Category: Kel Snache

When is a Door not a Door? When it’s Puzzleduck Pastures by Kel Snache

Posted on by fivesinatras in Kel Snache, Puzzleduck Pastures, Sequential Discovery, Take-Apart

Puzzleduck Pastures

Kel Snache; 36 copies

In a land far away, under the old Sycamore tree is where you will find the cheery little fairy community of Duckbill.

These puzzle loving fairies have an obsession with all things mechanical and have nothing to do with ducks. One fairy named Lil’ Ms Fairy Pants had her tiny home newly outfitted with the crafty creations from one particular wizard named Kel Snake.

Sadly, Lil’ Ms Fairy Pants has a poor memory and has gotten herself locked out of her home, again.

Save the lovely fairy and be the gallant young knight by helping her to open her front door. She will repay you with a tiny tour of her home.

Duckbill Times

It may not be new but it is still worth writing about: I got my copy of Puzzleduck Pastures upon release way back in ye olden days of 2019. Back then, my blog was still pretty new, my tens of readers a mere fives of readers. I was writing less frequently than I am now (which really is still not as frequently as I’d like) and simply never sat down and wrote about this gem of a sequential discovery take-apart puzzle.

Puzzleduck Pastures is Kel’s “response” to Michael Toulouzas’ Fairy Door (and, in turn, precedes Tracy Clemons’ take: Dark Fairy Door). The puzzle looks like the facade of a playful, cartoonish home, the roof slightly askew, a bulbous door, sketched windows, and so on. The puzzle is a sizable 12″ tall and 8.5″ at its widest point on the base; at 3.5″ at its deepest, it evokes a sense of a theatrical facade from which one might expect Puck to dramatically emerge (“And those things do best please me, That befall prepost’rously.”)

And this is just part of its appeal: it’s playfulness is a manifestation of Kel’s good nature and reminds us that we are here to have fun – belying this intentionally imperfect aesthetic are the internal mechanisms that interact in varied ways, locking Lil Ms Fairy Pants’ door and tempting the puzzler with a number of holes across multiple sides.

The door is quite firmly locked: two of the three square central “locks” on the door move just a few mm, with the bottom one spinning freely. But don’t think that the rest of the puzzle can be ignored! In typical Kel fashion, you will find a number of interacting internal mechanisms keeping you from solving the puzzle and opening the door, although only the chimney appears to have any give when reset. It is quite typical of Kel’s style: multiple misdirections as you embark on a semi-linear sequential discovery journey with very few blind spots. Re-solving the puzzle after a few years, I was pleased by how well everything worked, even as I was sure something was wrong at one or two points (nope: it was me). And I was super pleased with myself when the door finally pulled open once again!

At the end of the journey you are rewarded with a view of some of the internal mechanisms as well as, even more delightfully, some lovely art of Lil Ms Fairy Pants’ home created by artist Nicole Lees for the project. (This is not a spoiler as it is stated in the description)

I love this kind of finale, bringing the story full circle and rewarding the puzzler with a good, satisfied laugh. By no means will you wonder if it is solved: it is quite clear that you’ve helped Lil Ms Fairy Pants home and you can sleep soundly knowing you’ve done a good deed for an imaginary person.

Puzzleduck is fun and tricky, Kel’s deviousness abounding throughout the puzzle’s playful frame. While not as long a solve as Kel’s EWE UFO, it is similarly smartly silly and delightful to behold (and they look adorable next to each other). Now if I could just get myself a copy of Toulouzas’ Fairy Door, I would have the trifecta, thereby opening a portal into the world of the fae!

Quoth the Puzzle, “Ever-poor” – Rav’n by Ken Snache (w/art by Janice Bell)

Posted on by fivesinatras in Kel Snache, rav'n, Sequential Discovery, Take-Apart

Rav’n

Kel Snache (w/artist Janice Bell), 15 copies, 10″ x 13″ x 6″

The line between art and puzzle is oftentimes vague: many a Karakuri’s craftsmanship outweighs its complexity as a puzzle, while challenging, original puzzles may not always be the prettiest. Kel Snache runs the gamut: repurposed tea boxes are fun but a bit rough (which really is part of the charm), whereas EWE UFO and Puzzleduck Pastures are as pretty as they come.

