Amazing

Or not.  This is the height of testing boredom.  A pen maze!

I went in to work this morning fully intending to be good and do nothing but read between.  Yeah right. This is Rox we are talking about.  I can't read for 4 minutes then quit.  When my nose goes into a book it stays there so puzzling is a much better option for days like this.

Now I brought along a few twisties, but the pen on the desk fought my eye and that was that.  Ok ok so we've all seen these before, there's nothing new or exciting about them. You roll the two balls from one end to the other and maze solved.  Not much of a challenge there is there?  So I made one up in my little head and played a game with it.  

Solve the maze under the table while working without looking and without making any noise.  I gave myself 12 minutes to do it and although I've tried 9 times now, I simply can't do it.  Why? The noise rule for starters.  If I'm making ball rolling noise I'll be in big trouble.  The second problem? Well, look closely at the pen.  The ball on top is stuck.  See, all pen mazes are not created equally.  This one has a thicker sheath at one point and try try try, I get stuck at that point every time.  Go back to the first rule: no noise.  

Ok. So I've 6 more goes at this befor I leave here and along with my leaving, I must leave my new found toy.  I don't want to be a pen thief (again).  Wish me luck all!

Update: I found another pen exactly the case maze, but bigger sheath. I guess this does mean that bigger is better!

Escape from Alcatraz

I first saw this puzzle at IPP 34. Needless to say, I didn't solve it.  I find when in the puzzle competition room I'm not at all good at solving puzzles. I look around and see everyone is doing better than I am and suddenly loose all sense of puzzling.

When Wil sent out his October newsletter, I saw it was up for grabs and had to purchase one.  Let me tell you, this puzzle has given me a bang for my buck.  I've fiddled with it off and on since it came in, but have been unable to do anything with it.  Oh the first move is easy-well, the puzzle itself makes the first move.  After that it becomes quite tricky.  I tried solving it on a Saturday while working but between the holiday season sore head and the candidates interrupting me every 20 minutes, I got nowhere.  On Sunday I brought along a few easier puzzles to make myself feel less dumb (see post of 1 December) and as expected, solved them rather quickly. This brought me back to Escape from Alcatraz.

The object of the puzzle is to remove the one euro coin.  Easier said than done.  I fiddled with this one for around three hours in total before I got ticked off at myself and threw it across the room.  Like the metal ball version of Alcatraz, I did something but I knew not what.  When I picked it back up I managed to reset it so followed another hour or so of frustration.  

And then the light went on!

I was almost there. But still not quite.  Oh so close and then I had an inspiration.  After a bit of twisting and turning I discovered this!

  And It has just occurred to me that maybe the reason I was having so many problems solving this one is that I was holding it upside down the entire time?

She's back!!

Ive been remiss as of late.  Studies, and work, and travel have all managed to stop me from posting up about what I've been playing with.  But now I'm on pj days, reading for my degree and the travels have stopped til February so Ill make up for lost posts over the coming months I hope.

I start out today with a few metal puzzles I picked up in Beijing.  When I was there for the Gathering for Gardner I picked up a boatload of toys.  I'm only now getting around to opening them.  

These are remakes of old puzzles by Mimi toys.  They are heavy.  My poor back will attest to that.  Solving wise? Well, they are remakes of old puzzles and although it may be over 10 years since I've played with them I still remember how to do them.  

First up is a trick bolt. 

This one looks like it just unscrews.  The object of course is to remove the washer.  It looks pretty straight forward, but as with any puzzle, there is a trick to this.  I have another copy of this puzzle that I bought from puzzle master, and to be honest, this version is better.  Mostly because I have small hands without a lot of strength and my puzzlemaster version was stuck tight.  No real fault of the puzzle.

Next up, yet another bolt.  

This one is pretty cool because there are some grooves cut into the head of the bolt.  The first instinct is to twist the washer down into those grooves, and like any good puzzle, this is very much a red herring.  Of course that isn't the solution. What kind of puzzle would it be if that were all there is to it?  I can't tell you much without giving away the solution for it, so I'll just leave off saying it shouldn't take more than a minute to solve....

Final puzzle...

Is one I have hunted for years so I'm glad it has been remade.  This one is called jailbreak and the object is to remove that ball bearing. I'm disappointed.  The quality of this one isn't great.  When I opened the packaging, the puzzle was already solved.  That lead me to believe it was a dog puzzle.  Upon closer inspection I was able to easily see where the first move had to be.  As you can tell from the photo, the second step is easily recognizable as well.  The trick to this puzzle is simply lining up the bits.  Other than that, it's not much of a puzzle.  But I'm glad I was able to add it to my collection.  

It feels good to be back.  Later in the week I'll have more. See you then.