Vertigo

Vertigo: a sensation of motion in which thye individual or the individual's surroundings seem to whirl dizzily; a dizzy confused state of mind – Merriam-Webster

It’s hard to talk about puzzles when many in the world are at war. For anyone involved, directly or peripherally, intellectually or emotionally, it is an unsettling, dizzying time. But sticking to routines when possible can be helpful, and perhaps can provide a brief respite from the heaviness in the world. The newest puzzle box by QuizBrix, a small company based in Israel, is named Vertigo with ominous prescience. I continue to be impressed and inspired by their big ideas, and thrilled with their wonderfully fun creations which are made completely out of Lego bricks.

With their first amazing puzzle box, The aMAZEing Puzzle Box, they showed the world what can be done with thoughtful design and engineering using the Lego medium. They solved the inherent problem with these types of creations, which is that they tend to pry apart during exploration and solving. Of course this is only natural with Legos, but they carefully designed their box to avoid this problem without resorting to glue. They also came up with inventive and surprising movements and unexpected, brilliant mechanisms. aMAZEing garnered many great reviews. The team have not let up and did not disappoint with their next offering, Vertigo, a dizzyingly compact enigma full of similar new surprises.

Peleg Saban told me a bit of the vertiginous story. “So after the success of amazeing we compiled all of the feedback from the community and got a list of requests for the next puzzle. This puzzle is the compilation of all of them! The design keeps the basic concept of our company (clean and basic geometry) while keeping the standards of building with LEGO (no glueing, max durability). This puzzle is more a mixture of an SD puzzle with a puzzle lock.” And why is it called Vertigo? “Because it gives you vertigo trying to solve it haha (a lot of backtracking and turning to all sides).”

Like most puzzle box designers, QuizBrix have their own recognizable style, using clean aesthetics and a black and white palette so far. Their first box featured an interesting pattern on the top, which when positioned correctly can be seen to represent their name, “QB”. Vertigo also has a strange symbol featured on top, which is not immediately recognizable. Yet, “once again it is the letters Q/B (as in quizbrix) like we did with amazeing (part of the challenge as the designers to incorporate it).” It took me a while to see it, because it cleverly uses reverse imagery. It’s just another example of how these boxes are on another level.

From a design perspective, is there anything new here? “So pretty much, everything. First of all the size of the puzzle vs the amount of steps is pretty crazy! all that while not breaking easily (LEGO puzzles). Something to think about - there is actually no space left inside the cube - it's all filled with mechanisms! everything is pressed together making the build very difficult. I don't want to spoil anything but there is [unexpected] movement which is very hard with LEGO. There are new mechanisms in the puzzle.” The team has done a great job with this puzzle, and despite eventually figuring out some of the main movements needed to get things started, the box stumped me for a while.

They packed a lot into it and achieved what they had hoped for this design. “Yes and more - the main challenge was the durability vs. the complicity of the mechanisms in such a small size. We don't think that anyone made such a challenging design with LEGO (it's more like a clock than a puzzle). Of course it's all without glue - should there be glue the challenge is not that hard (a lot of the puzzle structure and design is a straight outcome to durability issues!).” As you might imagine, they were constantly revising the design to improve this durability, making changes “Non stop - some related to the steps of the solution and mostly because of durability issues.” They learned “SO MUCH! especially how not to lose hope due to stepbacks and changes in the design due to durability issues. I don't think people understand the difficulty in building a LEGO puzzle box - you are building a puzzle while trying to make it unbreakable although the nature of it is to break!” We are certainly glad they persevered, and that they have “many more!” new ideas to come. There is also a secret, which I won’t reveal, which ties their puzzles together in a majorly “meta” way. You are going to want to collect them all!

I’m toasting this virtuoso of mechanical confusion with a dizzyingly delicious cocktail, created by San Francisco bartender Duggan McDonnell, twice nominated “Best Mixologist of the Year” at Tales of the Cocktail, the spirit industry’s annual awards convention. McDonnell is the author of Drinking the Devil's Acre - A Love Letter from San Francisco and her Cocktails, 2015, a history of the famed city block of debauchery from the 1870-80s era.

The drink is very easy to make, being a simple highball of soda and spirit highly reminiscent of the Dark and Stormy. It also won’t actually make you very dizzy, because it is low proof. The only spirit in it is Averna, a rich and rewarding Italian bittersweet amaro from central Sicily. Like all amaros it is made with an old secret recipe which imparts “hints of orange and licorice, balanced with notes of myrtle, juniper berries, rosemary, and sage”. To make the drink, the Averna is floated on top of ginger beer (or ale) with a squeeze of lemon, which is perhaps where it gets its name – this is a precarious step that can easily go wrong. Case in point. No matter, it’s equally delicious whether right side up or upside down, and it’s hard to feel buoyant right now anyway. I raise my glass.

Vertigo by Duggan McDonnell

½ oz lemon

4 oz ginger beer

2 oz Averna

Lime wedge

Build ingredients in a tall glass in order, pouring the Averna over a barspoon to float it on top. If you are skilled enough …