An Advantage Of A Frightening Wife...

Is that she might make me find something I had forgotten!

Mrs S was very fed up with this!

The puzzles that I reviewed last week have been released by the New Pelikan workshop - they are seriously good!! Go get them now whilst they last.

I have mentioned on several occasions that I have a rather frightening Scottish wife who also happens to have had many years of training and experience as a nurse - this has a number of connotations:

1. The violence genes are very prominent in the Scots (especially when considering the English)
2. The violence genes are "X-linked" which means that the female of the species has double copies
3. 1 & 2 combined leave me cowering under the table or bed or behind the sofa quite a lot of the time
4. Nurse training teaches the violently inclined Scottish female many specialist techniques in the infliction of pain (both mental and physical) with the leaving of marks/evidence as "optional"
5. 3 & 3 combined means that I get very little sleep as I keep an eye open all night to see the Whack! Ouch! coming (luckily my years as a junior doctor in the 90s prepared me well for little sleep)
6. 1-4 & 5 leave me very susceptible to suggestion by "she who frightens the Northern hemisphere".

The end result of all the above is that I have 10 days of annual leave and my plan to spend it lazing around and playing with my rather frightening backlog of unsolved puzzles was not going to happen (thank you to Michael Q for pointing out to me that I maybe have more unsolved than solved). She said that the desk was beyond a joke and even the cats were unhappy! The cats like to watch out the window but struggle to get up and down from there when there is no space on the desk for them to use as a launchpad/landing area. She said that the basket under the window was looking very unsightly. Unfortunately I sort of had to sheepishly agree.

She then had the temerity/bravery to open one of the cupboards in the study and told me that things had to be sorted:

This is a couple of years out of date - it is MUCH worse now!

Finally she twisted my arm behind my back, frogmarched me into the porch where we had a pine chest of drawers. I had taken over almost all of it with metal and wire puzzles and she wanted the space back! In fact, the weight of the puzzles had been so great that two of the drawer handles had snapped when I tried to open them to stuff even more toys inside. 

The weekend of my annual leave saw Mrs S snap and threaten me with extremes of violence that even she had never dreamed of before. I cowered in the corner (because I could not slide under the chest of drawers and first thing on Monday morning I worked out on the rower (heaven help me if I get fat as well as untidy!) and went straight to work in the porch.

Oh Lord! I have a LOT of puzzles! One thing I was surprised to see, as I transferred them from draw to storage container, was that I had actually solved almost all of them. It was a really time consuming task as I had to identify everything and then catalogue where they were going to be stored - I have a database of what I own but it doesn't (yet) have a field for location). 

My Hanayama basket was transferred en-masse up to my upstairs puzzle room (into the Billy bookcases that are so ubiquitous amongst us puzzlers), then the hundreds and hundreds of disentanglement puzzles needed to be identified and placed in appropriate boxes in the correct grouping. 

After clearing the chest of drawers I could replace the handles and move on to the twisty cupboard. The twisties are going to stay in there but spread out a bit and the overspill of wire and vintage packing/movement puzzles taken into storage.

I expected to have to fill 2 or 3 storage boxes filled when I had finished and for it to take me just a day or two. Oh boy! I am seriously not very bright! I had no idea that it would take me 4 whole days of 6 or 7 hours each to do it! I ended up with the desk still looking like a shithole although the corner basket was cleared and the cupboard ready for rearrangement:

Much better....sort of!

Much better....nearly!

That's as far as I have got and I now have the prospect of finding space for this in the garage:

Help!!!

They don't look organised but everything is listed and the boxes numbered. Almost every single puzzle has been solved (part of the reason for the slow pace was that I might have gotten side-tracked into playing for a while on numerous several occasions. I have a little basket of "recent toys" and toys I never got around to playing with and as a result I got playing with a lovely pair of puzzles that I bought from Wil Strijbos quite some time ago when I last met him at an MPP. They are both sequential movement puzzles which I am usually terrible at but these come with an extra twist to them. Turn Over pentomino and Flying Tetra both by Naoyuki Iwase (aka Osho) 

These are lovely little portable puzzles with a serious challenge to them. The former comes with 34 challenges and the latter with 24. They should keep me busy for quite a while! In fact I expect Mrs S to make me do more tidying before I have finished! What are the rules?

