Ze Tomago

Sunny Side Up

I love a well themed offering for the occasional occasion here at B&B, and at least once a year, an egg theme is in order coinciding with both the Passover and Easter holidays (which is no coincidence). There are a few well known makers who have eggcelled at this task but none are quite so prolific as Australian dentist Stephen Chin, who has made, shall we say, an eggcess of egg puzzles over the years.

Perhaps all of these short order puzzle cooks, who have paid homage to her eggcellency, owe a debt to the original egg master, Kazuyuki Tanaka. Tanakasan was a Japanese woodturner and master of the lathe, who learned the trade craft from his father. He had a fascination with Karakuri puzzles and joined the Creation Group in 2000, where he contributed a few novel puzzle boxes using lathe turning techniques. He was perhaps most famous for his beautifully rendered spinning tops and nesting eggs. One of his masterpieces, a 36-piece set of nesting eggs, resides in the Kanagawa Prefectural History Museum.

Hakone Egg by Kazuyuki Tanaka
*photograph courtesy of Stephen Chin*

Tanakasan was a huge source of inspiration and admiration for Stephen Chin, who met the master turner in Hakone / Osaka at the 2010 International Puzzle Party. At the meeting, arranged by Naoaki Takashima, Chin and Tanaka exchanged spinning tops they had made for one another, and Tanaka had a final gift for Chin. It was a traditional Hakone egg, made in the region for over 100 years. The egg opens into two halves, and one side is a spinning top. The egg gave Chin an idea, to “turn” the traditional design into a puzzle box which opens with a novel mechanism.

From Chin: “ze Tomago, Japanese for egg, is a complicated puzzle to make, It also has a mind of its own”. Chin notes that the complex mechanism did not always work properly, and that certain moves might be circumvented with unintended movements, making it a very challenging puzzle to get perfect. “If weighted and shaped right, it will spin perfectly with no wobble,” he notes. About the central locking mechanism, “I don't think has ever been done, a very COOL concept”. And of course any puzzle from Stephen Chin is likely to have just a few “extra” features as well. “Me thinks, Hey what if it becomes a puzzle box with a tippe top end, Of course it whistles, does the Sun rise in the East? Does Superman fly! … Hence ze Tomago is born”. OK, but does it lamb*? It took him a long time to perfect the novel locking mechanism, and a long time to perfect the tippe top action (so that the spinning top flips upside down onto the stem), but he always manages to keep his Chin up in the end. Ze Tomago was presented at the International Puzzle Design Competition in 2020, the year of Tanakasan’ death. It was a lovely tribute to the legacy of the great master.

Here’s a toast to the tradition of egg turning that pays homage to the tippe top too. A “flip”, when referring to an alcoholic drink, is a concoction which includes a whole egg in the mix. It wasn’t always the case, and the original flip was a simple mixture of rum or brandy, beer and sugar that was heated to bubbling by a red hot poker (which was crucial in that it caramelized the sugars and toasted the grain). A strange but perhaps satisfying sailor’s potion back in the late seventeenth century, I suppose. In the mid nineteenth century, however, an egg would be found in a flip, which ultimately became a cold drink resembling eggnog without the cream.

The spirits industry and puzzle community, as I’ve said before, share a number of common characteristics, not least of which is hospitality. Stephen Chin is well known to include little extras with his puzzles, such as a trapped ring stand or bookmark, made from the offcuts of the process. Waste not want not! In similar fashion a bartender is likely to extend a “handshake” to others in the industry, or even a polite guest. These gracious extras often take the form of a bracingly bitter amaro or intensely herbal aperitif, spirits which are well appreciated by those in the know but not for the faint of heart. Sometimes two of these powerful spirits are even combined into a “bartender’s handshake”, as with St. Louis bartender Ted Kilgore’s famous “Industry Sour” which uses green Chartruese and Fernet Branca in a daiquiri template. Another such handshake by Nick Bennett combines Chartreuse with Campari.

Boston bartender and industry darling Frederic Yarm ups the ante on these drinks by combining all three intense ingredients and then “flipping” them with an egg, adding another rich and decadent layer to the game. Yarm explains, “I work at Drink in Boston, a bar without a menu and we have a good number of guests who want weird drinks. So I’m always thinking and scheming for new tricks. With inspiration from what I was making that night or week.” Here’s to the egg makers, a hard boiled carton of creatives who will make you flip. Cheers!