Bananas

What has 114 individual parts, weighs almost 1.5 kg, pays homage to a petting zoo, the circus, an Angel, Harry Potter, and has been confused with a berry? The berry part is also confusing, I know. But, a banana is actually a berry, believe it or not. I don’t think monkeys really care how they are classified, and like them just the same. Monkeys like grapes even more, but something about watching anyone eat a banana seems a lot more like monkey business. This particular monkey is even named Bananas, as if we weren’t already confused enough as it is.

Jon Keegan is a mechanical engineer with a passion for puzzling and the metalworking skills to bring his clever ideas into reality. His introduction to the world of mechanical puzzles began in 2018 when he submitted his Tumblers and Jewel Thief puzzles to the International Puzzle Design Competition, objects that immediately garnered interest and respect. It’s no coincidence that his puzzles reminded people of similar creations by Dutch designer Wil Strijbos, whose “Angel Box” had served as the inspiration for Jewel Thief, and later, Bananas. Although Jon had never actually seen the Angel Box in person (at that point, at least – since then a friend has lent him a copy to experience), he was enchanted with the idea of having to free someone from a puzzling cage. Jon relates the history and evolution of his latest and greatest labor of love, Bananas, which took three years to complete.

“Bananas for me started back in 2019. I was just starting Grad school and I had just finished the release of Jewel Thief. I felt very lucky to have had such good luck with Jewel Thief and I started to flirt with different design ideas for a follow-up puzzle. Scarf and Bananas came closely together. Scarf was the first creation of the two. A good friend of mine really enjoys woodworking and that led me to do some research on different kinds of joints and different ways to work the wood. The first version of Scarf, which I only made 11 or so of were lacking some details and I gave puzzles some pause for a time while fighting through class work and research work.

My first year of grad school came to close quickly and this led to the next summer possibly having some me time :)

Then as things turned out, a gentleman I knew from undergrad classes invited me to come out and interview for a small start up company he was working with. I suppose I made a good impression because they hired me.

The work was fun and rewarding but I did find myself needing something a bit more, the other work, puzzle work, soon began.

I honestly did not know what direction I wanted to take in the beginning. I could have finished the Scarf puzzle, but I was unsure of my feelings with that build. There are just some dishes you need to leave and let cook longer.

I spoke with some friends and ‘all the chatter and rage’ seemed to be focused on sequential discovery puzzles. This pretty much consumed me and led me down the road to develop a puzzle along a similar tone of Jewel Thief, releasing a trapped ‘something’. The only trick was to make something more ‘approachable’ and ‘interactive’, many had told me they thought Jewel Thief was too difficult. On this day, older and slightly wiser, I agree. It was a weird solve and some moves were not friendly.

If I remember correctly, I simply sat down one night and looked at cool little action figures or themed miniature toys on Amazon. Luck had it that I found a few. I was instantly attracted again to a couple of Lego figures, The Lego Monkey and a Lego Alien. A trend I am beginning to realize haha. The third find is no longer made so that makes me sad. Minion themed from Universal Pictures. The little yellow troublemakers.

I ordered these little guys and started to play when they arrived. I can not recall why I thought this would be cool but for some reason I wanted to lock the monkey in a cage. He just looked mischievous. The original very first thought was to lock the monkey in an old school traveling circus cage/cart. I had grand ideas of how I wanted to use the wheels and axles to lead the solve. I started doing some research and for what I wanted to accomplish, with the moves I wanted to do, I just could not make the puzzle small enough and inexpensive enough. My goal was always no matter what I made, I would create something sub $700. More fun for more people at this price I think.

After exploring the idea of the cage/cart and finding it a dead end I was a bit bummed. I didn’t know where to go from there. A month or so later a group of friends and myself went to the Oklahoma state fair. Food, booze and rides. It was fun. Before the group left, the girls decided they wanted to visit the petting zoo. Thinking nothing of it and still a full beer in hand I said sure.

The petting zoo was actually pretty cool. It had been ages since I went to one, and I mean AGES. We took some pictures, petted/fed some animals, and then we were off. A few days after that I received some pictures of the group via text, and looking in the background of one of the many pictures I saw both a merry-go-round and a few other kids rides under a big-top tent. I said to myself hey that looks cool maybe I combine those for my lego monkey puzzle.

The combination was going to be the monkey trapped inside a meri-go-round/cage and the exterior of the puzzle would be formed like a big-top-tent. I was going to have the pieces anodized, it was going to make sound when the monkey spun around, and few other tricks. I did a very rough model of how I wanted things to look and gave it some play. It was actually pretty fun. This was the time I found that the monkey could grip round bars, which I had to use in the final version. I loved the look of him just hanging out.

I revised these parts to make them able to be machined and not 3D printed, I sent them out to a few machine shops and the prices were just way way too pricy. Some tight tolerances for bearings, slip fits, dovetail slides and press fit parts drove the quotes through the roof.

I found from the Jewel Thief build that machining all these parts myself is not necessarily difficult, but they certainly take time, and I did not have the time for the parts involved in either of these puzzles as I was working dual jobs. College is expensive.

This is where my brain took a weird turn.

My girlfriend had the Harry Potter Movie series turned on and running in the house one weekend. I was doing some computer work sitting on the couch, catching the good parts and trying to write a paper.

