg. I had tried some other puzzles by Brett's brother, so I knew this one wouldn't be easy. I tried the usual things (whacking, shaking, spinning), and spinning ended up working! I checked with Brett, and unfortunately it wasn't the intended solution. No spinning required!

The actual solution is quite a bit more clever, but I didn't really figure it out since I saw the mechanism. It is pretty subtle, but I think if I had spent more time with it, I could have gotten it. The one thing about this one is that the mechanism is a bit unreliable, which can be frustrating if you don't know what the right sequence of moves is. Still, it is a beautiful puzzle and a clever mechanism that I haven't seen before!

Well, that's all for now, but I'm still not through all the puzzles I worked on Friday night! One more post should do the trick, then I'll get to the actual puzzle party. Stay tuned!

2011 New York Puzzle Party (Part 1)

The weekend before last was the annual New York Puzzle Party! Brett Kuehner was kind enough to invite me to stay at his house again this year, along with a few other puzzlers: Rob Stegmann, Laurie Brokenshire, and Tanya Thompson. With all these awesome people, it was sure to be a good time!

I took a half day at work and headed down toward Brett's place a bit early because I wanted to stop by Jose Grant Jewelry to look for puzzle wedding rings. I guess I should have written that post first, but I think I'll save that entry for when I get the final ring!

I think I arrived at Brett's around 5:00, and I was very glad to have come early. It turns out that Oskar van Deventer and his wife also there, though he would be staying at Tom Cutrofello's home that night.

The first puzzle that caught my eye was this interesting geared 2x2x2 design by Bram Cohen and Oskar van Deventer. There are four "big" corners and four "little" corners. The big corners mesh with the adjacent little corners, so if you rotate one, all eight corners will rotate! However, since the big corners have more teeth, the small corners rotate faster.

If that was all there was to the puzzle, then it would be impossible to scramble it since there is only one move: everything rotates at once, so just keep rotating till you get back to the start. However, as you can see in this second photo, you can also expand the cube along any of the three axes. This causes the left and right halves (for example) to rotate independently!

If you scramble it with these moves, it becomes a challenge to get it back together. Unlike most of these fancy cubes which folks won't let you scramble because they're too hard or time consuming to solve, this one was already mixed up when I found it, so I was able to try solving it!

I was able to get all but two corners done fairly easily, but any time I would fix those two I would end up messing up two more! Eventually, I figured it out, but I'm not sure I could reproduce the feat any quicker the second time. I think if I analyzed this puzzle more, I could probably come up with some algorithms to solve it more easily, but I was having fun just playing with it. The movement was nice and smooth for a 3D printed puzzle! You can purchase it (unassembled) on Shapeways for only $130, which is pretty reasonable.

Next, I saw gleaming on the table a T3 Popplock by Rainer Popp that Rob had brought for me to try solving. Rainer makes some beautiful puzzle locks that are machined out of brass. So far, I've only had the chance to solve T4 Popplock, which was incredible! Check out my review here.

I was particularly eager to try this lock because a new puzzle blogger named Oli (Oli's Mechanical Puzzle Blog) mentioned that this was his favorite out of the three he has tried so far T2, T3, and T4 (click for his reviews). I really loved T4, so it was hard to imagine that T3 could be even better!

I found this one to be challenging! The first move wasn't too bad, but then I hit a wall. I was able to fiddle with it a bit, but nothing really seemed to be productive. After a short while, I made an observation that I thought would be critical to solving the puzzle, though I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. After setting the puzzle aside and returning to it later, I revisited this observation and discovered the next and final move! It is pretty unusual and unexpected. In all, I think it took me a good 45 minutes to solve this one.

It was good, but I have to say that T4 is still my favorite! I found T4 to be more difficult, but the solution to me was more unexpected and interesting. Both are very cool though! I'm still on the fence about buying any of these, since they're quite expensive. You can purchase T3 and T5 on PuzzleMaster, but T4 is currently sold out.

