Can an Idiot Solve...?

 I haven't been buying many expensive puzzles this year. I finally got a 3D printer a few months ago and have been scratching the itch with TICs and burrs and such.. My money has instead been going towards a dream, probably-once-in-this-lifetime holiday to New Zealand that is now only 94 sleeps away (yes, I'm definitely counting). So what did my beloved Karakuri Creation Group do when I was trying not to spend money? They go and release a puzzle based on the national emblem of New Zealand, the Kiwi. This hobby will ALWAYS find a way to drain your accounts, always. The chances of seeing a real one when I'm there are probably slim, they're nocturnal and like to hide in undergrowth, but this walnut one from Yoh Kakuda is a solid alternative. What they lack in flight, they make up in chonky, huggable, fuzzy-potato-ness.  Can an idiot solve Kiwi? Yes, being a birdbrain would help actually. Get it? Birdbrain? 'cause it's a bird, and there's no brain here? Yeah, ok...

 Innovation is one of the most exciting things there is, right? Something new, something we haven't seen before, keeps hobbies and life in general fresh and alive. It doesn't need to be a big innovation, just some new little twist or a tweak can open up new areas for discovery. What happens, for instance, if you turn one of your TIC pieces cylindrical?  Alan Lunsford wondered that, and then he found out, and then he gave the answer to us. What happens? Good things.  He chucked out these designs onto his Printables pagr like they were throwaways, frivolous trifles undeserving of fanfare, but I think they're worth a little hype. Nothing wrong with a little hype once in a while.  Can an idiot solve Cobra & Hydra?  Yes, and yes I'm a little under the weather this week so my usually limited brain power is dimished even further, but I had great fun with these. Neither are profoundly difficult, I think combined they took me about 40mins, but I don't like difficult ...

 It has recently come to my attention that my wife thinks she is the titular idiot of this blog. She doesn't read it because she's a big poopy-head, (except if she ever does, then she's a beautiful, delightful princess)  Occasionally, I will hand her a puzzle just to show it off. Usually it's new, usually it's a Karakuri because they're the only one's she thinks are pretty. Sometimes it's something I designed, usually she breaks it. Apparently, she's got it into her head that this is me testing whether or not 'an idiot' can solve the puzzle. This is wrong.  Now, it's plainly and obviously true that my darling wife is, in fact, an idiot. She married me. Other than that sizeable misstep however, she's usually pretty smart. She was smart enough to be a straight-A student. Smart enough for a Big Important Career and then she was smart enough to walk away from it and get a job hugging dogs all day. Smart enough to realise what's import...

 IPP is a wondrous place. A mysterious land flowing with milk and honey puzzles. An enigmatic Xanadu where puzzlers frolic in bucolic glades, exotic wood grows with only the finest grain patterns, animated birds deliver your own personal unicorn along with breakfast in bed and solution sheets implanted directly into your brain so that you can feel smart and not like a filthy, filthy cheater. All the people there are 10-20% smarter, cooler and, yes, sexier than regular people. And the walls are decorated with the heads of scalpers on spikes At least that's what I imagine, I've never been.  I am learning though, that the next best thing is to go to the next MPP after IPP, because loads of people will chuck free exchange puzzles at you Can an idiot solve these IPP exchange puzzles?  PIL Box - designed and exchanged by Richard Williams - YES One sneaky little move, but even a half-brain can figure it out eventually.  Boarin' Burr - D&E by Steve Nicholls - YES At its ...

 One of the things I wanted to do when I started this blog was to occasionally review bad puzzles. Most bloggers understandably, for very good reasons, concentrate on puzzles they enjoy and want other people to enjoy too. There are very few resources to warn people away from things that just suck. And there are plenty of puzzles out there that suck, I should know, I made some of them. Even accounting for personal taste, whatever objective criteria we use to define what makes a good puzzle, there are some that fall short and still, somehow, get released into world for an unsuspecting idiot to buy. There are some with poor build quality, some with unforeseen shortcuts, some that can be bricked through no fault of the solver. Worst of all, there are some that are just dull, unoriginal and feel like a slog to solve.  Which brings me to Kuchenstuck...  I LOVE THIS PUZZLE!  Ok, fine, I'll talk about a bad puzzle next time. Maybe.  If I feel like it.  You can't ma...

 Oh God. Oh God, there's people here. I don't solve puzzles around people, I solve puzzles on my own. But here they are, with their eyes and their mouths and their looking and their talking. They're expecting me to talk as well, they think I have a brain. Some of them are wearing corduroy. Some of them smell like Mr Kipling's Fondant Fancies.  There's Allard, the grand Poobah with his massive collection like a generous Smaug. 'Sure you can borrow the Arkenstone, just reset it and put it back where you found it.' There's Dan, with whom I spend a certain amount of time plotting things. There's Amy, who has a habit of quietly singing children's songs when she's concentrating.  There's Tamsin, who struggles with hedgehogs.  There's the monkeys Ali & Steve, who gift me a teeny tiny pile of brass and a pig roll.  There's usually Kyle, who trusted me with the prototype of his first puzzle and is also, therefore, an idiot. I don't...

