IPP32: Awards Banquet (Part 2)

In my previous post, I went through the Top 10 Vote Getters and Honorable Mentions in the 2012 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition. Next, I'll go through the First Prize winners, the Jury Grand Prize winners, and the winner of the Puzzlers Award.

Jury First Prize

Ferris' Box a beautiful puzzle box by Peter Wiltshire. It features triple-miter joints on the corners and his signature groove pattern on the faces of the panels. All this makes it look a bit like a burr in a cage, which can be a bit daunting, however this puzzle box is just the right level of difficulty.

Peter Wiltshire with his trophy designed by
Yavuz Demirhan and made by Tom Lensch!

You'll probably quickly discover the first move, though you'll likely end up going in circles for a bit before you find the second one! This is a nice feature, since folks often get frustrated when the first move is too difficult. The final move isn't too tricky, but is quite well disguised. One small issue is that it is easy to not reset it completely, though this doesn't really end up mattering.

Only 20 were made, most of which were destined for use in another project, but a few of which went to collectors. I was lucky enough to be able to purchase a copy from Peter, thanks Peter! Overall, this is an awesome puzzle box, definitely worthy of the First Prize. [Update: I just found out that Peter has decided to make more! They will be listed on Puzzle Paradise, so keep an eye over there!]

Houdini's Torture Chamber by Brian Young is an excellent puzzle, and quite unique! The goal is to extract Houdini (the upside-down peg) from the tank (the plastic enclosure). This was Brian's exchange puzzle last year, which I purchased.

It is a sequential discovery puzzle, meaning that you discover tools to help you along the way as you work on the puzzle. However, what you do with the tools you are given is the challenge! Most people that I have showed this to are able to figure it out in a reasonable amount of time, 10-20 minutes, and are quite pleased by the way it works. It utilizes an interesting mechanic to enable the solution: no dexterity or whacking required!

As far as drawbacks, there isn't much to speak of, other than that you need to put it back the way it started properly: if you don't do it correctly it can be either trivial or tricky to get it back apart, depending on the error. Still, the odds of doing this accidentally are pretty low for an experienced puzzler (or a non-puzzler with some common sense). This is a great puzzle and I'm glad to see that it got some recognition in the competition.

Jury Grand Prize

Double G by Jinhoo Ahn is a puzzle that I was really looking forward to checking out. It looks a lot like a Hanayama Cast Puzzle-style design, and I'm a huge fan of Hanayama Cast Puzzles. It is a nice, hefty puzzle machined out of aluminum, where the goal is to separate the two pieces.

It would be pretty straightforward, but there are some annoying protrusions from the corners of the pieces that stop the obvious path toward separating them. The actual move sequence takes a number of moves, various rotations and such, that is fairly tricky. Once I started to get the hang of how to avoid the obstructions, I was able to get it apart without too much trouble.

I did like it, though I'm not sure I agree that it deserves a Grand Prize. The design does have a nice simplicity and elegance, as well as a fairly broad appeal due to these factors, which is probably why it did so well.

Smartegg by Andras Zagyvai is a very interesting sequential movement puzzle. The goal is to start with the stick on one end of the egg, and work your way to the other end. This seems easy enough when you look at the picture, but I assure you it is quite challenging!

The rod has nobs on either end, which restrict its movement, and the egg also has an inner core which rotates and moves up and down. The stick interacts with both the core and the external maze, resulting in quite a complex maze! I spent a good hour to solve this one the first time, and it took me another half hour to solve it a second time since I wasn't quite sure of exactly what I had done. To add insult to injury, multiple people told me that this is one of Andras' easier versions of this puzzle! I hate to think what a hard one would be like: it could keep you busy for quite a while!

The mechanics of this puzzle are quite interesting, he really takes it to the next level from a design perspective. There are lots of interesting moves to discover, it isn't all the same which is part of what makes it challenging. Also, the craftsmanship is superb, it feels great to play with.

The only drawback to this one that I can think of is the hidden-maze aspect: you can peer through the slots to try and figure out what the core looks like, but at times it feels like things are behaving a bit randomly. With persistence, puzzlers should be able to overcome this, but it could be a bit frustrating at first. Overall, a top notch puzzle and an excellent choice by the judges!

Puzzlers Award

Finally we come to the Puzzlers Award, which is awarded based on votes by all the attendees. This year, the Puzzlers Award went to Square in the Bag by Iwahiro (Hirokazu Iwasawa). It seems simple enough: put the square in the bag! Unfortunately, the bag is half the height of the square, so it really doesn't want to fit.

When I first saw a picture of this one, I had a guess about how it would be solved. It turns out I was correct about how it could fit in the bag, but actually getting it to fit in that way is the tricky part. Note that the square doesn't flex at all, and the bag isn't stretchy at all either. The fit is a bit tight at one point, but you wouldn't want it to be too much looser.