I was excited to see that Tanya had brought copies of some of ThinkFun's newest puzzles. One puzzle was Tilt, which I helped test a few months ago. It was very neat seeing how it ended up working physically, since I had worked with a software version. Full review to come soon, but the short version is that it is a great puzzle! It is for sale now on Amazon.

Amazingly, Laurie managed to plow all the way through another game Tanya brought, called Pathwords, which I had also helped test. I think this one also turned out very well! I'll be providing a review of this at some point in the future as well.

After checking out these puzzles, I tried out a puzzle that Robert brought called Diagonal Cube. It a Stewart Coffin design that George Bell created to be printed at Shapeways. You can purchase it from his Shapeways Shop here.

I thought this one would be pretty easy, your typical coordinate motion exploding cube, but this wasn't the case! All six pieces are actually different, which makes the assembly a good deal more challenging.

I worked on it for a good 20 minutes or so before I figured out the correct assembly. When I finally did figure it out, then came the challenge of actually getting the last piece in place! It required some tricky coordinate motion to maneuver it into the correct spot.

Here's a dyed version created by George. I love the way it looks with multiple colors, sort of like a harlequin pattern. It reminds me of a square juggling ball. However, since he's colored opposite pieces the same color, that would help you figure out the solution.

Definitely worth checking out for a very reasonable price (about $26). I hope George makes more Coffin designs on Shapeways!

That's all for now! Next up, I'll be writing about a beautiful puzzle by Brett's brother, and some Lego puzzles made by his son Kai! (Here's a photo Brett took of the group during dinner.)

Visit to Saul's House

Saul Bobroff is a puzzle collector with a great collection who lives fairly close to me, and a month ago he was kind enough to invite me to his house! I had been there about a year and a half ago for a Boston-area puzzle party that he hosted, which I wrote about here.

My main reason for stopping by was to test out a puzzle he is producing. It was quite cool, but I can't give you any more info than that for now. How mysterious! I brought the Karakuri Club Christmas presents and Gordian Knot Puzzle Box, which kept Saul busy while I was working on his puzzles.

After working on the mystery puzzle, he brought out this puzzle by Hirokazu Iwasawa (a.k.a. Iwahiro). Iwahiro has created some very cool puzzles that I wrote about previously, such as award-winning Odd Packing Puzzle, MMMM, and Dinghy.

As you can see from the diagram in the photo, there are seven pieces that you're trying to fit into a box with holes in it. As is frequently the case with Iwahiro puzzles, it involves coordinate motion (moving multiple pieces at the same time).

I think it took me about 5 minutes to solve this one. I could sort of tell how it was going to work, but actually implementing the solution took quite a bit of dexterity, since six of the pieces need to move at once. Also, there are holes on every side of the box, so it is quite easy for something to accidently fall out while you are working on it.

The one thing about this puzzle is that the frame is made out of particle board, which gives it a rough feel. This is the same material he used for ODD Packing Puzzle and MMMM, but due to the motion required in this puzzle, I found the roughness somewhat more annoying than usual. It lacks the elegant simplicity of the previous three puzzles I mentioned, but is still a fun little puzzle and a good challenge!

Next, Saul brought out a box that contained a number of puzzles by Frank Chambers! Frank has created a number of interesting puzzles out of corian, which is an unusual choice of materials.

This was his exchange puzzle for IPP 22. It consists of a cylinder with a ball in it, and the idea is to get the ball out of the cylinder. On one end of the cylinder is an opening, but it is obstructed by a plastic part that the ball won't quite fit through. There is a plunger on the other side, but it isn't long enough to give the ball a good push through the plastic obstruction.

This one had me stumped for a little while, but eventually I figured it out. I think it took about 10 minutes. It seemed impossible, but indeed there is a clever solution that I eventually discovered. Getting the ball back in was another problem, because you don't have the plunger to help you out! That took a bit of doing, but eventually I got it back in.

Here's another puzzle by Frank called The Oriental Toothpick Safe. It was his IPP21 exchange puzzle. This is a puzzle box, so I was intrigued to see how it would work.