 First post in almost three months, must do better. I don't buy many SDs, which is why this puzzle (designed & made by whatshisname) was such an excellent gift to receive from MPD's Secret Santa (which is brilliant, I'm in my fourth year of it now) . I really am very grateful, even if I now go into details of why I don't like it overly much. I'm very appreciative of the chance to discover why I don't like it, and it has helped clarify some of my issues with SDs which I shall attempt to put down here in no doubt a rambling and barely-coherent manner. I like puzzles to be a neat, elegant, self-contained challenge. I dislike puzzles that split into a hundred pieces and a thousand tools. My most disliked tool to find in a puzzle is a hex key or a screwdriver. If you find one of them, you pretty much know what else you're going to find soon after  I'm going to say perhaps the most controversial thing I've said here - I did not care for Angel Box. Yes,...

 End of an era.  I am very thankful that I never set out to post once a week here. I honestly don't know how those other guys keep churning out quality content. It's been a month since my last post.  The discord group have a rule (quite rightly) to refrain from any spoilers regarding the Karakuri Christmas presents until after Christmas itself. Some people like to wait and open them on Christmas day, I rip open the box like a maniac the first chance I get. So I had the idea back in early December to write a 'spoiler-free' review but just treat it as a joke. It would've been full of things like -  Kawashima's - ▇▇▇▇ it was so▇▇▇▇▇▇windy ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ saw a ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ chicken ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ lay the same ▇▇▇▇▇▇ egg twice ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ But then the Epstein files thing happened and suddenly there were redacted jokes all over the internet, and then I got the flu and then it was Christmas and then it was 2nd Christmas and then it was hogmanay and then I was so. Very. Very. Ti...

 Last time I wrote about my first puzzle (not really but sort of) so I figured I would follow up with my most recent. These days, most of what I buy is either Hanayama or Karakuri, with the odd Pelikan or Wood Wonder (and hopefully soon Ars Aenigma) scattered in for variety. I almost miss the early days of buying anything and everything indiscriminately, but now I know what I like and I generally stick to it. I leave the high-end metal SD chasing to others, and the small-run, list-based releases of Stickman & the like will always be out of my reach, I think. I like the bits-of-paper-in-a-hat, equal-opportunity approach of the Karakuri lotteries. I'm not really one to chase unicorns either. The rarity and value of older pieces only leads to disappointment (that said, everyone that knows me knows I desperately want a Karakuri Rose, I solve Allard's copy every time I'm down there,ut there are many, many things I would desperately want if I allowed myself to, the Ferris Whe...

 Gateway drugs.  This is the one that started it all for me.  I had bought puzzles before, a traditional Japanese box back in two-thousand-and-something, a couple of Constantins from an ace wee toy shop in Glasgow, but none of them had led me into Narnia. It was stumbling across this and ordering it online that made the advertising algorithms kick into gear. Suddenly I was seeing videos by Mr. Puzzle and Chris Ramsey, which led me to blogs more established and far better than this one. I drooled over the gallery pages of Pelikan, Wood Wonders and Cubicdissection. Eventually, I found some spare cash behind the proverbial sofa-cushions (this was mid 2020, the early days of the pandemic, and my industry was completely shut down) and put in my first CD order (for Pin Block Case).  I'll never forget the email Eric Fuller sent along with my order confirmation. Ordinarily, I would never dream of replying to such an email, but there was something so personable, warm and invi...

 Oooooh, ooooh that's a nice move. ...  Smoooooth.  ...  Why do I feel like playing some Barry White? ... Mmmmmmm, that's a lovely move too ...  Maybe I should light some candles ...  Can I take a puzzle in the bath, is that weird? ... It's sliding all slippery like ...  That's a new configuration, very pleasing.  ...  Anyway. It's late, I'm going to bed,  ...  aaaaand I'm taking this puzzle with me.  ...  Fondling under the covers ...  Ooh, that's nice ...  I love you, Radix Can an idiot solve Radix?  How the hell should I know?  I haven't solved it yet, it's too much fun. The moves are just so satisfying to perform that I don't want to solve it prematurely. I want to savour this and make it last as long as possible. 