In "Turn over pentomino" there is a start position for all the pieces and in each move you are allowed to Slide, jump, rotate or turn over one of the pieces. The aim is to finish with every piece in the tray flipped 180º horizontally. The challenges range from requiring from 10 to 22 moves to achieve the aim and so far I have completed about 10 of the easier challenges and sheepishly I have to own up that not a single one has been solved in the correct number of moves! I am just happy that they have been solved at all!

For Flying Tetra the aim is to place the pieces in a start position and slide, jump, rotate or turn over one of the pieces in turn until you end up at a set ending position. I find this one much more satisfying because the end point is easier to discern and the goal is always there in front of you. There are only 4 simple pieces but it is still a significant challenge. I have only completed the first 12 of the puzzles in the list.

I have also been desperately working in the evenings on a wonderful new Twisty puzzle. I received a fabulous gift from Twistytex of his special version of the 3x5x7 "Ultimate shapeshifter" cuboid. This was the very first one of this type to be produced many years ago and set me firmly on the path of enjoying more complex twisty puzzles. Whilst checking it out, I might have "inadvertently" scrambled it:

Twistytex' 3x5x7

That was really silly!

Having scrambled it, I realised that I had forgotten every single one of my cuboid algorithms! I also had not even solved a 3x3 or 4x4 for many months. It was back to the basics for this one. I have refreshed my abilities with basic cubes and am desperately trying to work out how to solve the cuboid without algorithms. I am trying to use a block method but am having trouble getting to grips with the movemnts. It might take me some time!       If she will let me!

Whatever you do, don't let Mrs S see this list of puzzles from Aaron! I am rather ashamed at how few of them I have managed to solve! I have kept the unsolved ones out for me to work on (and no doubt fail).

Dear lord! I am rubbish at disentanglement puzzles!

Some Seriously Wonderful Puzzles Coming From Pelikan

The pressure has been on me this week! I received the latest batch from Jakub and knew that he really wanted to put them up for sale this weekend. This little fact was dropped by Ivan Danik who runs the Puzzle Guy YouTube channel. Ivan also received the puzzles so that he can film them and do the product photography for the Pelikan store. Ivan let slip that the puzzles should go on sale in a week and so I had better get a move on and get working! Gulp! I'm a rubbish puzzler at best and solving 7 gorgeously precise puzzles that fast was going to be a huge challenge!

Play-girl 2

Play-girl 2 by Alexander Magyarics

How can anyone resist yet another wonderful packing puzzle designed on a triangular grid by Alexander Magyarics? Play-girl 2 has been beautifully made with such supreme precision that the corners are sharp enough to break skin! The lovely diamond-shaped box, made from pink oak has identical, rather wide openings on each side which allow entry of the Wenge pieces but then must be left filled at the end. Working outside of the box reveals through simple logic how the pieces should be oriented - this process alone is quite a nice challenge and then there is the much harder problem of assembling inside the box. This has to be done by working out how to disassemble them through where the holes should be. It’s quite a dexterity puzzle as well as a logic problem as the triangular pieces want to spring apart in certain configurations. The disassembly sequence is a level 11.3.3 which is pretty tough to remember to do then in reverse. It took me 3 days and I loved every moment of it!

A lovely challenge

It is also huge fun entering the puzzle into Burrtools as I am not used to working with the triangular grid but you should definitely do this for practice as I’m sure there will be more puzzles like this coming from Alexander and Pelikan.

Get Trunk 1

Get Trunk 1 by Alexander Magyarics

I adored the Bugs packing puzzle which could be hung on a wall as a piece of art and this is another along similar lines - it is very large at 21cm square, it has a clear acrylic cover and has been drilled so that it can be hung on a wall for display. It’s almost as if this puzzle was designed by Alexander and made by Pelikan specifically for me. With my family history of elephant collecting which I inherited from my late mum, I would never be able to resist another fun challenge with the same theme. This time we have an Oak and Maple frame and 6 different elephant shapes made from Acacia, Padauk, Wenge, Cherry and Zebrano (2 pieces). 

I started playing with this before I knew the instructions. I was trying to place all 6 pieces in the frame for quite a while before Alexander contacted me to tell me that there are 3 challenges. Each one is to place "just" 5 elephants inside. The first 2 challenges are to use just one of the Zebrano elephants alone with the other 4 pieces and then a more difficult supplementary challenge is to use both the Zebrano pieces and fit another 3 of the others inside the frame (but which pieces?). The shapes only differ in the position of the trunks and the complexity of their shape makes this a much tougher challenge than expected. 

