Smacking Moles Is Fun But...

After A While I Had To Use Some Pliers!

Smack-N Moles by Stickman

In 2023, Chinny collaborated with Robert Yarger to make a fabulous exchange puzzle, the "Smack-N Moles" puzzle box. Chinny gave it away to about 100 people in IPP40 at which I was not present. Luckily for a whole bunch of us who couldn't make it, there were more available direct from Stickman's website and I eagerly jumped at the chance to buy. My copy arrived in October of 2023 and has been in my second (or maybe third or fourth 😱) pile of puzzles to be solved. This time, my pile in the conservatory at the back of the house. I tend to sit there in the mornings at weekends and when off work and play with puzzles in the south-facing warmth. Sometimes I fall asleep, sometimes I play...I seldom seem to solve anything! The Smack-N Moles has been in that pile, played with weekly for about 18 months! I was beginning to get desperate. I felt a little bad for my failure but, in my defence, remember that I really seldom do puzzle boxes and don't really have a repertoire of the types of moves that they often need. Also in my defence, I note that Allard received his at the IPP in August and the write up was only published in December. Now, Allard is a huge Stickman aficionado with one of the few complete collections in the world and I am absolutely certain that despite receiving a lot of puzzles at the exchange, he will have made a beeline straight for this one and if it took him a few months then I can feel OK about taking 18 months!

This is a nice diminutive little box at 3.5x3x2.5" in size and my copy is made from Walnut. The aim is to open the box and release the moles. These cute little critters are engraved on the top of some Maple dowels that appear to be locking the sliding lid. Poking at a mole makes one or more of the others pop up when that one sinks down. You are given a tethered hammer to Smack/whack the moles but I doubt very many people are going to solve it by using the hammer that way. The hammer is tied onto the box by a loop of wire that is the perfect length to prevent the hammer being removed. Initially all you can do is poke at the moles and see whether there is a sequence of presses that will allow all the moles to be sunk below the surface of the lid.

I am slightly ashamed to say that I pushed and poked and even grabbed and pulled at the various moles for quite a long time trying to work out the sequence to release the lid. When I say a long time, I mean months! BLUSH! Remember that I am not terribly bright - it says so all over this website, so it must be true. At some point, I can't remember when, I managed to find a tool to be used but absolutely nowhere to use it so I carried on poking at moles and achieving nothing. I grew desperate - it's really quite frustrating to have a tool and nowhere to put it! I ended up shaking the box gently which also did nothing until I shook it in the right direction.Suddenly something happened and I was able to notice another "feature". After playing with said "feature" for a few minutes, I managed to manipulate it to get me a hole. At last! I had somewhere to put my tool. Now, now, keep your minds out of the gutter (especially you, Steve). I stuck my tool in the hole and wiggled it about and even rotated it for a while. Nothing happened, but it was very satisfying. Eventually, sticking your tool in a hole and swivelling it starts to get boring when there is no response - maybe it is my technique?

Here I stayed for over a year! On almost a weekly basis for a very long time I played with my tool to no good effect. I was getting to the point of maybe asking Shane for a clue when I had one of those rare thoughts© - maybe I should try this thing...   Nope, that didn't work and I stopped trying for another few months. 

Last week after continuing to think© I reached the conclusion that I had tried everything possible and something was stuck. I decided it was time for the big guns. Well actually a medium pair of pliers. Yes, I know, no external tools allowed but I had come to the conclusion that the next part of the mechanism was stuck solid on my copy and I had nothing much to lose. Needless to say, When you use brute force and pliers, things tend to loosen. Once my heart rate had settled a little, I found that I had a new tool and also a new set of things to try. Exploring with this tool revealed something very interesting and a possible way to make the two tools I now had interact with each other.

After a few moves something interesting was happening to all the moles and before long I had my wonderful long-awaited Aha! moment! Such a relief.

Moles are free and the box is open

I was now free to look at the mechanism properly and it is really quite clever. It really isms terribly difficult but the movement of the moles is designed to make you think all the wrong things and lead you in the wrong direction. 

The reassembly is significantly fiddly but knowing how it works means that a bit of perseverance is required. I then had a look at the piece that needed pliers and realised that some lacquer had gotten onto it and effectively fused it in place. There was absolutely no way that I was ever going to shift that without using my tool. This means that you can stop berating me! 

