I return to JL Puzzles for a quick follow-up to last month’s Flight Case post. As it turns out, I actually own two Smetsers items. When I purchased Flight Case, I couldn’t resist getting Leo Smetsers’ other trick “box” called The Vault. It is worthy of the name, I assure you. But before we get to that I need to provide a little snippet of information on Flight Case that I forgot to mention last time. Although produced and sold by Leo Smetsers, the Flight Case mechanism (or loading principle, as they say in the trade) was developed by fellow magician Gijs Benneheij who hails from Limburg, Netherlands. Credit where credit is due.

Now back to The Vault. I should start off by stating up front, in no uncertain terms, that The Vault is NOT a puzzle box. Unlike Flight Case, it is quit impossible to open this box from the outside once locked. So don’t rush out and buy this expecting a cool, refreshing solving challenge. Why am I reviewing it on a puzzle blog, you ask? Well, simply put, because bloggers like Jerry and my day-job boss Kevin let me get away with it. It’s as simple as that. But there is actually a puzzle element to The Vault which I will divulge at the end of the post, so read on.

The Vault is a very high quality machined aluminum box composed of four basic elements: a box frame, a half-cylinder lid, a stainless steel rod to bind them, and a diminutive padlock that secures the whole affair. The box frame is fashioned from separate front, rear, side, and bottom panels. The front and rear are anodized black while the sides and bottom are polished to a mirror finish. Four screws secure the front and rear panels. The semi-cylindrical lid is especially beautiful. It supplies the box with a cross-section appropriate to its moniker. The interior floor and walls are carpeted in velvet to prevent unwanted noise when an item is magically deposited. In the buttoned-up state it is quite hefty, considering its size, and feels very solid in the hand. It could surely be scuffed and dinged if abused, but it is not likely to ever break. All said, it is a very fine piece of work. All this beauty and craftsmanship however, does come at a price. The Vault retails for US$150.

Now, if it is not a puzzle box (i.e., not solvable) what exactly is it? In today’s parlance, it is known as a Lippincott box. This is a handy shorthand used by the magic crowd for a whole family of boxes, most of which employ similar mechanisms. The name comes from Mal Lippincott’s Quarter Go, which hit the market in 1949. Although Mal was quite successful with his product, the box and mechanism actually date back quite a bit further. From what I gather, the earliest published version of such a box is in Professor Hoffman’s 1876 Modern Magic. This audience is surely familiar with Professor Hoffman (pen name of Angelo Lewis) from his 1893 Puzzles Old and New, the bible for collectors of older puzzles. Much as we puzzlers would like to think that Hoffman was a fellow puzzle guy, it appears that magic was his first and best love. He wrote four books on magic between 1876 and 1918. Professor Hoffman can, in a certain sense, be considered the original spoiler for magic. Prior to his publications, magic was a highly secretive, well-guarded art form. That is still true today, to some extent, but after Hoffman the cat was out of the bag (excuse me, the rabbit was out of the hat). It was bound to happen at some point, of course. Today you could fill a library with books on magic.

In Modern Magic we find a nice puzzle box in the form of the Watch Box (pp. 219-220), which can be solved from the outside. As you know, Hoffman’s books are simply compendia of tricks and puzzles known at the time, so the actual “invention” of the mechanism must date even earlier, perhaps very much earlier. It seems that the Lippincott mechanism is a variation on the Watch Box, made smaller for a coin and, critically important, not openable from the outside. Although a “Lippincott” box should probably only refer to such unsolvable boxes, it seems that the term is now widely used for either internally or externally open-able boxes.

It would be the very definition of bad taste to reveal the secret of the Lippincott mechanism here, so of course I won’t. But the interested read can find plans, explanations, and how-to’s all over the interweb. For the solver, it will likely be the solvable versions that are of most interest. The renaissance puzzler, however, with an abiding interest in all puzzle-adjacent phenomena, may find it unobjectionable to own an impossible box like The Vault. As a bonus, that routine you’ve been working on with Flight Case can be used equally well with The Vault.

I promised to provide a puzzle aspect for The Vault, so here it is, simple though it be. In order to have a problem to solve, you first need to resist the urge to research The Vault, Lippincott, or anything related. Simply order The Vault and 1) figure out the mechanism (not hard for a true puzzler), and 2) figure out to vanish and reappear items. How do you do magic with a box you can’t get into? You can check your answer against the video provided by Smesters (it comes with the box). You don’t have to be a magician to figure it out, just work deductively. As for convincingly performing the vanish/reappear? That, my friends, requires practice.

OK, that concludes my short but sweet second JL Puzzles guest blog post. A warm mahalo nui loa to Jerry for once again giving me space here. I promise to review a proper puzzle next time around!

The post The Vault – Guest Post By Mike Desilets appeared first on JL Puzzles.

Before I go any further, yes, you are at the correct blog! This is JL Puzzles, not a certain other highly esteemed blog I frequent. I have not turned colors, just indulging in a bit of moonlighting between Puzzlemad assignments. Jerry has very graciously offered me space here to write and I thought it best to take full advantage. What I post here at JL Puzzles will be a little different from my current fare. The intent is to put out shorter, quicker posts on individual puzzles. Something easier and faster that won’t take up my whole weekend, but which will still be of interest to the solver/collector/designer community. It remains to be seen if I can actually pull that off. It’s hard to sit down and write, but once I do things seem to get away from me.