This is a great puzzle because it appealed to all skill levels, everybody wanted to give it a try and generally people had a good time with it. It has a "that's impossible" reaction when you first see it, which is fun. It would be a good one to carry around with you and show to non-puzzlers. With a bit of patience, most should be able to figure it out. For all these reasons, I can definitely see why it did so well!


Well, that brings us to the end of the awards banquet, and the end of my trip to the 2012 International Puzzle Party in Washington, DC. I hope you've enjoyed reading it! Up next, I'll be reviewing the rest of the eighty (!)  puzzles in the design competition!

IPP32: Awards Banquet (Part 1)

Sunday was a fairly leisurely day, I had a chance to sleep in for the first day in quite a while and went to the Spy Museum with Kellian. We checked out the Spy in the City experience, where they give you a little electronic device that guides you on a spy mission. It was fairly fun, but not quite challenging enough for our taste. Still, a nice way to spend an afternoon!

Before the awards banquet, we hung out for a bit in the lobby. I got a chance to try some new designs by Ken Irvine, which were quite enjoyable! Eric Fuller and Tom Lensch were taking orders to make some of Ken's designs, which is a real credit to their quality! Keep an eye out for them in the future. Here's a photo of William Waite playing with one of Ken's designs with Norman Sandfield and Kagen Schaefer.

At around 6:30 we headed in for another tasty buffet. This time rather than having everybody make a mad dash for the buffet (which resulted in long lines at the previous banquet), they sent us table by table, which was much more orderly. After dinner, we took our annual photo of all the puzzlers from the Renegade forum (photo by Jen Dantzer-Jackson, Neil's girlfriend):

Starting in the back left, we have Brian Young, Scott Elliott, Matt Dawson, Richard Gain, Nick Baxter, Brett Kuehner, Ken Irvine, George Syriaque, Brian Pletcher, Jim Strayer, Peter Wiltshire, Neil Hutchison, and Rob Stegmann. In the bottom row: George Bell, Eric Fuller, Allard Walker, Stephen Chin, Roxanne Wong, Jeff Aurand (lying down), Robert "Stickman" Yarger (brown cap), Gregory Benedetti, and Derek Bosch. Quite a good turnout among the Renegades!

Now for the competition results! A jury awards the Jury Grand Prizes, Jury First Prizes, and Jury Honorable Mentions. Puzzle party attendees also vote on their top five choices, and the puzzle that gets the most votes receives the Puzzlers' Award. Starting two years ago, they have also announced the Top 10 Vote Getters who weren't recognized with a Jury prize, which is a nice way of recognizing puzzles that a lot of puzzle party attendees liked.

Top Ten Vote Getters

Blind Burr by Gregory Benedetti was an interesting burr variation that had an unusual movement. I don't want to give too much detail on it since it would sort of spoil things if you knew too much. It is a challenge to solve without this information, you could spend a while spinning your wheels! It is very nicely crafted by Maurice Vigouroux, and fits together nicely.

From a design perspective this is an interesting puzzle, but it is definitely a puzzler's puzzle. If you gave it to an inexperienced puzzler, it could be pretty frustrating, I think. If you're looking for a challenge though, this is a fun one!

The Locked Room Mystery by Simon Nightingale is a puzzle box where the goal is to open the box with the key. Unfortunately, the key is inside the box! It has an interesting series of moves similar to a Karakuri box that I tried recently. However, the move sequence is more challenging, and the seemingly impossible nature of the puzzle makes it even more appealing. This is one I would have loved to get a copy of!

This is a nice one because it is pretty accessible, I think most people will be able to solve it if they stick with it for a while. There's nothing particularly sneaky about it (no whacking/shaking required), and you'll soon discover how it works, though actually freeing the key will take some persistence and systematic trial and error. One downside to this one is that the windows tend to scratch a bit with use due to the nature of the puzzle. One thing I really liked is the way the lock is actually used: it is a bit hard to tell how turning the lock will unlock the door, since there doesn't appear to be a latch! I heard that Simon was particularly proud of this little detail.

The Vault by Mike Toulouzas was one that I had seen on the design competition website and really looked forward to trying. It looked like a real beast, with its safe-like appearance. Fortunately, there are large keyholes on each side and the back, so you can peek inside to see what is going on! Without these, it would basically be a combination lock.

Because you can see the mechanism, I think most people will be able to get it open rather quickly. However, there is still a sense of accomplishment when it clicks open and you feel like you've cracked the safe!

Getting it open is only half the challenge! Once you get it open, a little spring-loaded piece pops out to keep the door from shutting, and you need to figure out how to close it. I was able to get it closed fairly easily...too easily in fact! It turns out that the spring-loaded mechanism was binding a bit, so I was able to cheat. A look at the solution revealed that a much more elegant solution was intended. It would have been much cooler if the binding issue was resolved so you really needed to figure out the ending. One other issue was that the weight of the door tended to tip the puzzle over on you when the door was open. Still an impressive puzzle: it had a neat mechanism and also looked fantastic! The craftsmanship was superb, and it was quite a fun one to solve!