I can finally put another puzzle away and this will join my small, but well-loved, Stickman collection. I have missed out on the subsequent releases but I am ever-hopeful that Robert will let me buy another one sometime. 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

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A little underwhelming?

Finally, with a little encouragement (but no real clues from Goetz) I can finally say that I have completed the Ages sequential discovery burr having found the compartment that contains the piece of Lightning Ridge opal. The opening of that compartment requires construction of a very clever tool and using it to manipulate the cover in a counter-intuitive way. It is classic Brian! Thank you my friend. I can finally put it away after so many years!

In the right light the pearlescent opal colours do shine

OMG! This One Took Me Ages...

And I've Still Not Finished It!

Ages by Brian Young

This blog post is a mark of shame or a mark of how bad I am at puzzling - you decide which. 

The Ages sequential discovery burr was released way back in October 2019 as a series of 200. At the time it was a relatively expensive puzzle but completely sold out within a month. Of course, I was one of the poor addicts who helped relieve Brian of his stock with mine arriving at the beginning of November. The instructions were simple enough:

"The ultimate goal is to find the piece of Australiana inside the puzzle.
At the end of the solve you will find a small compartment that holds a piece of Lightning Ridge opal. This may not be the hardest puzzle in the world but if you think about the Coming of Age MkII combined with the SMS Box with fewer pieces and fewer tools. You have it!

The puzzle has trick locks, tools, elements of sequential discovery but essentially it’s a very hard burr puzzle. If you’re looking for a walk in the park don’t buy this one.

Brian has included ideas in this puzzle that he’s never seen in a puzzle before. Solving a new puzzle often draws on previous puzzle-solving experiences so having lots of puzzles in your collection can be a big help. But the inclusion of ideas not seen before instantly bumps up the difficulty a lot."

So, it is a burr - just my thing. It's a sequential discovery puzzle - just my thing. It is a tough one - erm, that might be a problem as I am not terribly bright or, for that matter, good at tough puzzles.😱 But I will give it a go and hopefully it won't take too long. Except here we are nearly 6 years later and I still haven't quite finished it. In fact I only managed to make any progress at all in the last 2 weeks.

Why did he call it the Ages burr? Was it because he knew how long it would take me? I suspect that is not it because he surely wouldn't name a puzzle after my inadequacy. Plus, of course, other puzzlers have been successful in a much shorter time than me (I know that Ali solved it within just a few days). The real reason for the name was a quirk of the way Burrtools works. When Brian first plugged some pieces into BurrTools to check for solutions Andreas Röver’s wicked sense of humour was immediately obvious. Time left: ages

Burrtools tells all!

In fact, the full analysis of the selection of pieces has never been completed in BurrTools. Time left: unknown -> days -> years -> millennia -> ages Who knows how long it might take?  

This puzzle looks gorgeous made from Queensland Silky Oak, Western Australian Jarrah wood and including magnets and brass parts. It is a decent sized 11cm in each axis. I have kept it on my tray of shame for 5 whole years! 

This was the point a couple of months ago when Mrs S insisted I tidy up

Initially I played with this every evening when sitting down with Mrs S to watch TV. It was daily for a month or two and then every few days and then less and less often. After a year or so, I would religiously pick it up every month and persistently get nowhere at all.

Only two pieces can move

There were only two moves possible! One of them would pull a long way out but no further and another would move by a single voxel. Trying to move the mobile piece different amounts in the hope that there would be an opening for other pieces proved fruitless. Nothing else sprang to mind - I was stuck on two moves for a long time (yes 5 years!)

A rotational move?

Spot the pin

Quite early on, I found a rotational move. Now you might think that was a stupid thing to try but I was desperate and the information page admitted that BT would be unable to completely solve the puzzle due to the presence of a rotation. The rotation pictured above looked quite nice and it seemed to be caused by the presence of a metal pin bridging from one stick into the cap on the adjacent one. No matter how hard I tried (without undue force) I could not get the rotation to go any further and no additional moves were freed up by it. I asked Sue if I was going about it the correct way and received a definitely not reply. Sigh! Barking up the wrong tree again. Time to put it back on the tray and go back to my monthly attempts.

There was always something that bugged me about the puzzle - one of the pieces was adorned by a little face which poked its tongue out at me whenever I did my first move:

Being rude or telling me something?

For 5 years I stared at this face and pushed and pulled at every piece of this damned burr and got absolutely nowhere......until a couple of weeks ago.

