Saturday 13 April 2013

Burrs Galore!

Due to work and other personal commitments, I have not played with or reviewed any puzzles for a while. But during the last several weeks, a number of new wooden burr puzzles arrived, the latest batch from Jakub and Jaroslav Dvorak of Pelikan and Eric Fuller's Cubicdissection.


Clockwise from top left: Unassembled Vectes/Ghidorah (Yavuz Demirhan/Alfons Eyckmans),
Triaxe (Stephane Chomine), Estergon 2 (Yavuz Demirhan),
Columnata 2P3C (Yavuz Demirhan), Cockpit (Osanori Yamamoto),
Ice Pillar (Osanori Yamamoto), unassembled Four Cross Twelve (Guy Brette),
Derek's Half Dozen (Derek Bosch), Centre: unassembled 2-In-1 (Oskar Van Deventer)
Now what was I thinking when I ordered so many puzzles, I am now wondering to myself. Well, for one, I was attracted by some of the very colourful woods used, for example, Eric Fuller's 2-In-1 which uses 12 species of exotic hardwoods. Another reason being I wanted to have a bit more hands-on play with burrs, since I don't own many of them (and absolutely lousy with burrs!)....hmm, but now I am not so sure after looking at this complicated stash.

Virtually all of these are "super expert" level and "many-many-moves-before-the-first piece-can-be-removed" type burrs and interlocking puzzles. I am not even sure which one of these wooden beauties to start with. I still have a backlog of other puzzles which I have yet to touch beyond their unwrapping. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to comment.

I think I have bitten off a lot lot more than I can chew. But knowing myself, I would not unduly labour and lose sleep over a puzzle beyond a certain amount of time. I will still enjoy the exploration process of trying to it take apart and re-assembly even if I can't solve the damn thing. So we'll see how it goes with this lot of ten in the weeks, months (or years) to come.

2 comments:

  1. Ah Jerry! You're just like me! It's called hoarding for a rainy day.

    Just wait, if you think that disassembly is tough then wait til you've tried to assemble from scratch with no instructions! Much much harder.

    If I was you I'd start with collumnata, Estergon, Ice pillar and cockpit. Then do Derek's half dozen and Triaxe. After that any of the disassembled ones are still going to be unbelievably hard!

    Good luck!

    Kevin
    Puzzlemad

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  2. Ok, will follow your advice, Kevin....Columnata it will be!

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