Ze House of Mouse Ze Dong by Stephen Chin is a variation on Stephen's exchange puzzle to make it more challenging. The goal is to find the mouse hiding in the house. In this version, he added several additional sequential-discovery elements that make it a bit more challenging to get the mouse out of the house. Also, there are some electronics involved, as Stephen loves to do! When you stick your finger in the hole, the mouse starts laughing at you, which is pretty amusing.

This puzzle (and the exchange) has a nice little surprise built in, which will make it a fun one to show to friends. The solution is fairly challenging to find, particularly if you haven't solved the exchange version. One drawback is that the mechanism is a bit fragile: it is easy to jam up the mechanism inside the house, though it can be fixed if you poke around a bit. You also need to be careful not to poke through the little black bag that is inside the hole. This happened a few times to the competition version of the puzzle. Still, a fun little puzzle, despite the fact that it mocks you as you try to solve it!

Jury Honorable Mention

Heptagon 48 by Koshi Arai is a tray packing puzzle made out of marble, which is an unusual material for a puzzle. It worked nicely though, with the pieces fitting so well together to the point that they blended in with the edges of the tray.

The puzzle is based on the fact that heptagons (7-sided polygons) can tile the plane, though they leave pentagonal spaces as seen in the photo. I found the spaces to be pretty distracting, since I wasn't quite sure what the tiling would end up looking like. It would have been nice if they gave an example of what a heptagonal tiling with pentagonal spaces looked like, though I guess you could say that's part of the puzzle!

I found this one to be quite challenging, just because the geometry was quite unfamiliar to me. I wasn't sure what the pattern of pentagonal spaces would be like, so I soon got frustrated and peeked at the solution to see what kind of pattern I was trying to make. That helped a bit, but it was still quite challenging given the number of pieces.

I decided to make the challenge a bit easier by filling in a few pieces using the solution, and then trying to do the rest myself. Still, it was quite challenging! I needed to add a few more pieces from the solution before I was able to finish it on my own. If you enjoy this type of tray-packing puzzle with a fairly large number of pieces, then you might like this one, but I found it too challenging for my taste. The marble was quite nice though and it was an interesting tiling that you ended up constructing!

RotoPrism 2 by David Pitcher was one that I didn't really understand: I found three axes that would turn, but was only able to turn each 180 degrees. The directions noted that a 90 degree turn was possible, but I couldn't find it. After the awards banquet, I was speaking with Bram Cohen and he explained how to get to the 90 degree turn. He also explained that in order to enable this apparently simple twisty puzzle, there was some fairly complicated mechanics going on inside.

Unfortunately, I don't really know enough about twisty puzzles to really appreciate this one, though I'm sure it is quite impressive if the judges liked it! I played around with it a bit, but wasn't able to make much progress since I couldn't find the 90 degree turn.

Well that's all for now! In Part 2, I will go through the First Prizes, Grand Prizes, and Puzzlers Award!

IPP32: Washington DC Puzzle Party

Saturday was the day of the actual "puzzle party" where puzzles are bought and sold in a big room with tables. Again, I had to get up pretty early to make sure I didn't miss out on any of the good stuff! The room opened up at 9:00, and I was ready to go!

As you can see, the room was packed with folks rushing around and buying puzzles. First I did a quick sweep of the room to see if there were any Roger puzzles available, since they are pretty rare, but unfortunately there weren't any. After that, I had a list of puzzles that I was looking to buy, and went straight for those tables just in case they sold out. I was most interest in Perry McDaniel's latest petite four puzzle box, Hobbit Cake, so I grabbed a copy of that first. Then I headed over to get Sandfield's ReBanded Dovetails. Next, I went over to Brian Young's table to get his Washington Monument puzzle. Finally, I got a copy of Matt Dawson's exchange puzzle, A Plugged Well.

After I got those puzzles, I wandered around a bit more slowly to see what everybody was selling. I was pretty psyched to see that Rocky Chiaro was at the party: he machines some really cool puzzles out of brass. I have tried a number of his puzzles, but don't actually own any yet. Still, it was a pleasure to meet him and get a chance to see some of his puzzles that I hadn't been able to try yet.

In particular, I had a chance to try three of his secret-opening puzzles: Beer Stein, Ice-Bucket, and T-Pot. I started with Beer Stein and had a bit of trouble with that one. Eventually, I figured it out: it has a cute and fairly simple solution, but there are a number of red herrings that can distract you for a while.

T-Pot was the second one I tried, which I was able to open with a bit of strategic shaking the hell out of it. The actual solution is a bit more clever, though I think most will stumble their way to opening it rather than figuring out the proper solution the first time. Finally, I tried Ice-Bucket which was a bit similar to one of his other puzzles. I think Beer Stein was probably my favorite of this group. I didn't end up getting one, since it was $200, though that seems like a decent price considering the amount of work that must go into these puzzles. He machines each one of them personally, no CNC here!

