Heart of the Matter

Golem Heart

The Golem is a pervasive mythical guardian which appears time and again in various fantasy lore, originating with Jewish myth and mysticism. The most famous historical golem was a creature shaped of mud and clay by the 16th century rabbi of Prague, who brought it to life to save his people from the pogrom attacks. Instructions for breathing life into these creatures can be found as early as the twelfth century. The trick is to write down one of the names of god and place it into the creature’s mouth or carve it into the forehead. One particularly poetic story describes the magic word as “emet”, Hebrew for “truth”. To deactivate the golem, erase the first letter of the word, which then becomes “met”, Hebrew for “death”. Golems will almost always follow instructions precisely, which can be problematic, as they do not think for themselves. They can even become dangerous in this way, and darker modern versions of the trope include Frankenstein’s monster, or even “golem” from the Lord of the Rings, who was not animated from mud but was indeed enslaved and transformed by magic words. We find the golem again in the classic role playing adventure game, Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, an epic tale along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons which was awarded “Best Game of the Year” back in 2002. The Dwemer were an ancient race of highly skilled craftsmen in the game, but all that is left of them are their “constructs” (animunculi) – automated, magical machine guardians forged of precious rare earth metals. In other words, golems. Each of these guardians was powered by an extremely valuable “heart” jewel.

Stickman Golem Heart by Robert Yarger and Lewis Evans

The Stickman Golem Heart, which represents a new direction for the Stickman puzzle box company, carries this backstory and began, as these tales do, long ago. Puzzle makers Robert Yarger and Lewis Evans teamed up to create this modern version of the Snowflake puzzle box and brought the golem to life. From Robert Yarger: “The Golem Heart has been a fun journey, and in tandem to many Stickman puzzles, has evolved itself out of its own necessity. Obviously, it has its roots in the previous Stickman Snowflake. In some regards, I feel that the Snowflake was under appreciated. It was two puzzles in one, but after solving it to an open position, most puzzlers would think it a quaint design, and close it back up without experiencing the challenge of taking it apart and re-assembling. The golem started off as a simple remake of the snowflake, which I intended to ship out unassembled.”

Rob’s idea to do a remake included finding a way to mass produce the puzzle in a high quality medium, a pursuit which ultimately led him to Lewis Evans, who is a professional prototype artist. From Lewis: “I guess you could say the mastermind for this whole thing was a mutual friend, Arthur Haber. Arthur introduced me and Robert knowing that we were likeminded and may be able to help each other out. He couldn’t have been more right, at least from my perspective. At the time I had this idea to use vacuum casting to produce puzzles. It’s something I use in my day to day business every day so I could see the benefits. I was noticing that allot of people have been trying to produce puzzles with cheaper 3d printed FDM materials. But I was more interested in trying to bridge the gap between these cheaper 3d printed plastic puzzles and the more higher end wood and metal materials that were so coveted in the minds of collectors. When Art introduced me to Rob it turns out he was playing with the same thing in a way. He wanted a cheaper way to produce some of his older designs to bring them to a broader market but keep the higher quality that he was known for and collectors expected. We played around with a few different designs of his and settled on the Snowflake as a good starting point to dip our toe into working together and see if we could produce something that would help to break people’s preconceptions down of “plastic” puzzles.”

heart of gold

With the basic premise, general production strategy, and partner in place, Rob was free to explore something that had been incomplete about the original puzzle. He explains, “the Snowflake itself was never supposed to be just a snowflake. It was supposed to be an onion, with multiple layers of interlocking panels surrounding it. Over the years, I attempted to devise ways of adding more interacting layers. None of my attempts really worked out. But I had been so consumed with additional exterior panels that I neglected to consider having them on the inside. So a second (though somewhat simple) puzzlebox was designed to go inside this puzzle and increase its complexity. It interacted well with the original layers, and added additional puzzle steps. At the time, Lewis and I were going back and forth with different approaches to best reproduce all of this in cast resin, a medium that was new to me. The peculiars of production soon gravitated towards the inner box becoming a single piece. There was also a particular orientation of the inner box that could have locked things up permanently. Such issues could have been resolved, but from a production standpoint, a single solid internal piece became increasingly more practical, just to keep the final production costs reasonable.” Lewis recalls that this was actually a pivotal moment in the process: “A good turning point for the project was When Rob thought to put … a cube in the middle of the snowflake. This is what elevated it into another puzzle entirely, increasing its steps for completion.”

wild at heart

Rob recalls, “At the same time, the first production samples from Lewis were arriving, revealing all the different ways and techniques by which the parts could be made. Each was unique, having appearances that ranged from new age and steam punk to alien and futuristic. But one in particular stood out to me. "What was this?” One of them did not look or feel like plastic or resin at all. It was noticeably heavy, cool to the touch, and felt like a rock.” Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Lewis had been inventing. “Aesthetics were firmly in our thoughts when designing it as we wanted something collectors would … display on a shelf proudly. But we also wanted … something that felt very high end in terms of the materials. We thought about the look, feel, function, even the weight of everything. We settled on trying to make the resin look like Stone, something that [eventually] fit the chosen theme well. However, this was a large task to research how to achieve what we wanted. There is nowhere you can simply buy stone effect resin. I had to put in allot of development in this regard (a process now dubbed ‘fossilite’ ™). In those developments it became clear there were enough options to have a set of puzzles rather than just one. So we decided to have a standard version but also a few special limited-editions that we called ‘Ramble editions’. [During the process] we would send each other very long emails back and forth and it became a bit of a small running joke stopping ourselves short by realising we [were] rambling on. It’s a little nod to the process I guess.”

