I Think I Cheated...

Did I?

Rippl by DDK

I had hoped to be able to review a different type of puzzle for you today but despite weeks and weeks of trying, I have still not managed to finish the Free Me 9 puzzle from Joe Turner. I had been stuck on the second coin up until early in the week when a good puzzle friend and I started a combined attempt at solving it. Dominic gave me a little teeny hint and I suddenly found what I needed to free the second coin and now the two of us are stuck on the third - we are both noticing the same things, trying the same things and despite two of us doing the same thing over and over and over again, nothing seems to be changing for us...sigh!

In desperation and in the many many moments when I put down the Free me in disgust, I started playing with the Rippl puzzle from Aaron and managed to get very confused very quickly. The rings are threaded such that they straddle two "lanes" of the spirals and the shuttle is through all 8 of them. I thought that this would be a simple N-ary puzzle and with "only" 8 rings should not be too arduous. After all, it's ONLY a level 9 puzzle which must make it relatively simple?

Oh boy! I got a shock! Yet again! I explored this over the last week or so every time I put down the Free me puzzle. Mrs S was most displeased with me because this one really jingles a lot.

The shuttle comes off the first ring and the second very easily but then the third ring is completely blocked. I figured it was N-ary and went back to the first ring and replaced it hoping to get access where I needed it. Nope! That didn't work. I am sure that you noticed that the shuttle can be threaded through the rings both forward and reversed and after an embarrassingly long time, I also noticed that and after trying it with both the first and second rings, I found the one that worked. I had my access to the third ring and the shuttle was off of that one. 

And here I remained for over a week! I tried every combination of forward and back with the shuttle, through the rings forwards, through them in reverse and every single time I was blocked from releasing the shuttle from the fourth ring. What on earth was going on? I just could not get any further! What sort of puzzle blogger am I? A bloody useless one, I think - I should be ashamed of myself! There was a significant chance that there would be no blog post for you today! I have only ever missed one due to illness or death and really didn't want to do it again with no adequate excuse. Is being rubbish at puzzles an excuse?

Finally after 5 or 6 days I found a move. It had the desired effect of getting me access to the next ring but I wasn't happy with it. I kept putting the puzzle back to the beginning because that move I found did not seem right. It required me to slightly flex the spiral to allow the shuttle to be pulled through, I don't think any of DDK or Aaron's puzzles have ever needed even that tiny amount of force. So I kept returning to the beginning and trying afresh. Finally, this morning I bit the bullet and continued with that move and it opened up a whole new section of the puzzle which got very interesting very quickly. It also got really quite confusing but I was determined and carried on. Finally, just minutes before starting this post, I had a solved puzzle:

I have taken it apart but...
have I actually solved it?

Once I had taken my picture, I felt that I had better put it back together and check with Aaron whether I had cheated (I am pretty sure that I did on that one step). 

Erm...putting it back together was a whole extra challenge! I had, as usual, not really paid enough attention to how it came out and then got mightily confused when it would not go back in and when I did get it started on the return journey, I found that I could not seem to get the second ring on the shuttle. Wow! Despite being "only" a level 9, this was a really really tough challenge. Eventually I got to the mid point and tried the final moves to return to the start. Unfortunately one of the rings had unwound itself and was only held on one of the arms of the spiral and I hadn't noticed it. Another 30 minutes of swearing at it when I couldn't get it back to the start and then another 30 minutes swearing at my own stupidity when I noticed the problem. Finally it is back at the beginning and I am hoping to find out whether I had done something wrong at that crucial early step.

Yet again, an absolutely amazing and incredibly difficult puzzle from Aaron and DDK. It shows that disentanglement puzzles with wire only really can be incredibly tough and confusing - it has N-ary elements to it but only a couple of parts are - the challenge is navigating between them. Great value and a hugely bamboozling challenge. My head hurts now and I think I need to lie down for a while.