It Ain't Wood, But Plastic is Still Fantastic!

These Brought Real Happiness

Great Haul from last week's MPP
Quite a few were from the IPP

After last week's MPP (great write up from Allard here), I came home with a bunch of new toys to play with much to the disgust of the first wife. There is a bit of pressure to tidy up in PuzzleMad HQ because the collection is out of control and I have been working so much that the new acquisitions have just been placed on my desk, next to my living room armchair, in the conservatory and (heaven help me!) in the dining room! "She" has told me in ever increasingly irritated terms that they had better be cleared up or extreme measures will be taken. I have not had the courage to ask what they were! I had one last day of annual leave last Tuesday and, having had some new fitted wardrobes installed in my, gulp, second puzzle room. I was provided with some storage containers (nice ones that her tidiness fetish had "forced" her to buy) and told that the dining room needs to be clear by the end of the day. 

Needless to say, with that look in her eyes, I quickly complied and after several hours of moving things around, finding 2 puzzles that I did not remember the names of (thank you Aaron for reminding me) and we had a nice tidy puzzle free (almost) dining room. The latest acquisitions were placed into a position to play with and I have used what little time I have had this week to attempt to solve some.

Jigs4w by Haym Hirsh (made by Tye Stahly)

Poor Colin!

I have had only a little success with the 5 piece Jig5aw from Haym, managing only to solve 1 of the 3 challenges and despite hours of attempts, not gotten anywhere close to success on the other 2. However, I had been full of confidence having solved the 10 piece jigsaw and had watched my poor assistant and trainee fail dismally at it. I received the Jigs4w as part of my IPP haul which Ali had carted back for me and immediately suffered the same problem as I had had with the 5 piece. Damn! That man is so devious!

No matter what you do with this one there always seems to be there always seems to be one of the tabs overlapping the edge of the frame. For heaven's sake! There are only 4 pieces! Why is it so difficult?

To my eternal shame, it took me 4 hours of trying the same thing over and over again until I finally got it! Why was I trying the same thing repeatedly? Because I couldn't remember previous combinations and orientations of pieces. Not only am I not a genius like Derek, I am actually not terribly bright. I think I have written that before on this website. 

I think this is called Second Stellation Interlocking puzzle

This shiny piece of jagged plastic was being given away free at the MPP (I think it was Allard that made it) and I was forced to take it home disassembled like this. When I unpacked it and stuffed it onto my pile to be payed with next to my chair, I got a beady eyed look and decided that I had better get on with it pretty quickly. It really does look cluttered when left as a pile o' pieces. I did express yet again the wish to buy a cheap 3D printer of my own but was very quickly disabused of the idea when I was told that the spiders in the garage might eat me alive whilst I slept...because that would be where I would be living!

I had seen this one come apart, so I was aware that it was yet another variation of the Diagonal star puzzle which I have written about many times. However, when trying to put this one together, there are various notches in the stem of the pieces (obviously they interlock) and an awful lot of sharp end pieces getting in the way of each other once more than 2 are assembled. Despite the pain of stabbing myself a couple of times, I happily played with these in various combinations and managed to create two 3-piece halves which would not assemble together due to being blocked. Time to think© and I had a proper look at the shapes and after a lovely little Aha! moment I had a more presentable shape to show Mrs S:

I think this might be the best diagonal star yet.
It would be amazing in wood

That is two puzzles solved in a week!

Happiness cube #001

Happiness cube #006

I have a history of misery with happiness cubes! I have a bunch of them in wood and the b£@$tards took them apart and mixed them all up......TWICE! Amongst the same pile of freebies was a few more happiness cubes and at the end of the day, there were a couple left over to be picked up my me. Yay!

Starting with this week, I will be working 6 day weeks for the next month which means I will need as much happiness as I could get. I was very impressed with Rich's collection of 3D printed hapinnes cubes and playing with them last week reminded me that I love finding disassemblies. After getting home from work yesterday, I felt the need to take something to bits and had a lovely time exploring the movements and disassembly sequence of these. I even managed to make enough muscle memory to be able to assemble them again after rearranging the pieces for the photo. I may need to prevail upon someone with a 3D printer to make me a bunch more of them!

Number 1 pieces

Number 6 pieces

They are now back together and ready for filing away with my other pieces of happiness!

Thank you Allard for a great MPP and also for the plastic fantastic fun.

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Also, thank you to my readers for helping me pass yet another milestone. I have now had over 4 million page views since I begun the term into lunacy in 2011. The views even continued after the death of my mother and have taken off over the last year. It may well be that my site is just being scraped by AI bots and if that is the case then we will be safe from the machine overlords for a while yet. My drivel won't teach them anything useful!

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