Puzzles In The Sun

[Merlin06]

After meeting up with a fellow forum member yesterday I thought I would do a quick write up about it:

A few weeks ago I received a message from Pyromancer asking me if I wanted to meet up for a few hours of puzzling as I was a local budding Isis Adventurer. After some message exchanges it was decided to meet half way and I just happened to know a pub with a great garden and car park.

So yesterday the day came and I had selected some puzzles from my collection including a Ramisis G1, The First Box and Cylinder by Wil Strijbos and the Half Finished Box by Hiroshi Iwahara from the Karakuri Creation Group for Pyromancer to mess around with.

The day went really well, the sun was shining and Pyromancer brought some, well maybe a lot, of puzzles to amuse me.
There was a rather large collection of Sonic Games puzzles including an Isis Extreme, which kept me occupied for a while, when the conversation quickly turned into discussing non official opening methods for the Isis series (inspired by some pictures of a Ramisis being opened by an angle grinder and a Copernisis by a screwdriver!). Pyromancer is also thinking of creating a series of spoof videos demonstrating his own opening methods which had me laughing like mad so keep your eyes peeled.

After the Sonic Games puzzles were done we then moved onto the other puzzles including a load of wooden puzzle boxes and a particularly evil mind bending puzzle, built by Pyromancer, involving nails where you needed to balance 6 nails onto one vertical nail! Even after being showed the solution there was no way I was going to get there any time this year! – Git!

After the puzzles we started discussing the Isis coin searches that appear on the website from time to time and Pyromancer told me about the experience he had on a coin search with a fellow forum member (a write up on the search in more detail can be found on the forum) and showed me my first glimpse of a silver Isis coin that they found on the search. It seems that Pyromancer has a keen interested in coin searches and treasure hunts in general conversation moved on treasure hunt books such as the Golden Hare and Dennis where the books provides hidden clues to find an actual treasure hidden in the real world.

The best puzzle of the day must go to a puzzle Pyromancer turned up with which was a cube shaped burr puzzle that requires 128 (ish) moves to dissemble which kept me entertained for ages – in fact I have always said that I don’t really like burrs as a type of puzzle but this one has really got the edge and hopefully one day I will get my hands on a similar type of burr.

Anyway the morning of puzzling soon came to an end (although I left over an hour later than originally expected!) and have agreed to meet up again after the Tessarisis has been released to see who can open the Tessarisis first! Given Pyromancer’s previous track record (opening the previous 3 Isis puzzles in 3 months) and the fact it took me nearly 2 years to open my Ramisis I don’t think this will be a very fair race!

Overall a fun morning and would highly recommend that if you live near to another forum member to meet up and share some puzzling fun!

[Pyromancer]

I had a good time chatting about puzzles with Merlin06,challenging each other with a selections of non-Sonic puzzles was a lot of fun (pretty pointless challenging each other with Sonic puzzles as we both know them so well).

As Merlin said, I'd recommend meeting up with any other forum members in your respective areas, it's a lot of fun holding a little puzzle party.

Maybe we could get a bigger IAS gathering arranged for next summer?

If you'd be interested in a UK get together or if you're further afield, but still fancy the idea, send me a PM.

If there's enough interest we might be able to do something, maybe Merlin06 could use his magic powers and summon the great PUZZ?

[Merlin06]

Great idea!

I'm sure if there is enough interest then Puzz may come - see nearer the time if I can badger him into it!