So far I have only found one of the solutions…I blame my failure on the others on the cat on my lap who won’t lie still whilst I balance this on top of him. I cannot show a picture here because you don't want to cheat and see a solution do you? Get this puzzle - you really won't be disappointed. It is seriously tough.

Octopus 33

Octopus 33 by Osanori Yamamoto

Osanori Yamamoto and Pelikan have made yet another sequential movement puzzle in which 4 pieces are held in a maze and can slide and move in very restricted ways - the aim is to remove those pieces by carefully navigating the maze and orienting the pieces in such a way that they can be slid out through the single hole that will allow it. The last one of this type was the Waffle which I really struggled with. The Octopus 33 is made with a Bubinga and Wenge frame with 4 identical yellow Garapa L-shaped pieces providing a lovely contrast in colours. This seems to be probably the most restricted of this type of puzzle that Osanori-San has created. It’s quite obvious early on where the exit point is and obviously rotations will be required to get all the pieces out of the frame. However, the obvious moves that you want to do are apparently impossible. The 8 “tentacles” of the Octopus make the movements that you want to do really quite hard to achieve. 

A significant challenge

It’s a nice series of discoveries to find how to manoeuvre the pieces and the Aha! moment has a very unexpected aspect to it which actually made my jaw drop when I realised what Osanori-san had managed to design.

Hidden Curry no 90

Hidden curry no 90 by Dr Volker Latussek

When I received this batch from Jakub, I was rather surprised at the name of this puzzle. It doesn’t look much like an Indian meal. Dr Latussek, a master of the unusual packing puzzle (I have still not managed to solve Fermat or the Euklid for Nick puzzles!) has informed me that this puzzle has been designed and named for Paul Curry, magician and apparent inventor of the missing square puzzle. The Garapa pieces fit into the square Acacia compartment rather like a tangram (it’s not quite the same shapes as a tangram). 

Quite a deep lip to get the pieces under

The aim is to tip them out and fit them in the frame on the other side. This is extremely difficult due to the overhanging lip. I failed initially and decided to put the pieces back in the top frame for storage…this proved tougher than expected. There is definitely something odd going on with the dimensions of the pieces as they were rather harder to put back than they should be and some orientations won’t work. Have a really good look at the pieces before trying to solve it and then it will become a much nicer challenge. I didn’t properly look until I’d spent a couple of hours failing! I think I got lucky with this one - I suspect that it is really quite difficult. Of course I am not going to post the solution for you - that would spoil it for you.

Half Soma

Half Soma by Dr Volker Latussek

This puzzle remains unsolved for me. It is another of those anti-slide puzzles that Dr Latussek has created where the pieces fit easily into the box but that is not the challenge. The Zebrano pieces are Soma cube pieces where every single cubie in each piece has been cut in half before being put together. It arrives with all but one placed and a nice smooth surface on show. The aim, very like the previous Shrinking Soma, is to assemble all the pieces into the Pink oak box so that the smooth surface is flush with the top and, despite there being many gaps underneath, none of the pieces will slide at all or drop down to a lower level.

Really interesting pieces

I am just about able to assemble shapes but creating assemblies that won’t allow pieces to move is a logical arena that I just cannot seem to comprehend. I have actually struggled to assemble the Soma cube with the pieces cut down like this and got nowhere near solving it. This is a puzzle for someone seeking a seriously difficult challenge. If anyone has any idea about how to go about this type of puzzle then I’d be very grateful for some assistance in technique.

Turtle

Turtle by Alfons Eyckmans

Alfons Eyckmans designs wonderful burrs…many shapes and many different piece numbers but amongst my favourites are the hidden piece burrs with a contained animal inside (Goetz refers to this as the Burr zoo). This one, Turtle, is a significantly difficult challenge at level 46 (27.7.1.2.1.1.1.1.2). It has been beautifully made by Pelikan using Pink Oak, Jatoba, Acacia & Oak and all the pieces slide perfectly despite the rather humid conditions we have here just now. I did not expect to manage to solve this in time for the release of these puzzles but had a thoroughly fun time exploring and not too long getting lost (maybe I was lucky?) There are quite a few blind ends and a number of choices to make during the disassembly which makes it a pretty challenging solve but not impossibly so. It took me all day on Saturday before the magnificently decorated turtle could be removed.