Alan Boardman was also in attendance, who I also hadn't met previously. He is known for crafting particularly tiny and precise puzzles. While quite impressive, these don't quite appeal to me since they're pretty difficult to actually play with! What did catch my eye was a few normal-sized puzzle boxes that he had on his table. I spoke with him about them, and he said that they were based on Chinese puzzle-safe designs, and were prototypes to gauge interest.

I first tried playing with the one on the right, which has a similar mechanism to a commercially available box, though this  version is much better crafted and the mechanism is simplified somewhat. The middle one was also pretty simple, the moves were extremely well hidden but fairly standard. The one on the left was probably the most interesting of the set. It had similarities to a few puzzles that I had seen before, so it didn't take me long to solve.

They were a cute set of boxes, but unfortunately the expected price was around $700 each, which was a bit rich for my blood! I thought they were very nicely crafted, but I didn't find them to be particularly complex or interesting to the level that I would expect at that price.


I wandered around the tables a bit more, before heading out to grab lunch with Peter Wiltshire. We got some Chinese food to-go and sat outside the puzzle party room while we ate.

We started chatting with a woman who was sitting nearby, and she told us that she was really interested in puzzle rings. D=D= (pronounced Dee Dee) showed us an impressive selection of puzzle rings from her collection, a bunch of  Jose Grant rings, and a number of others. It was really neat seeing D=D='s enthusiasm: she was really quite thrilled by puzzle rings!

Unfortunately, she wasn't actually invited to the puzzle party so she wasn't able to go inside, but I suggested that she might want to chat with Bram Cohen, who has been doing some interesting work in the field of puzzle rings recently. I ran inside to get him, and he came out to speak with her.

They chatted for a bit about her collection and the work that Bram had been doing, and I suggested that Bram grab some of his new designs from Oskar's table, in case D=D= was interested in purchasing something. He came back out with a bunch of puzzle rings and started explaining some of the nuances of his different designs. Being an avid collector and quite interested in new designs, she bought two of each design! One for herself, and one for her even-more-serious-ring-collector friend, Dan Danzi! It was a lot of fun meeting her and talking to somebody so passionate and knowledgeable about a particular group of puzzles.

I headed back into the puzzle party to take another pass and make sure I wasn't missing anything. There were a bunch of other great puzzles, but nothing I really couldn't live without. Here's the full haul from the day, along with some other puzzles I acquired throughout the trip:

In the top row is Mini-Perplexus IPP32 DC (Tanya's Thompson's exchange), Washington Monument (Brian Young's exchange), A Plugged Well (Matt Dawson's exchange), and Mouse House (Stephen Chin's exchange). In the next row, New*T (Nick Baxter's exchange), Two Key Lock (Nancy Alliegro's exchange), Caged Coin (Norton Starr's exchange), Sway Cube (gift from Peter Wiltshire), Hobbit Cake by Perry McDaniel, ReBanded Dovetails (Robert Sandfield's exchange). And at the bottom is a cute magnetic puzzle by Jane Kostick that was given to members of the IPP32 planning committee. Not a bad haul!

After the puzzle party, I headed down to the design competition room for a while. When dinner-time came around, Kellian and I went out to eat with a bunch of puzzlers. We went to Mexican place that was pretty tasty. In the photo you can see Peter holding a Rubik's cube that shocks you when you try to turn it. I knew this, and it still scared the bejesus out of me when I tried it! I jumped out of my seat and dropped it, much to everybody's amusement!

After dinner, I dashed back over to the design competition room where I again camped out until around 2:00 AM. The puzzle party had been a lot of fun, but I'm going to need a vacation when I get back to catch up on my sleep!

IPP32: Puzzle Exchange and IPP Banquet

After a late night of puzzling, I woke up bright and early Friday morning for the Edward Hordern IPP Puzzle Exchange. In case you're not familiar with the Puzzle Exchange, it works like this: you bring a number of copies of a new puzzle (not commercially available before the exchange) and exchange it with everybody else for the puzzle they brought! So it is a great way to get a bunch of new puzzles for your collection. Usually people either make their own puzzles, or hire somebody else to make them specifically for this event.

This year, there were around 80 participants. I didn't participate this year, but I did assist Chris Morgan with his exchange. Each exchanger is permitted to have one assistant who helps him schlep his puzzles around and keep track of who he has exchanged with. While this might sound like a pain (it took about 5 hours), the upside is quite nice: it gives you the opportunity to meet a lot of people and check out all the puzzles in the exchange and see which ones you might be interested in purchasing later at the Puzzle Party!

They placed all of the puzzles on a table so you could get a sense for what was in the exchange. I took a number of pictures so you can see what was there. Some pretty interesting puzzles! In this photo you can see Bram Cohen's Holistic Ring, a puzzle ring that requires all the bands to move simultaneously when assembling or disassembling. To the left of the ring, is Tim Udall's exchange Open Window, where the goal is to take the four pieces out of the frame and put them back in. It was made by Tim, and designed by Tom Jolly.