Rob continues the story, “With an exterior that now resembled stone, that internal puzzle piece that was once a small simple box slowly evolved into a gemstone, with Lewis doing many tests on what colors and techniques produced the best results. These pretty little gems now required some way to see them when shelled in their box, so view ports were added, requiring still more mechanical design revisions. The entire time that Lewis was adding all these alterations into CAD software, he was getting very familiar with how the components of each piece interact with others to produce the puzzle elements. So he says, “do you think it could do this . . . . . . .” Lewis had stumbled upon a particular element to the design that I also had been struggling for weeks to accomplish, until my eyes crossed and I finally gave up. I told him all the ways I had already tried to pull this stunt off, how I feared it was impossible, but said he could play around with it, ‘if he cared to waste his time’. He is obviously much smarter than I, and few days later had figured it out. He moved a few things around, and pulled off those last two additional steps that had eluded me. Moments like that is what makes designing in collaboration so rewarding.”

what sorcery is this …

The evolution from Snowflake to Golem Heart was complete. Rob has been a fan of the mythical “Dwemer” race for a long time, and is arguably a descendant of those magical craftsmen. Recall his own Dwemer Construct puzzle box from the past. The ultimate 'gemstone embedded in a rock’ design called to his mind those magical, animated guardians of old, and the theme and backstory for the new puzzle was set. Yet the final production model eluded them, as Rob explains, “Lewis is also a perfectionist, and there were so many experiments, tests, samples, tweaks and revisions, that I thought he would never consider it done. The optimal results came from removing the pieces from their molds before completely set, and then allowing them to cool slowly. So special wood molds were crafted to house pieces in a warming chamber as they fully cured. The feel and glide of the sliding interlocking parts was enhanced beyond what silicone molds could produce by crafting highly polished brass inserts that were incorporated into the molding.” Lewis admits, “His patience while I messed about with these I think was tested along the way even if he wouldn’t say it. I have really enjoyed this project. Working with Rob is refreshing. He realises that the end product is almost always guided in a large way by the process itself. So a design will evolve naturally if you let it. I’m used to working with product designers that have a very rigid idea of the end product and sometimes not a good concept of what is actually manufacturable …. So working with someone [who] is very free to … taking a design in many different directions was nice. I think we complimented each other well in this regard so we could steer the design to the final product. I’ve learnt allot from the project and from Rob. I’d happily work with him again on another project in a Golem Heartbeat.”

Heart of Glass by Troy Sidle

I’m raising my glass to this mystical and legendary collaborative creation with something fittingly refined and elegant. The drink can be found in the slim volume Beta Cocktails, a pamphlet of a book which has a bit of a cult following thanks to the inclusion of many modern classics by some well known names from the cocktail renaissance, including this one by New York’s Troy Sidle. The cocktail is a “scaffa” – a drink made and served at room temperature. With roots in the pre-ice era of the nineteenth century bar, the style can still be found in many excellent modern creations. A scaffa, which is thought to be an informal Italian word for “cupboard”, is a spirit-only drink – you won’t find juice, cream, egg, or other such additives here.

temptingly tepid

Sidle’s scaffa is absolutely delicious, and balances the components perfectly. I exchanged the bourbon here for rye, but stuck to the spirit of the thing by using a fine aged rye for the rinse as well. His description of the drink in Beta Cocktails, in the form of a meandering manifesto on how to make it, may strike you as pretentious, especially nowadays, when much of the original pomp and circumstance of the cocktail renaissance is thought to be passé. To me his description reads not as pretentious, but rather as righteous. He is in love with the process, a perfectionist, and we can all still appreciate that sentiment, I’m sure. I’ve copied just a few of his descriptors in the recipe below, but you’ll get the idea. Here’s to perfection, may we ever be in pursuit of its shadow. Cheers.

time for a heart to heart

Heart of Glass by Troy Sidle

1 ½ oz bourbon

¾ oz Carpano Antica

¾ oz Cynar

17 drops Angostura bitters

½ oz water

Orange zest

Eagle Rare 10 rinse

“Donate” just enough of the fine bourbon to coat the inside of a rocks glass. In a separate glass, add the main bourbon, vermouth, amaro, bitters and water. Express plenty of orange oil from the zest, and then pour everything into the previously “educated” glass.

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for more information and to purchase the Golem Heart visit Stickman Puzzles