Simple burr sticks and a very large turtle

The turtle is unexpectedly really big, taking up a huge amount of the interior of the puzzle. This will explain why there is so much movement possible during the solution because to make space for such a large central figure the burr sticks prove to be quite shallow and simply designed. The reassembly will definitely require Burrtools. If you are into burrs at all then this will be an essential purchase - it is stunning!

Dragster

Dragster by Stephan Baumegger

Another hidden piece burr with a motor vehicle theme from Stephan Baumegger. This puzzle looks stunning made from Jatoba, American Walnut, Maple and Wenge. It has a very unusual shape and little glimpses of the Dragster inside can be seen if you peek between the burr sticks. 

The original by Stephan

I actually own an original copy of this bought from Stephan back in 2015 and have never managed to solve it! I was quite a lot better at burrs back then which gives a hint at the difficulty of this puzzle. It may be that I can solve it this time but with my deadline to post reviews by this weekend, I’ve not had time to try yet. Puzzlewillbeplayed tells me that this burr has a disassemble level of 28.2.3.4.5.2.2.2.3 so you can be certain that this will be a fantastic challenge ending with the removal of a wonderful little car hidden inside.

So which should you get? That's a terribly hard thing to tell. I personally cannot resist the elephants and the special packing puzzles by Alexander. But the incredibly tough challenges by Dr Latussek are brilliant too. I really wish that I had the knowledge of the logic required to solve anti-slide puzzles but until someone explains them to me, I will never be able to solve them. The wooden disentanglement/sliding piece puzzles by Osanori-san are very addictive to me because everything is visible and yet working out what to move where is still a huge challenge. Then there are the burrs with hidden pieces inside. Almost no-one else makes complex burrs as good as Jakub and Jaroslav and so for me these are an essential purchase. Keep an eye on their store as they will be going up for sale quite soon.

Don't forget that Peter Hajek's book is already up for sale - it is a Tour de force production with beautiful pictures and the definitive history and analysis of all the puzzle world has to offer on the subject of puzzle boxes. It covers puzzles both old and new, European, American and traditional Japanese as well as the wonderful creations by the Karakuri Group. There are even puzzles discussed which I can justify owning as not traditionally thought of as boxes. 

Take care everyone - the Pandemic has not gone away - go get your vaccine as soon as you can to help protect yourself as well as others in your family or those in society who are more vulnerable. With the hundreds of millions of doses administered we can definitively say that the vaccines are safe (especially compared to getting the illness) with a very low chance of temporary side effects and no real long term effects to speak of apart from the intended immunity.

I'm Rubbish at Puzzles!

A Week of Failure

Res Q

Over the last couple of weeks I might just have annoyed the hell out of Mrs S by taking ownership of a rather large number of additional beauties. I have photographed them all, catalogued them using Airtable and put them onto my dining room table for future play. This is because my study has turned into a shithole and there is literally no room to put more until I find time and energy to tidy up:

This is out of date - it's even worse than this now

Also my living room pile o' puzzles to play with has reached the point where it might fall over and Mrs S has threatened to commit mayhem upon my person if I muck up the living room any further. Unfortunately, with my work commitments (clinical and administrative) I seem to have very little time to actually play with my precioussss beauties. When I get home I either have to talk to "she who is so ferocious that I have been known to hide under the bed from her" or do various chores or cook. I do also like to read some sci-fi occasionally and am trying to keep to my year challenge of 15 books. 

After a small chat with Andrew (he who designed and created the fabulous Lock Out puzzle, I decided that I should try again to solve the ResQ that he had lent me. This wondrous creation was made by Eric Fuller (and design in collaboration with Frederic Boucher). I had wanted to buy my own copy but whilst logging in to PayPal and choosing a postal method it sold out from my cart and I missed out. A few weeks after Andrew had solved his copy (lucky bastard!) he offered to lend it to me because he felt it was something I should be reviewing on my site and he seemed not to want to write his own review and post it as a guest post here. He sent it to me way back in June and I set right to it and found something straight away (Yay!) and then hit a brick wall.

I played with it every evening for 3 weeks or so and never found anything else (shaking it gently certainly revealed that there probably was more than just a bunch of wooden blocks inside). In the end I put it down for a while to have a rest from it and to play with other toys - I desperately needed to solve things for the blog! True to my usual modus operandi, I would pick it up every week or so and play, get nowhere and put it down again. Recently Andrew nudged me and so did Derek so I tried again. The first play had found the first tool(s) but nowhere to use it/them. I have put this down to me being a man of a certain age and needing multifocal contact lenses to be able to read/puzzle as well as see the TV. Despite these wonders of modern science and the fact that the living room doesn't have blindingly bright light in the evening, I really couldn't see well enough to work out my next step. I told Derek, that this weekend I would take it into the conservatory and play in nice bright natural light. I did that both Saturday and Sunday and.....

