Gratitude For Those Who Work Up Through The – Eleventh Hour

Having just returned from this year’s International Puzzle Party (IPP41), I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to reconnect with friends that I haven’t seen since before the pandemic.  After a long hiatus, being immersed back in the community has helped rekindle that puzzling spirit and revitalize the pursuit of designing and solving new puzzles.

Note that I didn’t start to talk about puzzles.  The puzzles are a means – the friendships are the ends.  It’s about meeting and spending time with like-minded people that share a common interest.  Of course, this is not to say that I didn’t come back home with a suitcase full of new puzzles.

To successfully pull off such a large undertaking as IPP requires a dedicated host, committee members, and a cadre of volunteers.  All these people work extremely hard to establish a welcoming environment for everyone to enjoy.  Many of these people have invested years of effort to provide a smoothly run event lasting only a few days.  They work so hard and make it look so effortless.

On the last day, it is customary to honor these people that created, managed, and upheld the support structure of IPP.  And what better way than to award each with a puzzle.  Apropos for the volunteers who worked so hard to the very end, this year’s puzzle was: Eleventh Hour.

Eleventh Hour was designed by Goh Pit Khiam and was materialized in Maple by Tom Lensch.  The puzzle is a classic 4x4x4 cube consisting of 4 pieces and as you would expect from a puzzle made by Tom, the fit is excellent.  My copy came unsolved, and I found the solve to be straight-forward without any twists (i.e. there are no rotations; this is not a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC)).  Having designed a volunteer gift in the past, I know that one of the design goals is to avoid providing a puzzle with a difficult solution.  I won’t tell you how many moves it takes to remove the first piece when it’s assembled but if every move takes an hour, there is a clue on how long it will take.

I’m certain that the volunteers will cherish this token of the hard work that they dedicated to make this IPP a success and it will bring back fond memories of the good times that they had.