Whilemina the Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat

I’m a traditional kind of guy. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely one of the most open-minded people you can meet. I just mean that I love traditions. That goes for this weekly collection of stories and toasts I offer up about fascinating puzzles and cocktails, too. One of my “soft” traditions is to feature something by a particular puzzle maker around this time of year, to coincide with an interestingly perplexing period. I can’t say much more about that right now, but hey, if you know, you know, as they say. This “tradition”, which I’m calling “soft” because it doesn’t seem to have been completely consistent each year, started way back at the beginning of my budding blogging adventure, with a puzzle that turned out to be highly influential for me, called Big Ben. It was created by John Moores, Junichi Yananose and Brian Young, who made it for John to exchange as his gift for the 34th International Puzzle Party in London ten years ago. Big Ben is a fantastic and fun puzzle, with sequential discovery of hidden odd items which must be used to somehow find the complete solution. The puzzle won the Jury Grand Prize at the Nob Yoshigahara International Puzzle Design Competition in 2015, and in celebration, Brian Young and friends made and enjoyed the special cocktail toast I had created for the puzzle.

Keeping up with tradition, here’s another fine offering from Brian Young, known to many as the original “Mr. Puzzle”, the name of the puzzle shop he ran with his wife Sue for over three decades. Brian made many limited edition puzzles over the years, and Whilemina the Wombat ranks as one of his most coveted items. She is an adorable marsupial made from rare Queensland Walnut, an indigenous Australian wood which is no longer commercially available. Produced in 2008, it combines elements of a high-level interlocking burr type puzzle with hidden mechanism sequential discovery tools. He considers Whilemina to be one of his “milestone” creations which define the evolution of his career as an award winning puzzle designer, for a number of reasons.

Prior to creating Whilemina, Brian’s first love had been high level, multiple move interlocking burr puzzles. He later began to explore the concept of sequential discovery puzzles, where hidden tools are found and used in clever ways to unlock and progress to further steps in a puzzle. This exploration led to Ned Kelley, the first time he combined these two puzzling elements in one of his pieces, for his shop’s tenth anniversary. A few years later he produced Whilemina, where these elements are again combined, but with an even higher level burr aspect. (The pinnacle of this idea may be found in Brian’s AGES.) Whilemina incorporates more than one goal at different stages throughout the solving experience, along with a matching story as you progress through the puzzle – another clever feature Brian loves to include in his designs. Whilemina, with her cute rounded shape, was also the first time Brain shifted from completely linear production manufacturing methods, and used templates to shape the puzzle sculpture.

Like kangaroos and koalas (which Brain has also made into limited edition puzzles), wombats are beloved in Australia, where they are known fondly as the “bulldozers of the bush”. Whilemina can be taken apart into many pieces, and along the way “the object of the puzzle is to find Whilemina’s food, her baby called Warren, and the cubic poo.” Many are aware of this wombat oddity, that their poop is cubic. “Yes, it’s true, Wombat poo is puzzlingly cube shaped. It’s how they mark their territory and this way it won’t roll off a rock. Seems as though the animal was just made to be of particular interest to puzzlers!” Naturally, this important detail is not neglected inside Whilemina.

Sue Young also told me a bit of the history behind the timing of the original puzzle release. “Why is it so special:  A particular species of local wombat (Northern Hairy-Nosed https://www.wombatfoundation.com.au/) was at the brink of extinction when we did that puzzle. 115 left in the wild. Some friends were very interested in volunteering their time to help with a project to setup a protected sanctuary for them. They were trying to raise funds for a second colony as well to reduce the danger of a single population being wiped out so it was great opportunity for us to help donating $50 from every sale. It’s been quite successful project and they are now thriving.” Brian made thirty wombat puzzles for the limited edition at the time, and Sue commented, “Of course maybe of 30 x $50 did a bit; but perhaps the $5 million they subsequently got from a big mining company Xstrata helped a bit more!” In March 2023 Sue provided an update for their website on the wombats: “BREAKING: Queensland Government has purchased 2,800 hectares of important habitat in south-west Queensland to establish a new home for the northern hairy-nosed wombat. Powrunna State Forest will become the third site in the state where we’ll introduce these much-loved creatures. In the 80s, their population dwindled to as low as 35 but today because of ongoing conservation work they number more than 300.” Which is a very nice update indeed for this remarkable puzzle and endangered species.

There aren’t any great wombat cocktail recipes out there (yet!) so I’m toasting this ambitious animal and her maker with a different drink that feels right at home down under. The drink first appears in the hallowed pages of one of my favorites, the Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930. The collection was legendary bartender Harry Craddock’s magnum opus of the art deco era. The drink features the fascinating Swedish Punsch, a Scandinavian spirit of rum and spice with a storied history dating back to 1733.

The original is a fine drink that rightly deserves a little more of the spotlight. It has nothing to do, however, with the modern-day “boomerang cocktail”, a covert practice which is thought to have sprung up in New York’s East Village in the late 2000s, which refers to a drink prepared by a bartender at one bar and secretly sent over by trusted courier to another. It is also completely illegal in almost all cities in the US, except New Orleans, where people are allowed to carry open alcoholic beverages in the streets. Remember, “The first rule of boomerangs is you don’t talk about boomerangs. It’s like Fight Club.” So if I happen to boomerang a Boomerang to you at an intriguing problem pow-wow, don’t mention it. Cheers!

Boomerang c. 1930

1 oz Swedish Punsch

1 oz rye whiskey

1 oz dry vermouth

1 barspoon lemon

1 dash Angostura bitters

1 das orange bitters

 Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a coupe. Lemon peel.

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