NOPE!

Not got anywhere - I am rubbish at puzzles!

Then I moved onto some of the wonderful new designs that Aaron sent me - Many of his string based puzzles are ferociously difficult and frighten me to death but the wire only puzzles are less scary (I buy both types anyway). if you want to buy them then either contact Aaron via facebook or look at PuzzleMaster for them (I am sure that the latest ones should be in stock soon). I thought that I would start with one of the easier ones - Dig ears is a level 9 on Aaron's scale (which I really don't understand) and to my very gullible eyes, looked really quite possible to a puzzler of very feeble brain.  Dear Lord! I was terribly wrong - if this is an easier one from the batch then I am in serious trouble! I have greatly upset Mrs S by jingling away every evening for a week and then swearing aloud when I got nowhere - at least it doesn't get tangled into a knot! I must keep trying! 

I cannot seem to do it!

Not got anywhere - I am rubbish at puzzles!

Thinking that maybe Aaron had just rated it incorrectly, I moved to the first one from the Sax trio - a level 10 but I have done others of that difficulty:

These look absolutely fabulous and should be as much fun as the Scissors were. They had taken me quite a while but I did get some good Aha! moments fairly early on. I have played with Sax 1 and 2 and managed...

Absolutely nothing!

Not got anywhere - I am rubbish at puzzles!

What about some N-ary puzzles? I can hear you say that you are quite good at N-ary puzzles. I should probably see someone about these voices that keep appearing in my head. I had received a few rather beautiful N-ary puzzles in the batch and usually, once you have worked out a rough system then the solution is quite logical. I started with probably the most beautiful metal N-ary puzzle I have ever seen - Hippocampus.

Yes it is wonderful! Yes, it is easy - I should imagine that on Aaron's difficulty scale of 1 to 10 it must be a minus 52. It's a lovely little thing and having solved something, I moved on to another of the N-ary puzzles. These are rather special and come in a lovely box:

Nice box for storage and protection in transit

I picked what I thought might be the easiest of the 3 complex N-ary puzzles, Cableway. Goetz has done a preliminary analysis which looked promising and sort of confirmed that the others would be MUCH more difficult.

I have spent an hour so far and, to my eternal shame, have not even found a vague idea of a pathway/mechanism. The vertical rods attached to the base really get in the way. I had sort of hoped that it might be a variant on a Chinese rings but alas, no.

Failed again! 

Not got anywhere - I am rubbish at puzzles!

I really must try harder or this blog is going to end up very very boring!

I have received the latest puzzles from Jakub's Pelikan puzzles. There look to be some fabulous creations there and they should be available quite soon - keep checking their website. I have put my initial photos on my New stuff page but in the meantime they have put a book up for sale. Peter Hajek is the host of the New Years puzzle party in London every year and many of my friends attend to show off the best puzzles they have acquired the previous year (I have not managed to attend due to the distance involved and work commitments) then Peter creates a book of everyone's favourites each year. Peter is also one of the most knowledgeable puzzle collectors in the world and a true connoisseur (unlike me who will buy whatever is shiny!) He has written an incredibly beautiful book about the history and secrets of Puzzle boxes - it is a stunning creation. It is now on sale from Pelikan puzzles here and in a few weeks a special locked version will be available with a new lock designed and made by the incredible Shane Hales (I don't know how he finds the time to do it!) - I have not seen the lock/locked version but if it is made by Shane then you know it will be fabulous.

A simply stunning book by an authority!

Beautiful Brass From Phil

Bolted

Phil Wigfield is a new puzzle manufacturer based in the good old UK. He makes stuff the old fashioned way using lathes and measurement and creates things of beauty. He then sells them via his Etsy store. When Allard showed off the Bolted puzzle and gushed about it, I took note and thought that when my finances had recovered a bit from other puzzling expenses, I would make contact and buy something lovely in brass...except he had sold out by then. At that point I send him a message and he revealed what a great guy he is. He promised to make some more once he had managed to restock with raw materials and would let me know as soon as they were available again. It seems that with the pandemic and Brexit etc. stuff has gotten quite a bit more expensive but he honoured the original price seeing as I had asked to buy before he had reposted new stock at a new price which made it worthwhile his efforts. Top man!

