Sunday 18 September 2016

Two Special deliveries in one week to Ease my Stress

VERY special twisties
I had to go to London during the last week to hand in the keys to my late Mum's apartment immediately prior to the sale completion and then the following day was a special family and friends get together for her "stone setting". This was a very stressful and emotional time for me and when I got back I was ready for a bit of relaxation with Mrs S.

The day after my return home I got back to 2 deliveries - the first package was an unexpected and delightful surprise. My friend Marty has begun running his own on-line Twisty puzzle store here in the UK and delivers all over the world. I had discussed that I wanted the above two cubes but was going to be away a few days so he surprised me by arranging for them to be delivered the very next day to cheer me up after my ordeal! Now that is customer service for you!! I have to recommend his store as amongst the very best customer service out there.

On the left is the Dayan Bagua cube - this is a very complex puzzle that allows 45º turns and still lets further movement occur:

Top 45º then Right 90º turn
Just 4 turns only! Ouch!
This thing gets very jumbled up and then starts to block movements. I am told by a very good friend and twisty solver from Japan that this puzzle doesn't need any fancy specific algorithms at all! Gulp! I haven't even dared to scramble it yet.

Next up is the Clover cube from Very Puzzle - it reminded me of one of my favourite twisty puzzles, the Curvy copter:

Each half edge can turn 180º
This jumbles with every move!
Something tells me that this is going to be much more difficult than the curvy copter - Gulp again!!!

Finally I managed to get a copy of Eric Fuller's Bebox/Reactor cube:

It's N-ary and a burr and has a box inside!
I had missed out when these came out because I had faded out after having been on-call the night before. They sold out in 45 minutes at about midnight UK time! But luckily for me many had been held for people who had reserved a different box puzzle. After a couple of weeks had passed, a few people decided they didn't want their reserved puzzle and I got a chance to buy! It wasn't cheap but it sure was worth it!