It was my monthly attempt at a miscreant puzzle and I had a little bwain-wave! I only have a little bwain so can only generate small waves with it. I tried something that I had not tried before in the entire 5 years and suddenly an Aha! moment! After that amount of time that is worth a:

AHA!

Not only had I gotten a step further but I had found something useful. Not wishing to lose my thought© processes, I tried a number of newly possible things and some very unusual moves were possible. The burr started to move more and more and I needed to be careful to keep track. One thing that became apparent quickly was that what I thought was a single vocal was much bigger than that. The grid that it was built on was significantly more complex than I had expected and a good few moves were very hard to keep track of.

Over about 3 days, I got further and further with my to and fro approach allowing me to always return to the beginning. I progressed a little at a time and suddenly a very large movement was open to me that would lead to the removal of the first piece - Hooray! except I found myself unable to undo one of the moves that got to that point. I must have made a complex multi-piece move at some point and could not recall what it was and thus, could not return. Cue a set of panicky attempts which got nowhere until suddenly I found myself able to backtrack again. I had no clue what I had done but with some relief I reset the puzzle completely. I put it down for a day.

The following day, I tried again and got so far before being halted. I couldn't find that crucial move that allowed me to progress the previous evening. I spent a further 2 days at that point before I miraculously passed it without knowing how. There is quite a lot of too and fro with key pieces during the solve - it is not quite N-ary but there does seem to be an N-ary aspect to part of it. Even now when I take the burr apart, I struggle to get past the point at which the key move happens. I sort of move pieces around and then for no good reason, I can progress in whatever direction I am aiming for. Sigh - I am rubbish at burrs!

Having removed the first piece, I was a little stuck. The remaining burr sticks are quite stable and won't fall apart but there is a lot of rotational movement now in the puzzle. I fiddled with the burr for another hour before finding a lovely clever rotational move that would allow another piece to be removed. From here the sequential disassembly proceeded quite nicely and if it's held in the right orientation, it remains stable until fully apart:

A gorgeous 9 piece burr
(no spoilers here and putting the pieces into BT won't help you)

I then put it back together again and disassembled a few times to get used to the process. Every single time I get hung up on that critical move halfway through. I guess that several pieces must move simultaneously to let it happen and I manage it each time by accident after a struggle.
 
Does this mean that it is solved? Hell no! There is the matter of the compartment with the small piece of Lightening Ridge opal. I know where it is (I can hear it rattling about). I can see where the compartment is and what is closing it up. I know there is a strong magnet as part of the locking mechanism but nothing I can do will shift the locking mechanism. I've been trying for days but again there are only so many things I can think of to do - I might be another 5 years or even "Ages".

I think at some point I will need to ask Brian and Sue for a little help so that I can finally see the opal and then put the miscreant puzzle away on my MrPuzzle shelves. This would please Mrs S immensely! I did think that Brian would release the solution some time after the last one was sold but I have not seen it anywhere. A burrtools file for the linear component would be really helpful if it existed.

Despite there being 200 of these in circulation, I have only seen a few of these up for sale at auction and quite telling is the fact that a good few of them have been sold without having been solved. If you see one up for sale and are up for a challenge then go get it - it is seriously tough and seriously good. Thanks Brian and Sue for a fantastic and LONG challenge!

Pelikan Goes Minima(l)

Pelikan upcoming puzzles in April

It's always a great but scary day in the PuzzleMad HQ when a big blue box arrives from the Czech Republic! I am always delighted to see the delivery man (and he seems pleased to see me too) but Mrs S is much less happy about it. She knows that there will be a pile of puzzles lying around for a while to be solved and me making funny noises and pained faces as I struggle to solve them within a deadline. She always complains about the progressive buildup of toys but I think they look gorgeous and also they keep me out of mischief which should make her happy. Whack! Ouch!....or maybe not!

The delivery this time included:

Minima 1 to 4 from Frederic Boucher

Minima Smiley from Frederic Boucher in Acrylic as well as a re-release of the wood version

L'Escargot from Jorgos Anastasou

Farmacia by Dr Volker Latussek

Minima One to Four

The first four Minima puzzles

Now this is very exciting! I have previously written about the Minima series from Frederic Boucher. I do seem to have reviewed quite a lot of his puzzles over the last year or so - he is just so talented at creating designs that are simple looking but having a tremendous yet still accessible challenge. Here is another chance for you to get a copy of the whole set of 12 Minima puzzles over the next few releases. They were originally released by Tye Stahly and sold out completely more than once. Apparently these are quite difficult to manufacture and both Tye and Jakub have stated that they are really tough. 

