B-Nary

B-Nary

The title of this blog post is a little play on words to introduce a couple of puzzles I have played with over the last month or so. Late last year a few of the guys who got to go to the Dutch Puzzle Party managed to come back (as usual) with lots of new toys and the B-Nary puzzle by Jean-Claude Constantin particularly caught my eye. Several people were very enthusiastic about it but unfortunately there were none left for me! Sob! It was a particularly big birthday for me when the DPP was on and I could not attend - I could not risk the wrath of she who must be feared and obeyed. I did ask Mr Strijbos about obtaining a copy of the B-Nary puzzle and he worked his magic on JCC. My copy arrived about 4 weeks ago.

I love these puzzles! Not only are they N-ary puzzles based on Gray code but they also smell nice - I lurve the laser burnt wood smell that arises when you open the package. This puzzle may be called B-Nary because of the shape (B on the front and N-A-R-Y etched on the sliders) but I discovered straight away that there are 3 positions for each of the sliders and hence it is not binary, it is ternary as confirmed by Goetz' list.

Apart from the interesting shape, the next thing that immediately is noticeable is that there are ball bearings visible in the holes down the left side of the B. It is not clear what they are for but they move in and out of view as the puzzle is rotate top down or back upright. Also there is another ball bearing visible in the oddly shaped hole at the top of the B. The ultimate aim of the puzzle becomes clear as soon as you see that hole and bearing. If you've never done these puzzles before then I can tell you that these are a reset mechanism that allows you to insert the bearing back into the start position without having to retrace your steps through the puzzle - basically it is for the lazy puzzler! Seeing this immediately tells me that the aim is to manipulate the puzzle sliders to open a pathway from that start hole to another hole where the bearing can be removed. After that it should be put back to the beginning. I presumed that the exit hole was the one just to the right of the start as there seemed no other reason for it to be there. As with all these puzzles the trick is to work out the N-aryness of it (how many positions for each piece and how they interact with each other.

The B-Nary is actually fairly straightforward in its pattern - luckily each of the sliders moves the same way as the previous one and there are no weird patterns to it. The sliders interact by way of slots which accept ball bearings and force a stop to movement. A nice surprise was after the first move to discover that there are more ball bearings inside the puzzle which only come into view after pieces have moved. Each of the bearings and sliders need to be in an appropriate position before the next move can be made. Once the pattern is understood then it is actually a really nice rhythm and the whole thing can be sped through in a few minutes.

After 54 moves of the sliders plus a good few more tiltings of the puzzle to roll the bearings around then all the sliders have been moved across to the left and then the bearing in the start hole suddenly drops down inside. So how does one get it to move on to the end hole? I presumed that I needed to try and keep the ball down at the bottom and reverse the 54 moves and then direct it back up again along a parallel track. This proved a real task the first time - the bearing was able to roll about freely inside and kept getting in the way of the movements of the sliders! At times I couldn't move anything and would need to backtrack. Then after I had managed to position them all at the start I tilted the puzzle forwards expecting to see the ball at the exit hole but nope!! Your friendly puzzling idiot had locked the ball up somewhere inside! Doh!

After a little backtracking all the way to the beginning I proceeded to try again and failed and afiled and failed! I kept losing the ball inside somewhere! I was beginning to think I was truly rubbish at puzzling or maybe had totally misunderstood the puzzle when I suddenly managed this:

Finally got the damned ball out!

It must have taken me 2 hours! The sequence is possible in about 10 minutes each way but I kept losing the ball. At this point it was time to see what was going on inside. Flipping the puzzle over reveals screws which can be undone and I dismantled the puzzle layer by layer and not only saw the beautiful design in all its glory (I'm afraid you need to buy it for yourself to see that) but it also showed why I had had so much trouble - there was a disk magnet inside alongside the bearing track which was meant to trap the bearing in the down position. In my puzzle the disk had slipped out and was too far away to work. I placed it into the correct hole and reassembled it. After that I moved the puzzle back to the start without using the reset hole. This puzzle is lovely! Very nice logic, very well implemented and when the magnet is in place then its a rather therapeutic process. I have done it many times since then and now have it in my collection, N-ary section.

HLINE