Red Handed
Red Herring Box
Red Herring Box 2.0 by Doog Menzies
A staple of the northern European diet for over three thousand years, the tasty sardine and its big brother the herring can be enjoyed raw, salted, pickled and dried, just to name a few common preparations. Herrings are particularly tasty when smoked, but get easily embarrassed by this and turn a shade of pink. Of course, this colorful dietary diversion is all mere distraction meant to mislead you into thinking that this is a food blog.
raising some red flags
And, to quote myself from a prior post, “what does this all have to do with rubbing a dead fish on the trail to fool the blood hounds? (A great non-sequitur, no?)” We are most certainly about to find out. Our story begins on a sheep and beef farm in New Zealand, over fifty years ago, where young Doog Menzies was raised. His grandfather was, “a self taught engineer. His main hobby was building steam engines. When I was in my early teens, he passed away and most of his machinery and tools ended up in the farm workshop. This was definitely the biggest influence early on in my life.”
red alert
Doog prefers the outdoors and a life full of adventure. He got his pilot license, but rather than become a pilot went off to work on a farm in the UK, where he “was driving and maintaining large, brand new tractors, combine harvesters etc. If tinkering on my grandfathers lathe and milling machine was an early influence, then working with large, expensive equipment in England was definitely another.”
a red letter day
After the farm, Doog found himself as a deckhand on a superyacht harbored in Mallorca, Spain. True to form, he felt compelled to obtain his Captain’s license as a commercial yacht master, but then, decided not to pursue that, marketing himself instead with the title of “engineer”, which allows him more flexibility with his many skills. “Having an interest in anything mechanical leads directly to an interest in puzzles. So I have probably always been fascinated by puzzles, but until recently had not been exposed to many.”
a typical coffee break in the Alps
Fortunately, Doog’s natural inclination for tinkering and playfully puzzling mind discovered a perfect outlet. Back then, he got his first early spark of inspiration from a video he saw of a jewelry box with a secret compartment. “Four years ago when I got a job looking after a yacht in Tarragona, Spain, I had lots of spare time. This is where I started to make puzzles. The first box I ever built was the grandfather of RHB 2.0. Back then I did not know anything about the puzzle world. I didn’t know that puzzles had categories and I hadn’t heard the term “sequential discovery”.” He recalls this as a very relaxing time, making a new puzzle during each onboard two week shift, and getting feedback from his friends, who loved the puzzle boxes.
Red Herring Box schematic (redacted)
“And that brings us to my friends, they have been a huge part of my development. Very much the same as me, none of them knew anything about puzzles or the puzzle world. We started this journey together. I didn’t know that normally a puzzle has a description, rules, a name etc. I would just build another puzzle and hand it to the first friend I saw. The only instruction was to hand it on to any interested person once solved and reset. This process of course started a competition, not unlike the evolutionary trend of island gigantism. I would build a puzzle, they would open it and give me feedback. I would build a more complex, harder box, they would open it…”
a school of herring
Doog credits his friend’s enthusiasm for his creations as a source of his joy in making them into their more finalized version, and it is his friends who name the boxes as well. It’s too late now to change the RHB name, which is admittedly a little bit of a hint already, but Doog mentions that plenty of people have still struggled mightily to open the box despite the name. Doog is a very friendly person, and has been thrilled to discover the world-wide community of puzzle enthusiasts and designers, all of which he finds inspiring, but does shy away from too much interaction. He explains, “that while my head and sketch book still have unused ideas and mechanisms in them, I don’t want to be unduly influenced.”
“Life can be very easy if you are able to follow your passions.” - Doog Menzies
He found himself with some extra time during the pandemic, and built himself a tiny workshop, just 4 square meters in size. His sparse equipment consists of a lathe, a table saw, some power tools and a tool cabinet. “My workshop is a luxury and every day I get to use these tools I’m grateful. My workshop is too small for mass production, but with lots of planning and organization I’m reasonably efficient at building in batches of ten.”
“A lathe/mill is my biggest machine. This is an Emco V10P from 1978 and is still as good as the day it was built. It’s such a pleasure to use.”
The RHB 2.0 is a wonderful puzzle box, full of fun moves and hiding a very well disguised, brilliantly executed secret. But it is also special for another reason. “The first puzzle job I did in my workshop was to remake the original Red Herring Box. I took it apart, cut it down in size, machined a couple of new parts and reassembled it.” The original box was sent first to Canada, and then on a trip around the world, from solver to solver like a traveling puzzle gnome.
Facom tool cabinet with three drawers of tools
After receiving many inquiries, “I decided to make a workshop friendly version. It’s smaller in size, uses a few different materials, but anyone who solved the original will immediately recognize the mechanisms. I did have to remove one feature which no longer fit in the smaller box, but l was able to fit in two extra features to make up for it.
some assembly required
The box is based around a 5mm hardwood/plywood carcass with a 10mm base. Onto this I glue strips of 14mmx2mm wood (usually larch). The components for the mechanism are a combination of parts I’ve had to custom make and parts I can buy.” Doog makes the most of his tiny workshop and limited resources to bring his tricky ideas to life. “I love the wooden puzzle boxes made by others who use much more exotic timbers than me. The reality is that I don’t have the tooling or space to incorporate such wood, so I’m sticking to larch and oak for the time being (You’ve got to play to your strengths).”
puzzle box carcasses
He has also begun collaborating with Radek Micopulos, a Czech designer of metal puzzles who has already brought one of their ideas, Ziggy, to life. This partnership appears to be working very well, and they have many more ideas in process at varying stages of development. He also has plans for his own boxes, and plenty of ideas yet to come. “I’m constantly amused when I ask people what they think is going on inside one of my boxes. If someone is struggling I’ll ask them to describe what they are thinking. It’s very often the case that they give me far too much credit as an engineer and what they describe is beyond my capabilities. (Time locks, miniature rack and pinions for example). You hit pay dirt occasionally when someone describes a mechanism which is not used in the box they are holding, but is a valid possibility. This process has definitely helped me come up with several unique ideas.”
packing list
Doog is a philosophical guy, and had a bright outlook on this new adventure in his life. “I love how modern communication has allowed a bunch of people scattered around the world to come together. It seems to me that it is social media and technology used in the most positive way. The conversations I’ve followed make me think that everyone is working towards the same goal. That is to say a hobby that has no real justification! Solvers and collectors realize that they need designers and makers. Designers and makers need the support of the community. It’s pretty cliched to called it symbiotic, but that’s what it is. If I continue to enjoy the process of designing and making, I’ll do this forever!”
The Red Heering
I’m raising my glass to toast my new friend Doog, who is currently living life to the fullest in the French Alps, inside his cozy puzzle chalet workshop. To make this cocktail, you’ll need some smoked herring. But only to enjoy on the side, please don’t put that into the cocktail (unless you want it to be extra amazing). I’ve made a variation on one of my favorite drinks, the classic Negroni, which is traditionally made with gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. Rather than gin, however, I embraced the theme, and used the Scandinavian version of gin - aquavit. Also known as aqvavit, the spirit is distilled from neutral grains or potatoes and traditionally flavored with caraway and dill, along with many other herbs, spices, citrus and botanicals. It is typically not aged in barrels, and thus appears lighter in color, just like most gin.
gone fishing
Of course, the Campari in a Negroni already affords it a bright red hue, which is a characteristic this drink needed to have. But in place of the sweet vermouth, we have another Scandinavian spirit, Cherry Heering, which serves double duty as another component to the regional theme of the drink while adding color. Unlike some cherry liqueurs, like maraschino, which are clear, Cherry Heering is a deep rich burgundy. To offset this sweet spirit, dry sherry is added, which helps balance the drink properly and imparts another lovely nutty undertone. The drink is delicious, but of course tastes nothing like the fruit punch it might appear to be – the garnish of Swedish Fish is just a red herring. Cheers!
the red carpet treatment
Red Heering
1 oz aquavit
1 oz Campari
½ oz Cherry Heering
½ oz Fino sherry
Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a favorite glass with a large cube. Garnish with Swedish Fish on a pick.
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*special thanks to Doog Menzies for his story and photos