A few puzzling guests and a rather large addition to the Museum

 Pardon me for week's hiatus.  I had a rather important set of Scuba lessons to take.  You see, this is my birthday gift to George.  I had to drop everything and take advantage of calm seas while I could.

This week we've had two visitors.  First Chris came down last Sunday to make us a lovely spaghetti lunch.  He's still in Ft. Lauderdale so we were thrilled to see him again.  He was being a bit evasive about something and went up to the metal room. I was busy packing for our upcoming trip so I just let him wander the house and puzzle.  After a bit of time, I smelt something funny and went in search of the odor.  He was in the Mirror Room polishing brass!  What a guy!  He polished up a Charles O'Perry and did an amazing job of it. Sadly, after his lunch, he got called into work and had to leave early.  The photo doesn't really do the piece justice. 

Our next guest is Tanner again.  He came to help George assemble some of the 3D printers.  He was so helpful assembling the SLS printer that we invited him back.  Of course he had to do a bit of puzzling as well.  His real reason for coming though was to bring us an addition to the Museum. You see, he had a monolith he wanted to part with and we had a room that needed one.  So after 3 days of driving, it arrived in Boca Raton.  That thing is massive and heavy!  I started to play and managed to find the first couple of moves, but George shooed me away and told me to play later.  

This week has been very good to us.  I won a box of junk on Puzzleparadise and it came in this week.  What a great win!  I absolutely love it.  You can see a video of it here. A prototype, a new puzzle, and a symmetry puzzle.  How wonderful!

George very kindly mounted a Berrocal that I purchased. This one was made in 2000 and is covered in 925 silver.  It's only the second piece of art on the walls of Puzzle Palace.

As for the museum, we are still waiting for Tevin and Morgan to move in.  We have ordered the glass tops for all of the tables we assembled, but are still waiting on those as well.  I've ordered another 200 glass shelves to be delivered on the 21st.  This will hopefully be the last set.  The remainder of the shadow boxes have arrived and will be installed sometime in the not so distant future.  For now, I spend my time packing for our upcoming world cruise.  

Now, if anyone has a cista chest....

Days 12-18 of the Advent PuzzleTree

 George has said I've made him very happy this year.  I don't think he's ever had such a puzzling Christmas.  Thus far, he's only had 1 puzzle he didn't like. I hope I can keep this up.  This just makes it harder though for future years.  I'll have to up my game in the future.  

In case you haven't noticed a pattern here, I've been mostly gifting him burr puzzles.  These are his favorite.  I've not worked out yet if he likes to actually solve them, or if he likes to program them into burr tools more.  But what I do know is that he has been one happy man these past 18 days.

Day 12: Unbalanced 6 Board Burr by Juno. I believe he enjoyed this one. It was fun watching him take out the calipers to measure the difference in the size of the pieces. Of course he had it solved before dinner was on the table.

Day 13: 6-T by Dr. Volker Latussek caused much grief.  He started it before bed, managed it outside the box, put it into burr tools and discovered three solutions.  When I woke in the morning he showed me the finished puzzle. It bothered him being in pieces so he woke in the middle of the night and assembled it.  

Day 14: L-I-Vator. 2 rotations. Only three assemblies for this puzzle. Of course he entered it into burr tools. This one is nifty. It has a box with a lid that comes off. I guess you can put it together through the lid, Me? I'd just take it off and make it a packing puzzle. And yes, he enjoyed the programming more than the puzzling.

Day 15: 5th Avenue by Nob. Long ago George told me he would like to get all of the Nob puzzles. I've been hunting for them since. This year I found 5th Avenue in Japan for him. He sorted out the puzzle rather quickly, but then got stuck. Of course he went straight for Burr Tools. That didn't work. He had a great idea on how to program it, but made a small error in his programming. I was told he'd go back to it, but then he found the solution taped to the inside of the box. No Burr Tools solution exists yet.

Day 16: 3Qcube by Takeyuki Endou is an interesting puzzle. It is only 3 pieces inside a cage. How hard can it be? Two pieces are identical and then there is the third. Yes, he Burr Tooled it. No, it doesn't help. As it turns out, this one needed a few rotations to solve. He managed to put it back together and on the shelf in the wood room. He eagerly awaited day 17.

Day 17: Kepler by Felix Ure. This one was a replacement for my foolishness last week. Luckily the puzzle came in the mail the same day so I was able to put it in the box. I love it! It's such a cute little puzzle. George of course immediately pulled out the calipers and set to measuring. He then unscrewed (!) the bottom of the box to investigate. I won't give anything away here, but this is a really clever little puzzle. I highly recommend it.

Day 17 was also the day the driveway was started. We are more than pleased with the way it is turning out. I can't wait until it is finished.

Day 18: Loopy L Cube #3 by Juno is the last puzzle of the week.  His reaction was not as I expected.  I won't give it here to remove any negativity.  As always, he did enjoy putting it into burr tools.  It is now back together and in the upstairs wooden section.  

I'm not sure what the next 5 days  have in store for the advent tree, but I do hope he will enjoy them. 

Happy Holidays All.