Notes from Puzzle Palace

Saturday, January 5, 2013

On the 12th day of Christmas

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
12 other puzzlers
David Litwin, Bram Cohen, Eitan Cher, Mr. Yao, Jason Smith, Steve Winter, Vesa Timonen, Peter Wiltshire, Mike Toulouzas, Ayi Li, Wil Strijbos, and Stuart Coffin.

11 Oskar Van Ds
10 Chinnimoto's
9 Robert Stegmann's
8 Jerry Slocum's
7 Eric Fuller's
6 Tony Fisher's
5 Richard Hess'
4 Mr. Fok's
3 Da Yan's
2 Brian Young's
And Stickman in a pine tree

It's day 12 and this little story has come to and end.  I thought the best way to do that would be with 12 final puzzlers!  Links and photos are provided where available.  Go look, go buy, go make sure the designers keep designing and the puzzlers keep puzzling!

Dave Litwin, Geert Hellings
David Litwin is a long time friend.  He's designed and built my collection of elemental puzzles along with a few others over the years.

Bram Cohen, Adam Cowen, Bob Hearn
Bram Cohen in addition to being a computer wiz has had a number of puzzles made by Hanayama as well as being the inspiration for many of Oskar's designs.

Eitan Cher is a young up and coming puzzle designer.  He's currently doing post-graduate work in Chicago but still finds the time to put out a puzzle or two.

Mr. Yao is the man behind Witeden.  He's designed a number of his own puzzles and that number keeps growing.  In the past few months he's put out over 10 new puzzles.

Jason Smith
Jason Smith first brought the helicopter cube to the market.  recently he has been designing a series of deep cut puzzles.

Steve Winter is new to the puzzle building scene.  He specializes in mazes, but has recently designed  few twisty puzzles with a maze built in.

Vesa Timonen has been designing puzzles for a while now that can be found in shops all over the world. He works in all media.

Peter Wiltshire is another relatively newcomer to the world of puzzling.  His Ferris box won the 2012 Jury Prize at IPP.
Peter Wiltshire

Mike Toulouzas builds beauties in wood.  His Judges Gavel won the first prize at IPP in 2011.

Ayi Li is a designer of a number of new twisty puzzles. I love Ayi because like me, he calls his puzzles TOYS!

Wil Strijbos is the dealer of choice for the puzzle world.  One and all go to him for their puzzling fix.
Wil and Tom

And finally...Stuart Coffin. He has got to be the builder of puzzles with the most designs to his name.  As he numbers each design, it is fairly easy to keep track of what he's made.  At IPP this year I picked up number 258 "Octet in F".  That sure is a lot of puzzles!

(AND 12 bloggers blogging (Gabriel, Allard, Kevin, Jerry, Neil, Brian, Oli, Moises, Gunnar, Scott, Tom, and Rox of course!))


Neil Hutchinson and Allard Walker
For a real enjoyable trip through puzzledom, click on the bloggers names above. Some of them you might have seen before  others may be new to you, all are enjoyable reads. This was my originally intended ending, but as I went through all the puzzle designers in the initial write-up of this blog back in December, I realized that not all the bloggers are designers   For this reason, I changed it to the above 12th day, but since we all enjoy reading about puzzles and people, I thought I'd leave it in here for you to get a small bit of extra Christmas cheer!

designer and blogger Scott Elliot
Merry Christmas all!  I hope you enjoyed my little poem this year. I only wish there were more than 12 days of Christmas as I have many many more than 12 puzzlers I'd like to introduce you to.  To do that and learn more, I guess you'll just have to continue reading my ramblings.  The more I do these, the harder they get.  It is becoming more and more difficult to come up with ideas....But next year....well, I'm already thinking ahead now aren't I?


And just for you Mr. Stickman:


On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
12 puzzlers puzzling AND bloggers blogging
11 Oskar inventing
10 Chinny spinning
9 Robert Webbing
8 Jerry Collecting
7 Eric building
6 Tony cutting
5 Richard Hess'
4 Mr. Fok's
3 Da Yan's
2 Brian Young's
And Stickman in a pine tree

(Are there enough verbs in there for you now? I left them out intentionally because I wanted to name names and tell tales!)








4 comments:

  1. Fame at last! No fortune - I spent it on puzzles!

    Kevin
    Puzzlemad

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  2. Woo hoo! I made the blog as well, thanks Roxanne : )

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  3. How could I leave you out Peter? I wouldn't dream of it.

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  4. Thanks Rox! I'm honoured to have been mentioned among such an august group of puzzle-people! :)

    Wishing you a wonderfully puzzling 2013!

    allard

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