Going around the table, you can see Cubes in Space, an anti-slide puzzle exchanged and designed by Hirokazu Iwasawa (Iwahiro). The goal is to place the cubes in the hexagonal box such that the cubes won't rattle around inside the box. It is possible with both 12 cubes or 8 cubes, though 8 is much trickier. This puzzle was in the design competition last year. The red, white, and blue pieces near the bottom of the table are from Nick Baxter's New*T puzzle. The goal is to use the pieces to make three different sizes of the T pentomino. He was kind enough to give me a copy, so I look forward to trying it out. Thanks Nick! On the right hand side of the photo you can also see Tanya Thompson's exchange, Mini Perplexus IPP32, which was designed by Michael McGinnis, the inventor of the Perplexus. Michael incorporated various elements from the IPP32 logo, including the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building into the puzzle, which was very cool!

In this next photo, you can see a very large Washington Monument puzzle named Monumental Challenge exchanged by Andy Manvell. Below is Full Bloom, by George Miller where the goal is to arrange the white discs such that there are no gaps in the tabs as you go around the ring. To the right is George Bell's Lomino Cube 4, which had a number of goals to build things with the L-shaped pieces. Above the Washington Monument near the center of the table is Stephen Chin's Mouse House, a cute little puzzle where you're trying to find the mouse. It is a simplified version of his design competition puzzle. He was kind enough to give me a copy of this one, which I will definitely enjoy tormenting my friends with. Thanks Stephen!

In the bottom left of this next photo is Sandfield's ReBanded Dovetails exchanged by Robert Sandfield, designed by Robert Sandfield & Kathleen Malcolmson, and crafted by Kathleen Malcolmnson. I love puzzles by Sandfield and Malcolmnson, so I definitely wanted to try to purchase one of these at the Puzzle Party on Saturday! To the right is a sequential movement puzzle named Acrobat designed by Diniar Namdarian and exchanged by Goetz Schwandtner. The goal is to exchange the position of the two acrobats by rolling them around and twisting them, while avoiding the white holes. Above this puzzle is Pioneer Pyramid by Roxanne Wong, which is a variation that Roxanne designed on an old sequential movement puzzle. The goal is to roll the balls around to get them to match on each edge of the pyramid.

In the center of this photo you can see another collection of disentanglement puzzles by Markus Götz named More Serpentine Strings. This is a sequel to his previous exchange, Six Serpentine Strings. Above that is Matt Dawson's exchange, A Plugged Well, designed and made by Brian Young. The goal is to unplug the well and find the barrel of oil! That sounded like another interesting one that I wanted to purchase the next day. To the left and toward the center of the table somewhat is Try-Cycle Puzzle exchanged by Laurie Brokenshire and made by Vinco: it is a variation on his Flat Trick puzzle with some coloring constraints in the assembly.

In the center of the next photo you can see a grid-like puzzle in a plastic bag. This is String Rectangle by Saul Bobroff, where the goal is to wrap a string through the grooves in the grid, such that all the grooves are filled. I got a chance to test this one out for Saul a few months ago, and it was pretty fun seeing the different patterns that you could make! Below this is Perplexing Palace Puzzle by James Dalgety. The goal is to free the Queen by sliding the pieces around, but there are some interesting tricks in store (this was also in the design competition).

On the left of this next photo is a puzzle that looks like the Capitol Building named Capital Politics. The goal is to get the two red and two blue pegs to set evenly down into the building. When it starts out, the politicians are fighting and when you press one down, it pops the other one up. That fits quite nicely with the Washington, DC theme! To the right is a puzzle lock designed by Vesa Timonen and exchanged by Nancy Alliegro. It looked pretty neat so I planned to purchase one of these as well. Nancy said that it will be available from Bits and Pieces in November.

In this final photo we have a large puzzle presented by Allan Stein of Puzzle Master that looks like a hockey stick named Slap Shot Puzzle. The goal is to remove the puck from the stick. It will likely be available from Puzzle Master at some point in the future. Above and to the left is another puzzle that looks like the Washington Monument named Washington Monument by Brian Young. This was another one I wanted to try buying, since Brian creates some very unique and interesting puzzles.

Phew! If you didn't get tired reading that, I sure got tired typing it! But we're almost done for this entry. (Sorry to the folks whose puzzles I skipped, I don't remember the names of all of them.)

After the exchange, I headed to the design competition room where I bumped into somebody who happened to have brought in a copy of Lee Krasnow's Barcode Burr. Not only that, but they were afraid that it had jammed up and were looking for somebody to try solving it! I was pretty much beside myself, since this is one of the puzzles that I have always wanted to try: I love puzzles based on the Gray code (many puzzles are), and this one has particularly interesting geometry and just looks amazing.