It took him quite a few weeks to get raw materials in manufacture my puzzle and send out my new toy. I was very impressed with the packaging. It is beautifully presented in a nice wooden box with a metal catch. It screams "open me".

Even Mrs S was impressed by the presentation (even if she was not impressed by the arrival of yet more toys for me). Opening the box revealed a lovely pair of interlocking bolts on a padded interior.

Now, I have played with (even if I don't own) almost all of the bolts produced by Rocky Chiaro (whose website seems to be offline just now). One of the advantages (?) of being friends with Ali, Steve and Allard is that (prior to the bloody virus) I would get to drive a few hours to Birmingham every couple of months and could be tortured and made fun of by a whole bunch of fellow sufferers when I tried and failed to solve a whole bunch of puzzles that were not in my own collection. I am terrible at bolt puzzles! I am not much better at many other types but I don't seem to have the right brain processes for these - I just don't seem to be able to think about how they could possibly work and then also cannot interpret odd noises and feelings as you move them about to work out what might be inside.

I showed this off on FB when it arrived and wondered how many years it might take to solve it. Allard certainly loved it and was impressed with it which meant that I was going to struggle. What do we have? There is a nice chunky brass bolt with an appropriately big nut halfway down it. So far so easy to understand...except this large nut has another smaller bolt screwed right through it and the large bolt with a nut on one side and a couple more on the other. You have to do the obvious and try and simply unscrew everything don't you? The tow small end nuts whizz right off revealing how beautifully the fit has been made. At this point try unscrewing the small bolt from the rest of the puzzle...and of course it won't come out! There wouldn't be much puzzling if it did! It wiggles a little revealing that it should come undone at some point but it's not straightforward. Maybe the small bolt doesn't actually go through? Yes, I know it's silly but you kinda have to do the other obvious thing and try to remove the large nut from its' bolt with the smaller bolt attached and yes, I knew it wouldn't work but I did it anyway! I never claimed to be clever or even a good puzzler...in fact, this website has many instances of me claiming to be not terribly bright. Once the two obvious things had been tried with no success, I was quite stumped. It wiggles a tiny amount in each axis of expected motion but that is it.

Time to THINK©! Well, I thunk and nothing happened so I went to bed and nothing occured to me overnight. I was resigned to having this beautiful piece of craftsmanship sitting on my pile of shame next to me in the living room for months. At this point, I thought to myself: 

"Self, if you were going to make something like this then how would you do it?"

Well, I haven't gone completely crazy and there were no voices answering my question. There was just a high pitched Scottish voice in my head complaining about how many toys were littering my study - oh, that was Mrs S...I can ignore that voice. Whack! Ouch! Sorry dear.

I did manage to think of a possible way that I would make this work and tried to see whether Phil had done the same thing I would. Aaaaaannd, nope! That didn't work. Back to sleep on it for another night. The following evening, I had a very rare occurrence...a thought. Not a special radical thought (I am not capable of those) but a thought that was similar to my first one but with a little twist (pardon the pun). Oh! that's interesting and rather beautifully done! Then I did something else and Bingo!

Very impressive work

That is stunningly well made - Phil did say that he had to spend a whole lot of time with a micrometer when making these and I can see why. It is a lovely idea, beautifully implemented and very well hidden. I will have to show this off to my orthopaedic friends because they will really appreciate the precision of the manufacture and the clever idea behind it.

These are still available on Phil's Etsy store - go get one, you won't be disappointed. I suspect that I will need to make another purchase from him sometime. However I will need to let my finances recover from my recent purchase of Aaron's newest creations.

What's in the boxes?
Amazing stuff!

Please be careful out in the world guys, We are seeing very high numbers of Covid infections throughout the world and hospitals are still very full. The unvaccinated or partially vaccinated are still getting very sick and about 10% of our hospitalised Covid patients are in the ICU either on CPAP or ventilated. If you haven't yet...GO GET YOUR JAB! Wear a mask when you are amongst others in an indoors environment. I know many places have not mandated mask usage but it is a simple thing to do and certainly effective in decreasing the risk. Ignore the crap about them raising your CO2 - this is utter bollocks! As an anaesthetist dealing with breathing circuits and ventilators all the time CO2 removal is core to what I do and masks do NOT cause it's retention (even in COPD or asthma). If you feel crap breathing through a mask with your COPD then imagine how crap you will feel with Covid-19 on a ventilator!