Year of the Dragon

Time Capsule

It’s time to celebrate bravery, creativity and innovation here at Boxes and Booze – because it’s the Year of the Dragon! Let’s all be charismatic, ambitious, adventurous and fearless! In the Chinese zodiak, the Dragon is always associated with one of the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal or water. This is the year of the Wood Dragon, the most creative and visionary of them all. What luck!

Time Capsule Dragon Box by Laurence Chen

It seems perhaps ironic, in this case, to be featuring a 3D printed plastic puzzle box, but this ambitious new creation from Laurence Chen of Creative Workshop CA was too perfect to pass up.  Laurence, an information technologist from Toronto Canada, has been making and selling popular printed puzzles for a few years now through his Etsy shop. He purchased his first 3D printer back in 2021 and started designing soon after, releasing “Newton” as his first puzzle ever.

Enter the Dragon

His new “Time Capsule” series of puzzles debuted recently, just in time for the Chinese New Year with the initial release of the “Dragon Box”. The idea for it came to him after seeing an interesting image of the Yin Yang on the internet, an image that can also be found on the Dragon Box. In this new year of prosperity, Laurence wanted his puzzle box to reflect his favorite ideas about puzzles in general. “Recalling why puzzles attracted me; it was “Fun” and “Rewarding” when solving it. Not “Frustration”. Puzzle doesn’t need to be hard, “Fun” is the goal in designing Time Capsule.”

Dragon Box presents a large puzzle box with multiple stages to explore and conquer. “Stage-two (Clock part) was the first I came up with, then I thought, why not make it a bigger one with multiple stages (Different mech for different stages), idea of a multiple puzzles in one design.” Laurence relied on a few puzzle expert friends who tested out his design and liked it, and even contributed the final idea for the last stage of the puzzle box. The puzzle’s name evolved as well from the theme. “Yin/Yang, Dragon, Time, Clock…etc came across my mind and finally I decided to use Time Capsule as the series and Dragon Box would be the first one.”

first batch of Time Capsules - courtesy of Laurence Chen

The Dragon Box took a lot of planning until Laurence was satisfied. “LOL, you don’t want to know how much filament I wasted along the way I designed this puzzle. From design to testing; I started in Sept and went through ten major versions until the final product. I went through a lot of modifications and testing since some of the original designs didn’t work out the way I wanted.” Of course so many prototypes and ideas naturally led to other ideas for future projects. “There is always new stuff that I learned along the way. When I came up with a new idea, I drew it on my draft book and came back to it when I designed another new puzzle. I like Time Capsule’s multi-stages design and will continue on this approach for the next Time Capsule series puzzle. When designing a puzzle, I try to make my puzzles affordable. Time Capsule as an example, takes over 100+ hours to print and assemble, 1.4kg of filament used. I was thinking of setting the price to US$100 initially but after I found out the amount of time and filament used, it is just not feasible.”

Time Flies by Ryan Gannon

Laurence is a prolific designer and is constantly coming up with new designs and ideas. Some have proven very popular and some are downright diabolical. Does he have a favorite so far? “Really hard to answer that question, Angel was a good one, Traffic Light’s good as well but too many parts came out after solved, same for 369 too, CORE – some think it’s too hard (maybe it’s that my clues are not good enough), Dragon box seems to hit the sweet spot (but takes too long to produce … 😊) As you can see, after Traffic Light I started to change my design a bit to minimize the fallout pins and bearings after solved. And will continue my design this way.”

my how time flies

I’m toasting the Chinese New Year, and the Year of the Dragon Box, with a time appropriate cocktail from Ryan Gannon of Cure in New Orleans, who originally created this drink for Tales of the Cocktail, an annual spirits industry event held in New Orleans. Cure is worth a trip if you find yourself in the Crescent City, and want an upscale and sophisticated cocktail alternative to the ubiquitous Hurricane. Gannon’s Time Flies compliments punchy Pisco with a tropical tiki vibe, adding a healthy dose of tiki bitters along with sweet banana liqueur. In place of tiki bitters I used Allspice dram, which gets to the essential tiki bitters flavor profile. The drink is surprisingly delicious considering the unusual ingredients, but of course that’s why you go to a bar like Cure. Wishing you all strength, wisdom, luck and prosperity. Happy Year of the Dragon!

a timely pair

Time Flies by Ryan Gannon

1 ½ oz Pisco

½ oz banana liqueur

½ oz bianco vermouth

23 drops Bittermens 'Elemakule Tiki Bitters

Add ingredients to a rocks glass with five small ice cubes and stir. Express a lemon peel over the drink and then use as garnish.