2021, A Puzzle Odyssey

Tales of the Monolith, Part I

A Monolith has appeared in Houston Texas…

Just when I was beginning to get melancholy for having to say goodbye to Wonderland and head back through the looking glass to reality, aliens have landed to distract me. A giant silver monolith has appeared out of nowhere and may hold the secrets of the Universe, if only we are clever enough to decode them.

Perhaps the most famous and recognizable monoliths in human history are to be found at Stonehenge, in Wiltshire England. A monolith, technically, is a large, single upright block of stone, typically serving as a monument or pillar. The word is Greek, for single stone. Stonehenge is full of them, from well over three thousand years ago. More recently, Arthur C. Clark immortalized the monolith as an extraterrestrial piece of technology which can assist other intelligent species to evolve more rapidly.

It seems fitting that this new monolith also first appeared in England, in the studio of Felix Ure, a London based product designer who has recently turned his attention from high end furniture hardware to full time puzzle making. He brings a fresh aesthetic, clever mind, and passion for sustainability to the expanding field. Felix, who had started to produce a few brass puzzles and tops, was approached about a year ago by a well known puzzle collector to make a metal chest. “Matt”, who has a fondness for puzzle chests, has influenced so many that he is now known as “The Commissioner”.

From Felix:

“The idea was to make an entirely mechanical chest - no electronics, no setting up, no fluffy fictional backstory - just pure engineering porn in the form of a puzzle. I wanted it to be the best thing I'd ever made, and … it really had to be. As a very new business, I wanted it to be a showcase of what I could do, while also being a useful place to store your treasures, while also being a really fun sequential discovery puzzle, while also looking great. All these are very subjective, so the final 10 owners will be the judges of whether I've achieved those goals or not.

Similar in style to my other puzzles, I wanted it to be minimal on the outside, and very complex on the inside, but still elegantly designed, so excess complexity only exists when it needs to be there. I also wanted every mechanism to be unique and novel.

As soon as I first sat down with my sketchbook to design this thing, I realised I had a massive unforeseen problem to overcome: If you think of any 5 random sequential discovery puzzles, how many of them could you solve if the puzzle was so heavy that it's impossible to move it in any way? This was the main issue that plagued me for months - basic puzzle tropes like tilting, banging, spinning, shaking, or even turning something upside-down, are all completely impossible on a [40kg] lump of puzzle. It was really, really difficult!

The other main issue was to not allow shortcuts in the solve. Without giving anything away, there are 8 compartments on the chest, and I had to make sure the moves or tools to open each of them couldn't be used anywhere else to cheat the order. This is pretty simple on a 2 or 3 move SD puzzle, but on this puzzle which has somewhere between 15-30 moves, it becomes almost impossible to think of all possible things that someone might try, and design around them.”

Felix is being modest here, as he succeeded in achieving his intended goal, and by my count there are about 50 specific individual moves needed to open every compartment. The chest, which presents itself as an intriguing and irresistible brushed aluminum and brass object, appears to have seven drawers. But didn’t Felix claim that there are eight compartments? The top section does not appear to have any way of opening, as only the middle and bottom row have knobs. The lower drawer is secured by three imposing padlocks, suggesting a hunt for three keys may be in order. There are also knobs along the top, pistons that interact and flank a central plaque with details of the puzzle and edition number inscribed.

Monolith is a perfect puzzle chest in many ways. Acknowledging how ridiculously heavy it is (at least not 25 tons, like a piece of Stonehenge), Felix has ensured that all the mechanisms will be solved with the chest upright and stationary. Each compartment has its own unique puzzle to solve in order to open or remove the drawer. Some drawers must be opened in sequence, while others are independent. If that wasn’t enough, three of the drawers are also individual puzzle boxes which must be solved once removed from the chest. Each step has a logical and elegant solution which can be deduced once the puzzle is well understood. Felix has also hidden little treasures inside a few of the drawers for fun, which makes the journey even more rewarding.

The toast to the Monolith takes us all the way back to colonial era America in the second half of the eighteenth century. A popular drink of the era to be found in pubs was a hearty mix of rum and apple cider known as a “Stone Fence”. There is a famous story about the raid and capture of Fort Ticonderoga from the British, a strategic victory for the Americans at the start of the Revolutionary War. The raid was led jointly by Benedict Arnold, a commissioned officer, and Ethan Allen, head of a northern militia, who joined forces. The night prior, they got drunk on Stone Fences at a local pub, then set out in a predawn raid to overtake the poorly garrisoned fort.

Perhaps toasting the Monolith with a Stone Fence is a bit of a misnomer, since a monolith is singular and the fence implies many stones. But if we place all ten Monoliths side by side we may have something. The Stone Fence has changed over the last two hundred and fifty years, and is now more commonly made using bourbon. Mixing apple cider with bourbon is one of my favorite winter potions, served warm with a bit of seasonal spice added. For the Monolith variation I paid homage to the past with an equal dose of strong rum and rye whiskey, plus a touch of Amaro di Angostura, which tastes deliciously of baking spice. Any combination along the theme with a proportion 2.5:1 of cider to brown spirit will work well, so mix up your own and start planning a revolution.

Monolith (A Stone Fence cocktail)

1 oz rye

1 oz dark rum

¼ oz Amaro di Angostura

5 oz apple cider

Add ingredients to a glass with ice and enjoy. Lemon peel monolith garnish. Also delicious warmed up on a cold night.

Since the monolith has appeared in Houston, all manner of mysterious mayhem has been unleashed. Stay tuned for an interstellar series into outer space …

and for even more big puzzles: