Is It Bad To Get Help?

Orbit from Dee Dixon

Way back in June I ordered and received this gorgeous little (gulp!) box from the amazing Dee Dixon. The goal of this puzzle is to remove the center piece so I guess I cannot classify it as anything other than a box but I won't let that discourage me from denying that I collect boxes. It is vibrantly beautiful made from Canarywood and Purpleheart and measures 5 x 5 x 2". I set to playing with it as soon as it arrived only to rapidly get stumped. Dee had said:

"Orbit is a seemingly simple puzzle that will have you going in circles trying to decipher the mechanism that keeps it firmly locked in position."

And he wasn't kidding. I wondered whether the odd shape on the lid had any significance but couldn't seem to find one. Maybe that shape was just there to act as a handle? The lid spun around freely most of the time until at odd intervals, it went click and wouldn't spin any more - I had absolutely no idea why! Sometimes I found that things inside had shifted and I could tilt the lid and when tilting it there was an alarming sound of what I thought might be ball bearings inside. Every now and then, if you peek around the edge of the disk with a bright light then you catch a fleeting glimpse of something shiny - was this confirmation of my ball bearing thought?

I went round and round in circles, spinning and not spinning, tilting and pulling and generally getting nowhere. This went on for months! I moved it from my tray of allowed puzzles in the kitchen (thank you dear) to my other tray of allowed puzzles in the living room where I played whilst watching TV. All the while I kept doing the same sort of thing over and over and over again! No matter how many times I did the same thing, I never seemed to be able to make any headway. The odd thing was sometimes things moved and sometimes they didn't. This was despite doing the same moves repeatedly! Maybe Einstein was wrong and sometimes different things happen? After about 3 months I had to stop for a while and just went back to it every now and then. Until the recent MPP!

Someone had also brought in their copy of Orbit (I think it might have been Allard but in my confusion of solving and playing with so many puzzles in one day, I couldn't be sure). Another admission that this copy had never been solved made me feel a lot better and it was handed to another puzzler who claimed to know how it worked. My jaw literally hit the floor when he opened that copy of the puzzle in about 60 seconds - that was absolutely bloody bonkers! I briefly looked inside and saw things that were surprisingly not ball bearings. Hmmm! I did see what looked like a locking mechanism but tried not to look too closely.

When I came home I quickly got working on it and used my phone as a torch. At this point, the Aha! moment almost knocked me on my back. It is so simple...why could I not work it out?

No clues here.

Some of the rattling was coming from the little flame that was inside and maybe that had confused me. I can now categorically state that the shape on top is useful for more than being a handle and I can also conclude that I am not terribly bright!

Having finally understood the mechanism, I can now understand all the funny things that seemed to be going on inside like the tilting, the spinning which sometimes wouldn't happen and the clicking noises inside. I have now opened it from fully locked inside of 60 seconds and feel very smug about it! It is genuinely quite simple in design but, for me at least, seems impossible to work out without some sort of clue. Sigh!

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2 sets of salt and pepper shakers!
Something is wrong with the lettering though!

I saw that Jon Keegan and Tartarus puzzles were offering the Sandfield salt and pepper shakers in their beautiful metal version. Even though I have the original proudly displayed on the shelf directly in front of me, I could not receive something similar of Jon's quality.

They have truly managed a beautiful recreation of the original puzzles with only the odd lettering and a slight tiny change in the detail of the solution. It took me about 15 minutes to recall the process and redo it until I had a bunch of pieces and my seasoning:

Salt and pepper released from the cruet set

Even Mrs S agreed that they look gorgeous on display. If you get a chance to own it or at least play with them then jump at the chance!