The owner said that he was only able to get three moves, and wasn't sure if the fourth was possible. I tried for a little while and found it pretty easy to get the first three moves, but the fourth was very elusive, even though I knew what needed to be done. The really tricky thing about this puzzle is the way it moves: six of the corners pull away from center, but you can't really grip them to make this move. there is a small piece that runs through the center of the cube that you need to push on from the opposite side for it to pop out. However, the fit of this puzzle was darn near perfect, so it was quite difficult to find which piece needed to be pushed.

After a good while, I finally found it! Not only was the move well disguised, but it was also very stiff. Once I had that, it was fairly straightforward to finish the sequence of 64 moves (!) and remove the first piece. The puzzle disassembles completely, but given that dinner was coming up soon, I thought it would be best to quit while I was ahead. I carefully put it back together before heading off to the banquet, quite giddy that I finally had the chance to try a Barcode Burr! Check out this video review by Neil to see it in action.

The IPP Banquet was a lot of fun: the food was excellent and I had a great time chatting with the folks at my table. Kellian and I sat with Allard and his wife, Jeff Aurand, Jim Strayer and his wife, and Peter Wiltstire and his wife. There were two performances, both of which were magicians. I really enjoy magic, so I was looking forward to it. The first magician was clearly extremely talented, though it was a bit difficult to see and hear the performance even though it was projected on the screens to the right and left. The second magician also had some pretty impressive tricks, but the pacing was a bit slow for my taste.

After the banquet was over, you can probably guess where I went: back to the design competition room to continue working on those puzzles! I stayed up until around 1:30 again before finally heading to bed.

Up next, the actual Puzzle Party to buy some puzzles!

IPP32: DC Tour and Founder's Reception

This last weekend was the 32nd International Puzzle Party in Washington, DC, an invitation-only gathering of serious mechanical puzzle collectors. It is an awesome event both for the excellent puzzles and the chance to socialize with other people who are similarly obsessed with puzzles!

Kellian and I arrived on Wednesday around 9:30 in the evening. It was only a short flight from Boston, which was a welcome change from Japan and Berlin, though the locale was a bit less exotic to us! Unfortunately, we cut our departure a bit close and didn't have time for dinner, so we had to eat when we arrived. This is unfortunate because I had to walk past the design competition room, with 80 puzzles that I was really looking forward to trying, and seek out food instead! Luckily Kellian was there, or I would have probably just skipped dinner!

After finding a place that was open past 10:00 PM (which was a bit of a challenge), we hurried back to the design competition room at around 11:00 PM. I was pretty overwhelmed: there are so many puzzles, it is hard to figure out where to start! Since I'm a fan of puzzle boxes, usually I'll start with those and then work my way to the others. I will post a series of entries about each of the design competition entries later, so I won't get into detail about the individual puzzles here.

I stayed in the competition room until 1:30 AM, thanks to Nick Baxter kindly allowing me to just lock up the room whenever I felt like leaving this year! This was quite a treat, since usually I am in quite a hurry to finish trying all the puzzles in the limited time available. Fortunately, there were a few other die-hards, including fellow blogger Neil Hutchison, who stuck it out into the wee hours with me.I would have stayed longer, but the following morning (Thursday) I was signed up to go the bus tour of Washington, DC at 9:00AM.

Stephen Chin and Goetz Schwandtner
in front of the Korean War Memorial

The tour was a lot of fun, it was great to see old friends from past puzzle events, I ended up on the bus with Matt Dawson, Peter Wiltshire and his wife, Jim and his wife, Stephen Chin, and a number of other folks, so it was great getting the chance to catch up with them. Also, it was a great way to quickly take in some of the sights in DC! We got to see The Pentagon, Arlington Cemetery, The Marine Corps War Memorial, The Lincoln Memorial, The Korean War Memorial, The Roosevelt Memorial, The White House, The U.S. Capitol Building, and a number of other things.

It was blazing hot, so it was nice getting to climb back on the bus after looking around each location for a short period! After the tour, they dropped us at the Smithsonian Museum of American History where we wandered around a bit before heading back to the hotel.

The design competition room was open again, so I started feverishly working on puzzles again from around 2:00 until Nick Baxter and a few volunteers started packing the puzzles up for the Founder's Reception at 6:30. We brought all 80 of the puzzles to the banquet hall, so people could try them out during the reception.

At the Founder's Reception I had the pleasure of meeting Robert Yarger, who has built some of the most amazing and intricate puzzle boxes I have ever seen. Robert has somewhat reclusive tendencies, so it was a real treat that he made it out for the puzzle party! It was great hearing him talk about his puzzles and get to know him better. He's on the right in the photo, and on the left is Gregory Benedetti, who is also an excellent craftsman. Robert is holding a cute little puzzle box that Peter Wiltshire made and gave out to a number of us, I'll be writing about it at some point in the future! I also got a chance to meet another fellow blogger, Allard Walker, who made his way here all the way from the United Kingdom with his wife. It was great meeting him as well!