Cue one of his newest releases, Rav’n, a collaboration with artist Janice Bell (who is also contributing to the Dragos boxes). As soon as I saw a pic, my puzzlie senses began tingling: a unique trick-opening puzzle reminiscent of an Edgar Allen Poe story?! Um, yes please.

Several weeks later and a big box arrived, containing the sizable wooden bird affixed atop three beautifully made wooden books. Bigger than I expected at more than a foot from beak to tail and almost as tall, the bird is a gorgeous black with shimmering purple and blue detailing on its head, eyes, neck and wings and feather carvings throughout; the bird stands one-legged upon the smallest of the three books, their spines crafted with yosegi-like details and “pages” that exploit the wood grain for a fitting look, akin to Bill Sheckel’s book boxes.

The goal of the puzzle is quite unique: open the wings! This originality was almost as enticing as the aesthetic (almost). While not insanely difficult, with around a dozen sd-lite steps it still proved to be a fun challenge for me. Further, the inner spaces behind the wings are adorable in typical Kel fashion. Similarly, the three knobs on the pages of the bottom book are classic Kel and fit wonderfully with the woods used elsewhere.

After ooh’ing and ahh’ing my way around the piece, I showed it off to my wife who was actually impressed, earning it an “oh! that’s really cool” rather than the typical “that’s nice, babe” that the majority of puzzles receive. Admittedly, she is even more of a Poe fan than me, which may contribute to the response, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is just so damn pretty a puzzle!

It was a solid challenge for me, as I managed to solve it in three dedicated sessions; there are some fun mechanisms that, in typical Kel fashion, are at least as aesthetically pleasing as they are tricky. Needless to say, this piece of puzzle art (art puzzle?) earned its place Downstairs, where many of the prettiest and coolest of my collection lurk. It is a great puzzle to show to non-puzzling passersby, who invariably had assumed it could not be a part of that odd collection of wood and metal things this weirdo rather obsessively collects (but hey, who’s judging!).

Kel continues to work his way through the Dragos boxes; check back in a year or so and perhaps I will be able to share my Lovecraftian dragon box with you 😉 Rav’n is, I believe, fully claimed, so obtaining one may be difficult; hopefully these pics will tide you over until you have a chance to visit one being held in captivity for our puzzling pleasure.

Part of my Kel collection: (from left to right) Puzzleduck Pastures, EWE UFO, Rav’n, There Goes Bill & Flor Fina 2

When EWE Need a Sheep Alternative to Puzzle Boxes

Posted on by fivesinatras in Kel Snache, Puzzle Box, Sequential Discovery, Take-Apart

EWE UFO

Kel Snache, 5.5″ x 5.5″ x 5.5″, 2020

“In what can only be described as a freaky fluffy encounter of the 5th kind, an apparent rag tag group of crafty and clever ewe’s mellifluously stormed the gates of Area 51. Witnesses say they saw what must have been their larcenous leader take command of not one, but 17 super secret flying machines!

As [we] have come to understand things from [the Captain’s] view, they don’t all enjoy being shorn. So apparently a small group hell bent herbivores decided to tell the freaky farmer to ram it, and ran!

Somehow, whether it be the grindage grazing or the foreseeable fact that they don’t have pockets, but they lost any comprehensible clue as to what they were. [We are] afraid that you all will have to sort your way through their retrofitting of this ubiquitous UFO…”

– EWE UFO Back Story (excerpt)

Kel Snache has yet again made a puzzle that is not only challenging, but also wildly unique and fun. Last year’s Puzzleduck Pastures was awesome and he has further outdone himself with a puzzle that is even more complex and satisfyingly silly than was helping Lil’ Miss Fairy Pants unlock her door. Kel has created a backstory about four sheep determined to make a break for it (and one forced to come along): the intrepid Captain Fran, and her crew of Fern, Flo, Fanni and the sheep-napped Wee Fae. The story is told in facebook posts (reproduced in 13 pages alongside pictures of his progress taken over the course of several months): the “Fluffy Five” have built a ship and we have the rare opportunity to explore it, if we can find our way inside.

