LCPP - Part XI

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

 Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

- Lewis Carroll

Master puzzle box craftsman Robert Yarger is tangentially to blame for the Lewis Carroll Puzzle Project, because the collaboration might never have been dreamed up were it not for Yarger’s original multi-puzzle box artist collaboration concept, the famed Apothecary Chest. That incredible endeavor brought together twelve international artists who each provided a box “drawer” for the mechanical chest. Yarger conceived of the idea as a way to celebrate his friends and co-conspirators in this unusual artform. He added a box drawer of his own, and crafted all the chests, which were incredibly complex puzzles themselves.

The Apothecary Chest was difficult to bring to conclusion, and few will ever know the toll the project exacted on the architect. It’s no surprise that Yarger declined to oversee the chest for the Lewis Carroll project, which as it turns out, does not (yet) exist. What does exist are a few sets of the wonderful puzzle boxes themselves, which we have been celebrating here over the past many weeks. Yarger’s own contribution plays homage to a scene at the very beginning of the journey Alice takes in her Adventures in Wonderland:

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

From Yarger: “ ‘Late for Tea’ puzzleboxes are representations of the clock the rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland” carries while running late for the tea party. Its inspiration is that of “cracking a safe”, with the hands being used as safe dials, but instead of just one dial, it has two – a dial within a dial, or a hand within a hand. This makes it more complex. I have always enjoyed trying to crack safes since a youth.   

Of course, a safe in concept is not a puzzle box. A safe is instead a lock box, and there is a difference. This box was designed with notable clicks that inspire logical deduction as to what is going on inside as its primary puzzle element. This makes it a puzzle to be solved instead of just a “lock box”.

This is the first Stickman Puzzle box that includes a Stickman coin, and these coins were produced for it. So much of the box was taken up by the mechanism, that in the end there remained a secret compartment area only able to accommodate the size of a coin.”

Yarger also relates that he had many other ideas for this puzzle box, such as a two-way mirror, and phosphorescent internal lights. He is truly a renaissance man and one of his many hobbies and interests includes amateur chemistry. Many of his puzzle box projects can be measured by what new skill he acquired during the production, and on that scale this one was a great success. He developed new knowledge and skill in phosphorescent chemistry and silver mirroring, even though these elements didn’t find their way into the final puzzle in the end. One more new skill that did was gold leaf gilding. Robert made a set of Red and Purple Heart wood versions of this box for his Stickman line, but the puzzles in the Lewis Carroll set were of Bocote and Wenge, and featured gilt edging.

The rabbit, consulting his gold leaf pocket watch, was running late for the Hatter’s tea party. It seemed appropriate to toast the Late for Tea box with another tea infused Jabberwock cocktail variation, this time using the exotic spices of Chai. But for the base spirit we turn to rum rather than gin, and specifically, Bacardi rum, whose symbol is a fruit bat. From the company’s history we learn that in 1862, “Don Facundo Bacardí Massó bought a small distillery in Santiago de Cuba and started his famous company. His wife, Doña Amalia, noticed a colony of fruit bats hanging in the rafters of the distillery. She recognized their importance to the Spanish and Cuban Taíno Indians as symbols of good health, family unity, and good fortune.” The bat became the symbol of their new company and “soon locals began to ask for ‘el ron del murcielago’ – the rum of the bat.”

How does this remotely tie into the tea party? How can we forget the brilliant recitations of the Mad Hatter during that maddening party? Perhaps his most inspired oration was this one:

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you’re at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a teatray in the sky.

Carroll scholars point out that the poem was an inside joke referencing Professor Bartholomew Price (whose nickname was “The Bat”), a Don at Oxford College and one of Carroll’s former teachers, who was well known and loved by Alice Liddell’s family. Clearly we must use Bacardi rum to honor The Bat. It would be mad not to. The cocktail is also sweetened with honey, a perfect compliment to tea, and enhanced with Blackstrap Bitters, with flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg, sassafras and sarsaparilla that go perfectly with rum and chai spice. Cheers!

Late for Tea

1 oz chai infused Bacardi 8 rum

1 oz Amontillado sherry

1 oz Caperitif

¾ oz honey syrup

2 dashes Bittercube Blackstrap Bitters

Stir ingredients together with ice and strain into a favorite teacup. Garnish with a lemon peel.

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