Jakub and Jaroslav plan to create these in batches of 4 to be bought as a set or individually. This month will start with the first 4 which are definitely a great challenging introduction to the series. They have been created with a bunch of different woods which make them stunning on display. They are made with the following wood combinations:

Minima 1 - Elm and Wenge

Minima 2 - Walnut and Acacia

Minima 3 - Purpleheart and Ash

Minima 4 - Jatoba and Padauk

The aim is to pack all the pieces into the boxes with all holes covered when packed. Like most of Frederic's puzzles, some very interesting and hard to find rotations are required. They get progressively more difficult from Minima 1 to 4 and are made all the harder with the Pelikan versions because having a wooden box which you cannot see through means that you really have to plan your approach before starting to place the pieces inside. After the second piece is inserted it gets increasingly difficult to place others and you cannot see what is causing the blockage. Also the precision of the manufacture and the fact that the wooden box is less slidey than acrylic ones means that any rotations need to be very precisely placed or they will not work. 

I had to solve all four of them again from scratch as I had no recollection of the solutions from before (don't tell Mrs S that I only need about 10 puzzles to be solved over and over again!) They are such fun and this explains why I have a HUGE collection of these Minima puzzles of varying types and from various designers. Basically I will purchase any of them when released to add to my collection. I would say that these are ESSENTIAL purchases for anyone seriously into packing puzzles - they are stunningly beautiful and a fabulous challenge!

Minima Smiley

Acrylic version

Re-released wooden version

The Minima Smiley was first released in December of last year and along with the rest of the Boucher Minima's made it to my Top 10 puzzles of the year. It was so good I actually spent several paragraphs gushing about how it challenged me and scared me half to death as the magnets inside caused various things to clack together unexpectedly. This time the Pelikan team are re-releasing the original version in wood (Mahogany and Maple with a Yellowheart smiley ball) and also an identical one with a see-through acrylic box and Bubinga pieces. They both solve the same way but obviously one is solved blind by deduction and the other is entirely visible. The solution is fabulous and classic Boucher with a wonderful set of Aha! moments.

Which should you buy? The wooden one is the most puzzling but the see-through version is wonderful to watch as you manipulate the pieces. You obviously need both in your collection!

L'Escargot

L'Escargot by Jorgos Anastasou

This is the second puzzle for Jorgos Anastasou and is a wonderful animal shaped burr. We have a wonderful snail which is asymmetric  like the delicious escargot we can eat. This is different to Pelikan's earlier snail puzzle of their own design which is more of a sequential assembly/disassembly puzzle. 

Pelikan have made this with a wonderful smooth and tactile Walnut and Zebrano shell and an Ash body (there are some Wenge eyes too).

Obviously, the aim is to dismantle it and then reassemble it. Of course, the next part of the fun is creating your own Burrtools file for it as well. Maybe you can manage the reassembly before the BT file? The disassembly is a fun sequence of moving parts of the shell as well as the body around and gradually you can see an opening come into play which will allow the first piece to be removed. Even after removing the first piece it is still a challenge to remove the next and then the others are much simpler. The disassembly sequence is a perfect level 14.11.4.3 giving you some rather complex looking pieces:

Huge fun

I actually managed to keep the pieces in a reasonable orientation and position to be able to reassemble without resorting to a BT file but I doubt I could do it if I had scrambled the pieces. I am sure that all of you would easily manage to do it though.

Farmacia

Farmacia by Dr Volker Latussek

This is not even a complete disassembly

The Farmacia by Dr Latussek is absolutely gorgeous with a box made from Acacia and vibrant Padauk pieces to be placed inside.

It arrived with the pieces formed into a cube that slotted into the box but did not fit flush to the bottom. The aim is to remove the cube of pieces and reassemble it into the box so that they all sit flush with the top of the box.

 Only when I took the first few pieces out did I realise why it was standing proud - each of the packing pieces are L-shaped Triominoes. Each of these triominoes has a central cubie which is solid and attached at each end to two others. One end-cubie has a hole drilled into one of the faces and the other end-cubie on the other end has a protruding short dowel which fits inside the drilled holes (these are also at varying positions on the faces). There is also a single hole in the centre of the base of the box and a single dowel in the centre of one wall (pictured left).