We watched the whole series over a couple of days and while lying in bed one night, on the verge of sleep, I recall the scene with Bellatrix Lestrange standing on what I recalled being the corner of the prison. At that moment I woke up and had to write it down in my notebook.

The next day bits and pieces of Bananas started to come together. I sat down and thought of what I saw in the movie and what I wanted the puzzle to look like. I had a few clever ideas of how to utilize the corner geometry of the puzzle for the ‘cage’. I experimented with some 3D printed proof of concept part moves, hated some and loved others.

The first iteration of Bananas actually only took a few weeks to design, and I was so excited I personally went and machined the parts. Adjusting things on the fly, changing designs in the machine shop, altering tolerances. I was having a blast.  

I thought about things while in the machine shop and I was just not comfortable with locking a monkey in jail. Bazinga. He is a curious creature and needs a super overnight cage. The story developed fluidly from there and I just had fun with it.

I had a group of individuals play with the few copies I made and there was a lot of great feedback. I soon after went down to a fun puzzle party in Houston and met some great people, one guy even sent me his Angel Box for play :) I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the very first ever Bananas with Angel Box before returning the puzzle.

In the time following I started to make some final changes and create some drawing files for the puzzle. School was back in and I was giving all of my time and effort to classes and friends. I forgot about Bananas for over a year.

I applied for a few jobs the semester before graduation, interviewed and had offers. Ended up accepting an engineering position here in Norman at The Advanced Radar Research Center. Bananas was still out of sight and out of mind.

The world was quickly slowed by a global pandemic, I bought a house while interest rates were low, and Bananas was still out of mind.

The world began to get back on its feet and I finally had some free time. I decided to send out some email feelers about interest in Bananas and to my surprise people jumped on the invitation.

Bananas was a terribly underestimated build for me. From the start to finish nearly a nine-month endeavor. Bananas puzzle was limited to 225 copies, each puzzle contains 114 parts. Over the build my house was scattered with some 25,650 springs, fasteners, magnets, machined parts, dowel pins, ball bearings, and lego monkeys with their bananas.

Bananas consists of seven distinct sub assemblies to make a large master. Deadpool Movie (Ryan Reynolds): “Five mini lion bots come together to form one super-bot!”

The final production version of Bananas has an additional series of tricks which differ from the original design. I implemented these on some ‘first article’ parts before pulling the trigger on final parts. I am so happy I added some of these moves. I feel they really give the puzzle a challenging but also ah-ha fun solve dance.

The number of movies to solve is subject to the solver. The solution manual I sent to IPP design competition alludes to about~13-17 moves.

The wooded box Bananas was shipped within took three of those nine months to design, cut pieces for, fixture, and glue. Each box has 10 pieces, so 2250 boxes to cut and glue together.

Bananas was a very fun build and I hope to continue to make cool things. Future puzzles, their difficulty, complexity, quantity, and price point will unfortunately depend on how taxes look this year. I pretty much made Bananas for free. Love taxes. Some things are just hard to foresee. Maybe my own machine(s) are in the future. Cool stuff to come I hope. Will be hard to one-up Bananas I feel.”

It would be hard to one-up Jon’s incredible story as well, so I will not try. Instead I’ll raise a glass and toast this amazing achievement, which surely highlights how we can all fall down the rabbit hole and follow our magical dreams into existence. Bananas is an incredibly fun and engaging puzzle to solve, and tells a story which draws you in. The first step has been controversial, and Jon added a component to it that makes it harder than in the original prototype – “to hurt the solver”, he admits. Nonetheless once understood it can be reproduced reliably and consistently. He also added a few twists and turns that increase the challenges, but also clues and “windows” that make things fair and enjoyable. The journey has a few stages, and releasing “Bananas” the monkey is only one step. After this, Jon does something incredibly sneaky which should garner him some serious respect as a “puzzler’s puzzler” – the ultimate title for a designer. Jon tells an adjacent story about the first alcohol he ever tired, “99 Bananas Liqueur”, a fruit schnapps produced by the Polynesian Products Co. in Louisville that clocks in at 99 proof. He says “It hurt me the next day” – he’s been trying to get back at those bananas ever since.

I had the opportunity to beta test Jon Keegan’s original Bananas prototype in 2019 and enjoyed it immensely. There were definitely a few kinks he has worked out in the meantime, but it was fairly similar. Ever since, I have known which cocktail I wanted to pair with the final puzzle, and what crazy garnish I would make to accompany it. I think it was worth the wait and turned out well, but I may be bananas.

The drink was created by the well known Australian bartender Sam Ross, who came to New York in 2004 to work with bar legends Sasha Petraske and Audrey Saunders, and eventually found his way to the landmark Milk and Honey bar. That pioneering bar became “Attaboy” in 2013 under Ross’s direction, and is where this drink, in New York, was fittingly born. It’s a deliciously funky, tropical banana old fashioned, that I’m certain the great ape would have enjoyed at the end of a busy day climbing the Empire State Building and swatting at biplanes. Cheers!

King Kong by Sam Ross

1 ½ oz bourbon

½ oz Smith and Cross rum

½ oz Banana liqueur

 3 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a favorite glass with ice. Lemon peel garnish, unless you are feeling cinematic.

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N.B. Many thanks to Jon Keegan for sharing his story and photos