EWE UFO is not quite a puzzle box – as Kel says, it is “disguised to look like one [but] there is no internal space to store tiny objects de jour.” It would be more accurate to describe it as a sequential discovery take-apart puzzle, as it will ultimately break down into 23 separate pieces after successfully navigating 32 steps (plus an additional four steps to fully disassemble it), revealing tools and red herrings along the way. The craftsmanship is excellent, with a build quality that feels like it will stay strong over time and aesthetic details that add to the sense of wonder that the puzzle brings.

EWE is a cube made of a variety of woods that seems to float a few cm above whatever surface it is on, due to the placement of the escape hatch on the bottom. All four sides are identical, except for a little acrylic portholes giving us a view of the sheep crew as they cook pizza, take a bath, extinguish a fire, and look back at us with X-Ray glasses; all except for Wee Fae, desperately reaching up to us as we look down the fifth porthole on top of the ship. Our goal: “Be the noble hero and join the quest to remove Wee Fae from the top of the craft. She just wants to go home before the others resume their zoom into space.”

Some of the portholes spin freely, while others do not. Other than this, there appears to be no way in or out. As we work out way through “six sides of play,” we must navigate through (as it says in the instructions) “a Trap Door, A Guillotine and a Four Finger Force Field,” before we can do a bit of post-solution disassembly for a “full visual tour of the Inner Core.”

The instructions at the front of a 14-page packet, which also includes detailed solution steps with accompanying pictures), informs us that there is no need for tapping and no tricky magnets. You will instead enjoy a journey through diverse mehanical mechanisms that meanders along an otherwise linear path to success. Steps build upon one another; pieces removed may serve multiple purposes or none at all; things sometimes move only to confuse us; and our assumptions will be used against us.

Escape Hatch

Throughout the puzzle, we find pieces and mechanisms that are so instantly recognizable as being from Kel; while the puzzle is totally original and quite different from any other piece of his that I have had the pleasure of working on, it also manages to have an aesthetic and method that is uniquely his.

The rhythm is exactly what I love in a puzzle: I am pulled into the experience with some early success, which pays off with some tools and moving parts that provide unknown opportunities to do…. something (maybe). From there, I hit a series of walls as I proceed through the puzzle, steps discovered in fits and starts, forcing me to backtrack and explore and question what I’ve done and what I am trying to do. Things that seem like they must do something, actually do nothing (nothing useful anyway); other things that seem to fade into the background, end up being essential to my continued progress.

After a few hours spread out over several days, I manage to remove the top porthole, liberating Wee Fae from her wooden, spacefaring prison, and finding Kel’s snake mark burned into the piece. The open porthole, as indicated in the instructions, allows me to peer into the internal mechanisms at the core of the puzzle (with the aid of a flashlight). The “further disassembly” referred to earlier, essentially consists of removing the four brass nuts in the top corners of the puzzle, allowing me to lift it off, exposing the “Inner Core,” and showing the copy’s edition number (mine is #12/17).

At this point, I was able to slide the central cube out, allowing me to see how all the varied mechanisms fit together. While not exactly a fusion drive, there is a lot going on in there! Mostly wooden pieces (with a few metal parts) are stacked and organized, with sufficient room to allow for the movement necessary to solve it. I went through the steps again, watching the internal machinations of the puzzle and appreciating it all the more for it. Reassembly was mostly straightforward, a matter of following the steps backwards. I was proudly admiring my brilliance until I noticed a piece that I had somehow left out – so I was treated to another run through the majority of the puzzle, until I found where it should go, acting as another lock on an otherwise locked piece, yet another step along the way.

From the wacky story, to the beautiful craftsmanship and complex mechanisms, and, finally, to the eventual full disassembly and exposure of the puzzle’s inner workings, EWE UFO stands among the best puzzles I have had the pleasure of working on: it is playful without being easy, challenging without being impossible, tricky without being annoying, and very unique.

(SPOILERS: click here to see some pics of the puzzle totally disassembled, including the outside and inside of the inner core, where the majority of the puzzling occurs)

Overall Grade: 5 Sinatras