Singing an Out of Tune Duet?

Mrs S is going to shout at me... a LOT!

Over the last few weeks Aaron Wang has been showing off his latest creations on Facebook and I have been getting more and more dehydrated due to the continuous drooling! He sent me out a pre-print version of the latest catalogue for me to check the spelling and a couple of changes were required in the names. Following this, the catalogue was published for people to peruse and place their orders. I couldn't resist it and placed my order. Needless to say, I did not tell she who must be feared what I had bought for fear that an interception of the package might occur.

Pretty much all of the puzzles that Aaron produces (he doesn't design quite all of them) are level 10 or 10+ and I keep buying them despite the fact that I really cannot solve them! But they look so shiny and pretty and I cannot resist. I spend many many hours playing and failing to solve them which sort of makes me happy and sad at the same time.

Designed by DDK - Duet is an unusual one - only level 9!

There was one puzzle in the bunch that actually looked like I might actually get somewhere! Duet is very reminiscent of a few others I have solved before with the classic dumbbell shape held inside a loop. Here we have 2 challenges - to remove the 2 Pacman shapes from the triangles and the rest of the puzzle. It's a level 9 Yay!!!

Having taken a bunch of photos and tried to reassure Mrs S that most of these new toys were string and so wouldn't be too noisy/jingly, I set to work. I picked one of the Pacmen at random and tried a few of the obvious moves and found that the triangle really restricted what I could reach. This added to the challenge that the triangle needs to be carefully positioned first. 

I made some moves and seemed to be making progress until I was stopped in my tracks. The other triangle began to get in the way and I could not seem to get past it. Hmmm! Thinking© happened and my feeble bwain started to hurt. Time to backtrack (I always do this frequently because forgetting what I have done can lead to a permanently solved puzzle (my Cast cyclone remains in 4 pretty pieces next to me). Having gone to the beginning again, I started up my solution and excitedly progressed and this time was not blocked. I continued along the logical path and apart from the needing to plan the position of the blocking triangle, I was enjoying myself. Suddenly the first Pacman came off and I yelled my satisfaction (much to the annoyance of Mrs S). Having taken it off I looked properly and realised that I had inadvertently removed the wrong one. I must have grabbed the second one and started working on it without realising what I was doing. In the end this made perfect sense and I realised that the removal of the first one should make the second one possible. Time to try...

Duet solved

Lovely! I really enjoyed that. It probably took me about an hour or more in total. 

The reassembly was left for a couple of hours and was a little tougher than expected when I realised I had forgotten the sequence. There are a lot of very similar moves involving several of the loops in the puzzle and some of them need to be done a certain way with the triangular pieces arranged perfectly. I managed the reassembly with only a little bit of swearing from me and a lot from Mrs S!

Another design by DDK - Telescope is supposed to be only a mere level 7

I next attempted the supposedly even easier Telescope puzzle. It has string...this means that it is tough for me. The level is wrong!

I have spent an hour or so on it so far and managed absolutely nothing apart from to frighten myself half to death! There is no quick release mechanism on this one - if I get a knot then I am stuffed. Wish me luck!

Card case

Whilst I have your attention, you might want to go and visit Yukari and Juno's Pluredro store and have a look at the latest release. Juno has made another of his little case/box puzzles - the Card case. He has made a reasonable number and the last time I checked there were over 30 still available. Don't miss out - all his previous small cases have been highly sought after.