This puzzle is not for the faint-hearted! Having taken the pieces out of the box for my photo, I couldn't actually recreate the cube shape to get them all back in again. So far I have been experimenting with the various ways that these can be assembled into shapes and how to build up bigger shapes. I suspect that this will be a huge logic puzzle very similar to the Logical Progression puzzle from the late Eric Fuller which took me over a year to solve. This will require some proper thought and planning to solve. So far I have not managed anything yet but I will keep at it. So should you, it is beautiful and a very tough challenge.

The MPP Forced Me To Look For A Loophole

Loophole Lock from Boaz Feldman

Yet another success caused by the recent MPP - I am on a roll! I am absolutely terrible at lock puzzles but I am attracted to them like Icarus to the sun! I guess that I have not been killed by a lock like Icarus was but when Mrs S noticed that a new lock migrated into the house on my return from the MPP, she was distinctly unimpressed and that dangerous violent gleam could be seen in her eyes.

I bought the Loophole lock (currently sold out direct from Boaz but still available from PuzzleMaster) way back in December 2023 at the same time as the simply amazing PicoLock (available here from Boaz and also from PuzzleMaster). Having had such fun and great success with the PicoLock, I expected to have similar success with the Loophole which was supposed to be considerably simpler (indeed, it is rated only a 9 in PuzzleMaster's 5-10 scale). But here I am over a year later and only just managing to write about it. In retrospect, I have to admit that it's not because it is incredibly tough, it's because I am awful at locks! I should be ashamed of myself really.

The MPP stimulated me to try again because someone had brought in the Ant Hunt which had been released just a few months ago and I had had similar complete lack of progress. 

I asked a few people at the MPP about the Loophole and whether they had found it particularly difficult. Yes, they all agreed that it was a lovely but not too difficult puzzle. Damn! I really needed to go back to it and try again. Mrs S had made me rationalise my pile 'o puzzles to be solved because the weight was marking the carpet and I needed to hunt for it in a secondary storage area. It arrives in a nice bag with instructions to "open the lock" - well duh!

One thing I did manage to do correctly was the obvious removal of the key and ring from the shackle by unscrewing the ring. 

Yes, I know that it is a cliché but you simply have to insert the key and try to open the lock. I don't know why we always do it, we know it won't work and sometimes it gets us into trouble by locking the key in place. At least this time I inserted the key and tried the inevitable and it wouldn't even turn a little bit. At least the key was removable afterwards. After that, it's time to explore. The first thing to notice is that right in the middle of the 'O' of Loophole there is a hole. All the way through - you can create a loop by passing the key ring through it:

Now that looks nice but doesn't help you one little bit!

The other thing to be seen is that there is a fairly decent hole in the side of the lock which allows you to see inside and reveals...nothing! I could see into the depths of the lock and even poke about with the open end of the keyring. That does nothing either. Hmm! Turning the lock shackle downward reveals a bulky pin or something that shifts back and forth to cover the hole. It looks completely innocuous and doesn't have anything that could be engaged with the keyring. Looking through the hole in the front shows that the pin is so big that it impinges a little bit on that hole - enough to prevent me putting the keyring through the hole again. 

A pin visible in the side hole

This was the point that I had gotten stumped a year ago and on and off for months afterwards.

Having started again this time, I had a little think© and sort of wondered to myself: "self, why has Boaz knurled that pin?" Time to investigate the pin and suddenly I found a new detail that had evaded me completely for months. It didn't really help me initially but something new is always good. I moved the pin about up and down and tried to see more of the details of it. Suddenly I found a second something and this sent me up a new pathway that got me nowhere. I tried to screw the keyring inside and needless to say, that was a fruitless attempt but I then had a wild thought! What if I???

Opened

AHA!

The thing that really helped me here was to be sitting in a quiet room with no TV, radio or chattering complaining wife in it. This allowed me to listen to what was going on inside and whilst it's pretty subtle, there is a distinct extra unexpected sound that helped me work out what was the next thing to try and it worked. I have to say that it is very elegant. The quality of the workmanship is incredible. It isn't the voyage that PicoLock was but it is stunning and fun. This is one to show colleagues - they may actually think it through given enough time.

Thanks Boaz - now I need to go back to Ant Hunt (not even found the first step) and Andrew Coles' Clutch Lock which I have made some progress but am now all "locked up" with. 😱