The lid will slide left or right and sometimes it will slide a bit further, but it won't quite come off! Quite perplexing. After about 30 minutes, I started to see what the pattern was, and shortly after that I was able to open it. Still, I wasn't quite sure what the mechanism was, and probably wouldn't be able to reproduce the feat again quickly at that moment.

The mechanism is hidden even with the box open, but by removing the black plastic stopper, the lid will slide all the way off, revealing the mechanism. Saul was kind enough to let me do this, and I was quite surprised to see that the mechanism is actually the same as Maple Chest by CMC Puzzles! However, since the construction is better, the mechanism works as intended much more reliably. Also, since there is no gap between the lid and the box, my solution to maple Chest would not work. This makes for a much more subtle and interesting puzzle. I really liked this one because it requires you to pay attention to what's going on as you manipulate it.

There were a few others I tried, but the highlight of my visit was the chance to work on a Stewart Coffin original Rosebud! As you can see from the photo, it is a beautiful-looking puzzle! Check out the link above for nicer photos. Also, check out this link to Stewart Coffin's description of this puzzle in The Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections.

The really amazing thing about this puzzle is that if you position your hands in just the right place, all six pieces simultaneously expand outwards, like a rose opening. Beautiful! There is a small pin that keeps the puzzle from coming apart accidently as you do this, because it is a real beast to get back together!

Here's an excerpt from Coffin's description that really intrigued me:

A few of these puzzles were produced some years ago and sold unassembled. After sufficient time had elapsed and almost none had been solved, the customers were given the opportunity to purchase (for an outrageous price!) an assembly jig and directions. With these, it is easy. Without the jig, it can be done with patience, using tape and rubber bands. Without such aids, it has been done but borders on the impossible.

That sounded like a challenge to me! This puzzle has come up for sale at various auction sites, but never at a price I could afford, unfortunately. I really wanted a copy since it is such a beautiful design! Also, I wanted the chance to try something that borders on the impossible.

Saul was kind enough to give me this chance: I was thrilled when he said that I could take it apart completely, just as long as I got it back together eventually. He said I could always take it home and work on it if I got stuck. It turns out that I'm actually the first person to have taken this puzzle apart, he bought it directly from Coffin and hasn't been foolhardy enough to take it apart yet.

So, with some trepidation, I removed the safety pin and expanded the puzzle to the point where it collapsed. What had I gotten myself into! I was soon left with six pieces, and little idea on how I would restore them to their original position.

After I had gotten oer the shock, I started to put the pieces together again. I assembled three pieces to form the top, and three pieces to form the bottom, but of course you can't just put them together, they need to be expanded to the point of collapse in order to fit! Much like the way I solved Spinning Icosahedron, I tried putting in one piece at a time. The first three were easy, then the fourth, but the fifth was really difficlt to get in!

You have to push the pieces out in the coordinate motion while keeping them from falling out of place, and then slide the piece in. Phew! Here's a photo of me after about 30 minutes of working on this damn puzzle, looking a bit haggard. Now how do I get the sixth piece in? Surely this would be even tougher.

Indeed it was! Again, I expanded the puzzle to the point of collapse, and tried to insert the sixth piece ever so carefully. Unfortunately, luck was not on my side and the whole thing collapsed!

This happened a few times, but after about an hour, I finally got it back together. Saul was over in the kitchen, and I proclaimed with glee that I had done it. Here's a photo of me beaming after I had done it.

I was pretty proud to have done it with no tape or rubber bands. I tried using the bubble wrap in front of me to give the pieces a bit more traction when setting the puzzle down, but the final piece was placed using just my hands. Needless to say, I will not be trying to do this again anytime soon, it was quite an ordeal!

I can't express how thrilled I was to finally get to try this puzzle. I had been wanting to do this since I first read about it in The Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections, so it was great to finally get a chance to do it. I'd still love to buy a copy at some point (not necessarily a Coffin original) so let me know if you have one you're willing to part with!

Thanks again to Saul for inviting me into his home! It was great seeing him and chatting about puzzles.