So today let’s look at a puzzle which wasn’t even intended as a puzzle, per se, the Flight Case. You may recall a blog article a couple years back concerning a pair of de facto puzzle boxes produced by Joe Porper? Flight case is along these lines. Precisely along these lines. It is a “gimmicked” box employed by magicians to convincingly, and impossibly, disappear and reappear items. Although primarily useful for magical routines, it is also very interesting as a puzzle box.

Flight Case was designed and produced by working magician Leo Smetsers from Holland. As such, it comes complete with a routine which, with a little practice, even I could pull off. But that was not my intent in purchasing it. I wanted to solve the box.

Upon arrival of my Flight Case, I duly locked it with the miniscule brass padlock provided and then proceeded to explore. Within about 10 minutes, trying this and that, I managed to get it open. The mechanism is actually very simple, but also well hidden. Quite invisible, in fact. Examination of the exterior provides no clue to the mechanism, although there is plenty of room for speculation. In terms of difficultly, I would say it is moderate to low for the experienced puzzler. It is much easier than Strong Box 2.0 and perhaps equivalent to Strong Box original. It could be handed out for examination during a routine, but not for too long!

How does it fly?

Although Flight Case is not difficult from a solving perspective, I think it would be of interest to serious puzzle box aficionados. Difficulty is not necessarily the defining quality in a puzzle box. Craftsmanship, beauty, and design ingenuity all play their part. Certainly within the very narrow subcategory of trick magic boxes, Flight Case stands out as a very high quality item on all counts. It functions flawlessly with perfect fit between moving parts.

Construction-wise, with its faux-wood panels and riveted aluminum and steel frame, it stands apart from everything else I have seen. I’m not a puzzle box guy by any means, but I do keep my eye on them (often lustfully). Like the best puzzle boxes, Flight Case is a hand-crafted item made in small numbers, usually to order. The price reflects this, running north of 200 USD. Though not in the stratospheric range like some boxes, it is a serious purchase.

I wouldn’t recommend Flight Case to anyone who is principally interested in the solving aspect. It probably won’t provide sufficient value based on that criterion alone. But if you take the broader view, this box may be something to consider. There are a very small number of high quality trick boxes produced by the magic folks. Joe Porper’s Strong Boxes are probably the premier example, but Leo Smetsers’ Flight Case is in the same class and is a necessary item for the committed collector. And hey, once you have it, why not put it to use? The routine can be mastered by anyone willing to put in practice time. It would be great for friends and family entertainment. And on the practical side, it’s the only way to get full value for your money.

That concludes my short but sweet maiden JL Puzzles blog post. Thanks so much Jerry for this opportunity! Back over to you….

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A big thank you to Mike for a very nice write up on the Flight Case. I am already looking forward to his next article!

The post Flight Case – Guest Post By Mike Desilets appeared first on JL Puzzles.

I decided to up the ante and see if I could come up with an 8 piece version with a (higher) unique solution. After several days of toying with Burr Tools, I managed to design a version, L(eight)tice-2 having a level 5.1.2 single solution. I contacted Andrei and told him about my design and asked if he would consider making copies of L(eight)tice-2 in aluminium.  There were several exchanges of Facebook messages and Andrei agreed to cut a prototype out of 5mm aluminium sheet.  This was several weeks before IPP37 in Paris in August.  Andrei said he would try to have the prototype ready and show it to me at IPP.

On the Awards Night Banquet of IPP37,  Andrei walked over to my table and plonked this heavy hefty aluminium L(eight)tice-2 down. It was pretty massive at 70mm x 70mm x 40mm! I played with it for a while but very gently. I did not want to unravel the pieces as I knew I wouldn’t be able to put everything back together at the dinner table without help. It felt fairly stable and none of the pieces dropped out even after being shaken pretty hard. This prototype was returned to Andrei and he said he would try experiment with 3mm thick stainless steal to produce a smaller sized puzzle. Andrei later reported that another attendee at IPP37 solved the puzzle by hand without too much difficulty. Well, kudos to him for being such a good solver.

After I returned home from IPP, I tried to improve on my design; unfortunately there is only so much one can do with board burr pieces confined to dimensions of 70mm x 40mm. But after quite a fair amount of tweaking,  I did manage to increase the level of difficulty from Level 5.1.2 to a Level 6.1.1.2. However the downside was that I could not get it down to a unique solution. So this latest version would have 2 solutions, one Level 5, the other Level 6. The Level 6 solution with 13 steps (on paper at least) seems to indicated that the whole ensemble would be harder to solve and also appearing even more stable than the earlier version.

I subsequently dropped Andrei a note about this second iteration of my design and when the time came to produce copies in stainless steal, he adopted my “improved” design ie L(8)tice-2. While waiting for his metal puzzle, I decided to cut a copy out of acrylic. The plastic version confirmed my theory above; fitting pretty snugly together and harder to solve. A couple of weeks later, Andrei finished producing his copies and listed them for sale on his site. He had experimented with various tolerances and the copy I received from him was firm and “tight”. The puzzle feels very solid and heavy in the hand and no way would the pieces be shaken loose unless it was violently thrown to the floor.  My copy of L(8)tice-2 had nicely rounded corners and polished to a smooth matt surface, very nice to the touch. Very good construction and high quality indeed.  At either level, the L(8)tice-2 is not an easy puzzle and I still cannot solve it without the aid of Burr Tools. And I must add that it is quite a challenge to handle all 8 pieces at the same time during assembly! Metal interlocking burr puzzles are rare and hard to come by. I am really delighted  that Andrei Ivanov has made available the L(8)tice-2 (US$48) and other of his metal puzzles for sale.

The post L(8)tice-2 Interlocking Burr appeared first on JL Puzzles.