There is a purity to interlocking puzzles. Just a few wooden blocks, glued together in the right way, can can produce confusion greater than the sum of its parts.   Unlike more complex SDs, boxes & locks, there is no trickery, no fakery, no blind manipulations, no guess-what-the-designer-was-thinking, no I-can't-tell-if-that's-solved-or-not. There is no amiguity and there is nowhere to hide.  There are, however, flippin' loads   of them out there. It takes something very, very special to rise above the crowd but, when one does, they can be counted among my favourite puzzles. Daedalus, Kuchenstuck, Push Button, the best of the many, many TICs by Crowell, Sharma and more. They are all highly praised but, for some reason, Dinlas doesn't receive the same amount of reverence.  Designed by Terry Smart (who, incidentally, lives just over the river from me, one of very few Scottish puzzlers that I've met), there are only 50 of these Cubicdissection builds out in the...

 Naming a puzzle something so on-the-nose as Enigma is a bit like Ferrari naming a car 'LaFerrari', or a parent naming their child 'Parent's Name Jr', or naming the sequel to the greatest movie ever made 'John Wick 2'. You just have to damn well hope that it lives up to the name.  Good thing, then, that it's entirely deserved in this case. This is a genre-defining puzzle, an easily-accessible masterpiece that all of you should own It's been around longer than I have (which is saying something). I will never understand how ye olde-timey folks designed things like this without computer assistance. They were most definitely not idiots. Two of the shapes are delicate, sinuous spirals, while the third is a lumpy blob, shaped the only way it possibly can be for the moves to work. The whole thing is a Giger-ish blend of devilish precision and elegant harmony Can an idiot solve Enigma?  Surprisingly, yes.  Weren't expecting that, were you? At any given p...

So. Many. Holes.  Holes can be wonderful in puzzles. You can stick tools, fingers or no-don't-do-that   in them, you can catch tantalising glimpses of whatever's inside, they almost always signify something, even if that something is unknown. It's hard to think of an SD puzzle that doesn't use some kind of hole somewhere in its solve.  The sheer amount of holes in this lego-built box from Josiah1221 (which may or may not be his full legal name) is, at first, intimidating. They can't all do something, can they? With so may options, so many possibilities, the obvious starting point is to try all of them and then be annoyed when that doesn't work.  Can an idiot solve Holey Box?  Probably, yeah.  There's a particular move early on that had me stumped for a while, and I did solve it with my brain, but it could conceivably be overcome by some lucky or exhaustive poking. It doesn't mean much to say that this is the best Lego puzzle I've ever done, as I'...

 Kleeshay is the prolific Dee Dixon's (AKA Dedwood Crafts) newest puzzle box. Unusually, for this box he sold far more 'Scratch & Dent' versions then regular, pristine-perfection ones. Dee is one heck of a woodworker so I can only assume there's something about the black walnut or the lacewood that unavoidably leads to more scratches and dents. My own copy does have a couple of noticeable chips and dings, but nothing worth caring about. Can an idiot solve Kleeshay Box?  Possibly, if you're lucky  The first step is a doozy, which is going to need equal parts thinking, exploration and luck. There is a lot of noise coming from inside, but not much of it is very helpful. This idiot had to take a hint and it turned out that I had tried the right thing, just hadn't quite executed it correctly. Once I knew exactly what I had to do, it still took a couple of tries to get it right.  Once that first step is out the way, it's a clear run to the finish line, or the ...

 Every once in a while, nice people send me stuff. There are quite a lot of nice people in the puzzling world. I don't quite know why, but it's very rare to meet a not-nice puzzler. The generosity sometimes gets intimidating, I'm heavily in puzzle-debt to several people with no easy way to repay it (maybe because I'm just not that nice)  Tyler Hudson is one of the nice ones, and he also has a knack for design. His puzzles generally have a beautiful appearance coupled with elegant, simple (but not easy) solutions. I've been a fan ever since Pelikan released Kuchenstuck, with all its slidey, cakey goodness. Enlaced was a wonderful brain-melter that took me aaaages to solve. I missed out on Commotion and Sierpinski's Burr due to financial impairment, but hope to add both to the collection one day.  We've exchanged gifts a couple of times in recent years and this particular puzzle arrived alongside another that must be kept hush-hush for now (but it's excell...

 Just look at that face.  Anyone who knows me knows I love my Karakuri. Sure, maybe they're not the hardest puzzles around, but it's always important to remember that I'm an idiot. I like an easy win once in a while and, again, just look at that face. How could you not love that face?  He is extremely yellow. I believe the wood used is Japanese Torreya, which is... yellow, I guess. It was made by Yasuaki Kikuchi, who can be a bit hit & miss in my (often wrong) opinion. I adore his last couple of Christmas presents but Otter and Shrine were a little iffy.  Can an idiot solve Yellow Box Fish?  Yes In fact, it might actually be easier for idiots than for smart people. I solved it by messing around, I didn't expect what I was doing to open the compartment, I just thought it would be fun to do, and it was.

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