Perseverance Pays Off...

Finally!

The Snowman Puzzlebox by Kyle Chester-Marsden
Someone has stolen the poor snowman's nose

I hadn't managed to attend many MPP's last year and also don't really have time to lurk in the Discord and hence missed out on a few of the beautifully made puzzles from Kyle and from what I have heard, I have really missed something special. In mid November he put out a little announcement on the Mechanical Puzzle Community Facebook page that he was making some more of the Snowman boxes available again as potential Xmas presents. He had made these as presents for Xmas 2023 but as usual, I had not seen them and missed out. They had been reviewed back in February by Steve and looked fabulous. This time around I saw them announced and contacted him immediately! Phew! For once, I had not let it get by me. The handy thing was that he had one available at the last MPP of the year and I picked up a nice brown box and sneaked it into the house. "She who must be feared" saw it amongst all the other acquisitions on my return and, luckily, it didn't register when I told her that was going to be her present to me at Xmas. 

We don't tend to do Xmas presents much because, by and large, we each buy whatever we want throughout the year and it seems pointless to buy something just because of the time of year. I know "she" will be buying clothing etc and "she" knows that toys will be arriving. We just try not to complain about it too much unless the clutter escapes into the shared areas.

Nice box with magnetic closure

Beautifully packaged

I hid the brown card box box in my study and totally forgot about it! I'm an eejit! I blame work mostly because I ended up in the operating theatre through most of the holiday period and just didn't seem to have much time. Finally just in time for New Years Day, I remembered it and unpacked. Marvelling at the packaging, I was delighted  to see something just beautiful inside. We have a small box with a disfigured Snowman on top. The top and bottom plates of the box are made from vibrant Padauk and the main body along with snowman, made from what looks like Maple. When turning it upside down there is an interesting clicking noise.

Time to explore and I quickly found that the snowman could swivel on his box but only a fraction of a turn before stopping dead. It could return but that was all that was possible. Examining it from all angles showed me that things moved inside and sometimes they allowed the snowman to turn further or turn back further... and sometimes turning it didn't allow any turning. Hmmm!

Why would the extra rotation be allowed sometimes but not other time? Time to think© and listen. After a little while I made a crucial discovery and I could rotate at will in any direction that I wished. At least I could do that for a few turns until I couldn't any more. It seemed to be very tight and I didn't want to use force. Time to search for something else. I looked and looked and looked, and...found nothing. I was stuck!

This being stuck seems to be something that happens to me a lot. Mrs S says it's because I'm an eejit and rubbish at puzzles. She is starting to insist that I shouldn't ever get any more. Sob! I thunk for 10 days until it occurred to me to have a proper close look at the puzzle using a magnifier app on my phone. At this point I had an idea and tried to implement it. I was so certain that I was right that I put the puzzle in a room with a dehumidifier and after 24 hours my suspicion was confirmed. The puzzle seemed to be rather tight and loosened slightly with the dehumidifier. This then allowed me to carry out the next movement and with a bit of a squeak, I was able to see the rather clever mechanism inside. There was no nose to be seen but part of the mechanism dropped out and looked like something that had an additional function. A few minutes later, after nearly 2 weeks of trying, the snowman and his nose were reunited:

Even Mrs S thought this was delightful!

Thank you Kyle, I love it. It's a clever mechanism with a nice added extra step. My only excuse for how long it took me was being busy and the humidity in the UK just now made it really quite tight. This will look lovely on display.

If you get a chance to try it or buy it then you will not be disappointed. Unfortunately, I missed out on the Reluctant Drawer from Kyle which won accolades at the End of Year Puzzle Party as well as in the Mechanical Puzzle Discord. Hopefully I'll get to play at an MPP in the future.

---

Last week, when I mentioned Juno's incredible Tornado burr, I showed off (one of my) trays of shame:

A LOT of unsolved puzzles here

After another 24 hours of playing with the Tornado burr, I finally did manage to reassemble it and even did it again a second time. It's a bit fiddly but certainly very approachable for a lot of you geniuses out there. Don't be put off by the "burr" in the name. It's really not a burr in the traditional sense - I would recategorise it as an interlocking puzzle. Juno still has a few for sale here if you are interested.

The white bag at the back of the tray pictured above has been there for 18 months! I bought the incredible Euroka 10x3 puzzle from Juno in Feb 2023 and put it on display on a windowsill for nearly six months when a moment of madness made me disassemble it. I thought I could do it piecemeal and take sequential photos which would help with the reassembly. I wrote about it here. 

Lovely on display

Unfortunately the puzzle doesn't really come apart sequentially. I took it apart from the top and removed 3 layers before my Aha! moment collapsed in a heap on me leading me to the epithet below:

You Stupid Boy!

Over the subsequent 18 months I have repeatedly attempted reassembly only to be surrounded by pieces, a very high blood pressure and a new-found reliance on swear words. I have access to an unlisted video from Juno showing the assembly as well as the picture on his info page about it. Multiple attempts have failed and after last week's success with the Tornado burr, I was determined to assemble the bloody thing.

held by rubber band

This time I had a new advantage! I had a rubber band! These wondrous items have never been allowed in our house due to the fascination that our cats have had with them. They adored chewing them and once broken would swallow them. It all sounds perfectly reasonable and slightly funny until 24 hours later they reemerge from the cat at the opposite end. Picture the cat zooming all around the house with an itchy bum and a rather hideous springy brown kebab emerging from his back end. Then add to this wonderful image add a picture of me chasing him around with a piece of kitchen paper to try and catch and extract said kebab and rubber band. Whilst this seems funny to most blokes, it is not funny to Mrs S and as a result rubber bands are VERBOTEN! 

Our last cat unfortunately left us last year and I felt brave enough to keep a band or two in my study for emergency puzzling situations. This was just such a situation and I put said rubber band to good use. I managed to assemble the bottom 5 pieces and placed the band around them. I then built up the next 2 layers on top and it suddenly became stable. After this, I just had to work out how to place subsequent middle layers and finally, after several hours of attempts, I got them all to engage with a click. 

Hooray!

I'm not taking that apart again!

Mrs S was actually impressed when I showed her that it was finally assembled and threatened for a moment to take it apart for me. I snatched it away! I now think I could do it again but not for a while!

My other tray of shame has been removed from the living room! The weight of it has marked the carpet and I am told in no uncertain terms that I must redistribute them so that there is less weight on the tray. Some of these puzzles have been there for several years, unsolved but with a vague hope that I might one day mange them:

Marks on the carpet? Whack! Ouch!

Some fabulous and difficult puzzles here

In particular the Popplock T13 remains unsolved as well as Brian Young's Ages sequential discovery burr (not even found the first hidden move! Sigh! I must try harder!