Slammed Car
Jury Grand Prix
Let’s go for a ride. It’s been a while since we’ve taken a trip together here on B&B. The last time was just over a year ago, when we took a road trip in Rocky’s brass model-T. We’ve been on a sailing trip, and even a trip to outer space. This time we’ll pile into a great big automobile and have an award winning adventure. Don’t get confused, we’re not going in a Japanese car, despite its having been last seen in that country. It looks a lot like an old Jeep Grand Wagoneer, but in fact it’s an Australian car, the first to hit the production line there since October 2017. The manufacturer, Pluredro, admits that the Australian auto industry is a bit puzzling, and have limited this run to one hundred cars.
Slammed Car by Juno
Slammed Car, designed by Junichi Yananose (Juno) and produced by his puzzle company Pluredro (Juno and his wife Yukari) in Queensland Australia, is their latest and greatest sequential discovery puzzle, and one of the best new puzzles in the world. It recently won the Jury Grand Prize at the 2019 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition held in Japan. Juno is well known for his complex, intricate and innovative assembly puzzles, but has also put his impressive mind toward puzzle boxes and sequential discovery puzzles in recent years. His series of card suit (diamond, heart, club and spade) boxes are each delightful, and his sequential discovery burr was on many best of the year lists last year. Recognizing the appeal of these types of puzzles, Juno set out to create another puzzle box which would also be a sequential discovery puzzle. Juno is incredibly ambitious, and wouldn’t settle for anything short of the idea in his mind, so took much longer than usual to produce the final puzzle, the Slammed Car. It helped that he has a workshop full of advanced manufacturing tools, including a CNC router, which allows mass production of intricate parts and fine details. But for the Slammed Car, he decided he would need an even bigger CNC router – so he got one! He also wanted to use light Koto wood for the car, but didn’t have enough. So he went to his favorite timber stock yard, and reserved almost all of their entire stock. Which, it turns out, was barely enough for one hundred puzzles. Based on the response the final design has received, it was worth the wait. The car is a lovely wooden model in its own right, with many nice details crafted from Koto, Blackbean, Jarrah and PNG Rosewood. There are side mirrors, headlights, license plates and even fully functioning wheels. The license plates are modeled after actual vehicle registration plates (“number plates”) from the UK, where by law the front plate must be white and the back plate must be yellow. Juno and Yukari felt this would make the cars more “posh” than those seen on the country roads of Queensland.
Authentic rego number plates make this one posh ride
The puzzling aspect of the car is simply brilliant. There are many, many steps to it, from 15 to 20 according to Juno depending on how they are counted. I’m partial to the 20 count based on my own experience. There are at least ten items to be discovered and removed as the car is disassembled in order to try to find the way inside. Most items are used again, in very clever and specific ways, to achieve the final goal. There are about three distinct phases to the journey, and most travelers end up stuck on the side of the road at the final phase, which requires a very elegant and satisfying solution. Every aspect of the design is used in the mechanism, including the wheels which spin freely just like on a model car - and in fact this very detail led to the name "Slammed Car". Juno realized early in the design phase that if the road clearance of the car were set at a normal height, he wouldn't be able to place any mechanisms around the wheel axles. He intentionally lowered the clearance, and realized the car looked a lot like the modified cars popular with young kids in Japan. These are called "shakotan", which means "low height car". A similar term for this style of car in English is "Slammed Car". It is a brilliant puzzle, incredibly fun and beautifully crafted, well deserving of the Grand Jury prize. Juno has placed a tiny loaf of bread inside the car, based on a running joke about puzzle boxes, and to reward the weary traveler after the long journey to the solution. Personally, I’m celebrating with a drink as well.
Parallel Parking
I’ll start this toast with an old classic cocktail called the White Lady. Bear with me and we will eventually get to our actual destination, but I like to take the scenic route. Harry MacElhone was one of the more famous bartenders of the golden age, and invented any number of well-known, perfectly turned out classics still celebrated to this day. But even Harry had his prototypes. Take the White Lady, named after a popular rose of the times, in the aftermath of World War I, when Harry was getting his start in London after serving in His Majesty’s Forces. It was a sickly sweet concoction of Cointreau, crème de menthe, and lemon.
Ten years later you would find Harry finally in his true element, at the famous Harry’s New York Bar (in Paris, of course – it was Prohibition in New York, after all). He revised the drink, and the true White Lady, a well balanced mix of gin, Cointeau, lemon, and egg white, was born anew. This is the drink still popular today.
Boxcar by Lawton Mackall
Alexander Lawton Mackall was the “POTABLES” writer for Esquire Magazine during the 1930’s and 40’s, and knew MacElhone’s drinks well. He is credited with creating a slightly modified version called the “Boxcar”, in which the lemon is switched for lime, a dash of grenadine is added, and the works are served up in a sugar rimmed glass. It remains another great classic, simple and tasty, but rather more obscure, until now. Because I would be hard pressed to find a more appropriately named cocktail to pair with this puzzle box car. I can vouch that the drink does indeed go well with Juno’s award winning creation, and I will add that this is the only circumstance when I would advocate drinking and driving. If you are lucky enough to find yourself behind the wheel of one of these beauties, buckle up – you’ll be in for the ride of your life! Cheers.
This couple auto get a room
Boxcar adapted from Harry MacElhone by Lawton Mackall, c. 1935
2 oz gin
½ oz Cointreau
½ oz lime
1 dash grenadine
½ oz egg white
Shake together without then with ice and strain into a favorite vehicle. Sugar rim the steering wheel in order to be authentic, and buckle up.
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