At one point in the evening, Zandraa Tumen-Ulzii wheeled out an amazing piece of puzzle furniture he made that he brought all the way from Mongolia. It consisted of a chess table, which was really a massive burr puzzle, and each of the pieces was a smaller burr! You can't really get a good sense of the size from the photo, but it was probably a good 3 feet in diameter. Very cool! Mr. Tumen-Ulzii has a museum dedicated exclusively to mechanical puzzles called The International Intellectual Museum.

I spent the remainder of the evening hunched over the tables with the design competition puzzles. There were a ton of people there, so it was a bit hard to concentrate, but I spent a good 2-3 hours on them before Nick and some fellow volunteers started packing the puzzles up to bring to the design competition room. We hung out in the design competition room until about 1:00AM this time, continuing to work my way through the puzzles. I decided it would be best to head to bed, since the puzzle exchange was starting at 9:00AM the following morning, and I didn't want to start getting too sleep deprived!

Much more to come, so stay tuned!

Plums Glass Puzzle

Plums Glass Puzzle is the next in a series of glass puzzles that the folks at Puzzle Master were kind enough to send me. Thanks! Check out the full set at Puzzle Master here.

The goal of this puzzle is to neatly pack the plums neatly into the glass container. The cool thing about this puzzle is that it makes good use of the shape of the container: each plum has a unique shape as if they had been real plums that were crammed into a glass container. Some people might be a bit grossed out by the plums, they do look a bit like small organs of some sort.

You can see two little protrusions from the glass container: these make it a bit easier to figure out where to start and also keep the assembly from spinning around the container while you put it together.

I liked this one because it had a pretty logical way of fitting together and it was fairly clear when you had the fit correct. The beginning is a bit tough, but once you get a few pieces in place it becomes much easier. This contrasts with Beans Glass Puzzle (which I will review soon), which didn't fit nearly as nicely and was therefore much more difficult. I think this one is similar in difficulty to the Beer Glass Puzzle, both of which are doable in 10-20 minutes or so.

Overall, Plums Glass Puzzle is a fun little puzzle that probably makes a better use of the actual glass container than any of the other puzzles in the series. Worth checking out if you think you might enjoy this type of assembly puzzle and don't mind pieces that look a bit like chicken livers!

Wasserhahn

This next puzzle is one that had me stumped for quite a while: I originally found it back in Osaka, Japan during the 2010 International Puzzle Party. It is called Wasserhahn (German for faucet/water tap) and was designed by the mysterious Roger, whose identity is known to very few people. His puzzles are quite rare, so I was really glad to get a copy!

As with most of Roger's puzzles, this one doesn't have a clear objective. I had a guess as to what I needed to do, but didn't have much luck getting anything to happen. I fiddled with it on and off for about two and a half years, picking it up every now and then, but didn't have any luck. The faucet twists around, the wing nuts screw up and down, and you can hear a distinct rattling when you shake it around, but nothing seemed to do anything!

After having been stuck on this one for about six months, I was particularly surprised by Oli's review stating that he'd solved it in a half-day! This, in addition to the fact that he said it had a good "a very satisfying 'Ah-Ha!' moment", re-inspired me to try it again. Unfortunately, again I came up short!

About a year and a half later, Allard also posted an interesting review that set me to working at it again. This time I was determined not to give up, and emailed Allard a few times to rule out a few things that I didn't want to attempt for fear of damaging the puzzle. This was fortunate, since none of them were correct! In the process, I got a slight nudge that got me thinking for a bit.

After a bit more puzzling, I finally had it figured out! Indeed, it does have a very satisfying 'Ah-Ha!' moment, just as Oli said! I don't really want to say much more, for fear of giving anything away, but it is a very well-done puzzle. I had a pretty good idea of how it would work, but lacked that one crucial detail in order to make it work. Overall, Wasserhahn is an excellent puzzle that I would definitely recommend if you can get your hands on one.

For more reviews of Roger's Wasserhahn check out Oli's review, Allard's review, and Jeff's Review.

For puzzling-inclined folks located anywhere in the vicinity of Rochester, NY (or willing to travel) there's a most excellent puzzle event coming up: The Third Annual Rochester Puzzle Picnic! It will be happening on the weekend of August 25, 2012. Jeff Aurand organizes the event and hosts it at his house each year, and it is a blast! The puzzling starts on Friday night and goes all weekend, complete with tasty food from Jeff's grill, good company, and plenty of puzzles! If you are interested in attending send an email to Jeff.

Beer Glass Puzzle

Beer Glass Puzzle  is the next in a series of glass puzzles that the folks at Puzzle Master were kind enough to send me. Thanks! Check out the full set at Puzzle Master here.

The object of this puzzle is to dump out all the pieces and put them back in such that you are able to rest the foam back on top nicely. All of the beer pieces will form a nice level surface on which the foam can fit.

There is a single piece down at the base that has five steps at different levels, and each of the ten beer pieces has a certain height. So you need to figure out which combinations of pieces go on which of the base steps in order for the entire glass to be level. Simple, eh?

