bilateral kellerberrin

On the way back from Cunderdin, I asked Felena if we could stop at the Tammin op shop. It’s my Thursday arvo ritual by now, and I’d hate to disappoint Gwen, my op shop angel. The ladies jumped straight into action this time: “what does he need now?”, “what can we offer for his music workshops?” and my favourite: “what will he come up with next!?”

True to form, they delivered the goods: a box full of christmas cracker inserts, the bits that make the “bang.” Perfect. I also walked away with a carton of fresh farm eggs, some more metal kitchen bits and pieces, and half a dozen multicoloured zippers.

* * * * *

Back in Keller, I raced to see Jo. Ever since I started buying games from op shops, I have been trying to crack this “Kwazy Kwilt” puzzle. It confounds everyone who tries it. Thirteen odd, and oddly pleasing shapes have to fit into a plastic frame. That’s it. There’s no instructions, no hints, no apparent pattern. I tried to do it and failed. I tried it out on the anthropologists. They failed. Josephine failed, Cristina failed, everyone failed. Pat couldn’t do it either. I tried it out on David Blair, and he nearly threw it across the room. Jo battled with it for two days while she was minding the gallery, and got no closer to solving it than anyone else.

Everyone has the same experience. You get so near to fitting all the pieces in, but one or two won’t fit no matter what. Then you disassemble everything and start again. The frustrating thing about “Kwazy Kwilt” is that you never seem to learn anything from your past mistakes. Jo, who prides herself on her logical and problem solving skills, wondered if perhaps it was, in fact, unsolvable.

But Claire solved it, in less than half an hour. Below is a photo of her proudly displaying her mastery over the unsolvable puzzle.

I couldn’t wait for Jo to do her shift at the gallery, so I could see her face when she found out that someone had cracked the Kwazy Kwilt. I had placed the finished puzzle in the window of the gallery so she’d see it when as she came in. As I expected, she was outraged. Her first words were “Who did it!?”, I think her pride had definitely been wounded. Jo would have preferred nobody to have solved it.

As you can see, there IS a trick to the puzzle. It’s all in the three central pieces…