Well, if you just start randomly trying things, you'll be able to keep things level for a bit but soon you will run out of pieces that are the correct size and run into issues. A more methodical may be better here, which is what I ended up doing after floundering for a bit.

There are only 10 pieces (excluding the base piece and foam piece), so it isn't particularly difficult. I do agree that it is more difficult than Rice Crackers which I reviewed earlier, but not by a whole lot. I think it took me about 15 minutes to figure this one out.

I liked the translucence of the pieces and the fact that this glass vessel had a more unique shape than the others. As a puzzle, it is nice because you can figure it out with a logical approach within a reasonable amount of time. Overall, I would say Beer Glass Puzzle is worth checking out if you're into puzzles of this type!

Stickman Milestone Puzzle

I recently had the pleasure of acquiring the latest puzzle by my favorite puzzle craftsman, Robert Yarger. It is called The Stickman Milestone Puzzle, since it is the 25th puzzle in the Stickman series and also marks 1000 puzzles produced by Yarger.

The puzzle also locks away a copy of the official Stickman Book (edited by Matt Dawson) with 50 pages of color pictures, descriptions, and background on every Stickman puzzle (past and future), as well as a full biography of Robert Yarger. Quite an interesting read for any puzzle enthusiast!

It took 7 months of work to produce only 30 copies of this puzzle, and the level of work involved really shows. When I first opened the puzzle, I marveled at its intricacy: gears, screws, and even a wooden chain! It is also quite large, measuring nearly a foot square and 4 inches deep (10"x9"x4"). This one really stands out on my display shelf!

Despite being visible, the mechanism doesn't give up its secrets immediately: you need to find the first move before you can see it in action! Fortunately, after a bit of fiddling I was able to get things under way nicely. Even once I had things moving, it wasn't entirely clear what was going on, but a bit more investigation helped me figure things out. I think that's one thing I really liked about this puzzle: you gradually start to understand it as you play around with it. Much more satisfying than a puzzle that you end up whacking and shaking until you stumble upon the solution!

Even once you get things going, it takes a few more leaps to be able to actually unlock the mechanism. However, this gives you plenty of time to enjoy watching the gears move and appreciate the puzzle.

Once the main enclosure is open, you'll discover that the book itself is trapped in a wooden frame! It only takes a few moves to release it, but was a nice little detail to include. The book itself is very nicely done, though I haven't read it all the way through yet. There is also a cypher hidden somewhere in the book for you to discover! The book and frame will be available for sale by Robert at the 2012 International Puzzle Party, I'm looking forward to meeting him there!

Overall, I really enjoyed this puzzle: I love Robert's more mechanical works with visible gears/mechanics, and this one really delivered on this front. As a puzzle, it was quite enjoyable, though not overly difficult. I think it took me about 30 minutes to solve it, though it could easily take an hour or two, which feels just about right. No real downsides to this one except maybe the price: it was a bit steep but definitely reasonable considering the absurd amount of labor involved! It is masterfully designed and crafted, and a fun puzzle to boot! I'm already looking forward to seeing what Robert will come up with next!

Check out Allard's Puzzling Times for a great review with plenty more photos and Neil's video review that has some shots of the puzzle mechanics in action after the closing credits.

Rice Crackers Glass Puzzle

Recently the folks at Puzzle Master were kind enough to send me a copy of Rice Crackers Glass Puzzle to review. Thanks!

Rice Crackers is part of a series of glass puzzles originally produced by Toyo Glass and recently re-issued by Beverly Enterprises. They are likely designed at least in part by Nob Yoshigahara since it is labeled as part of the "Nob Collection". The rest of the packaging is in Japanese, so I couldn't tell much more than that!

As with all the puzzles in the series, the idea is to try to put the food inside the glass container. This one is the easiest of the group by a fair margin, since there are only 7 pieces, and it is fairly clear when you start to get them in the correct orientation. I've given this one to a number of non-puzzlers, and they all were able to get it figured out with a little bit of persistence! Puzzle Master rates it a 7 out of 10, which I'd say is slightly high: a 6 may be more appropriate.

I had a good time solving this one, you have to take a good look at the pieces to see how they might fit together, and it is pretty satisfying when you find the right match. They are warped in such a way so that two wrong pieces may fit together somewhat, but the proper piece will fit particularly nicely.

The food theme is fun, though this particular food will be pretty unrecognizable to most folks outside of Japan. The only downside to this one is that it is pretty easy, serious puzzlers may want to skip this one and choose one of the harder ones, but it will still keep you busy for a good 5-10 minutes. Overall, Rice Crackers Glass Puzzle is a good, simple packing puzzle. For another review, check out Gabriel's blog here.

Sorry for the recent lack of posts: once I got out of the habit of posting regularly, it was easy to just keep on slacking off. However, I've got a decent backlog of puzzles I'd like to get through before IPP, so stay tuned for more! Up next, I'll be posting about a particularly awesome puzzle from my favorite puzzle box craftsman.