TETRA

The Extra Terrestrial Robot Alien

“We come in peace” or “Take me to your leader”? Which side of the alien invasion theory are you on? You’d better decide quickly, because TETRA has arrived and you’ll need a plan! Not since we saw the Monolith arrive on Earth, heralding all manner of interstellar mayhem, has there been so much signal ricocheting off the telescopes at SETI. Roswell, here we come.

From the bafflingly brilliant mind of Christophe Laronde, lead inventor of intricate innovations at Lodeve, France’s NKD puzzle, comes another enigma of galactic proportions. Fans of NKD’s amazing puzzle boxes will know that NeokiD (Christophe’s nom de puzzle) typically takes his inspiration from one of the many genres that sparked his imagination as a child and then adult. From the futuristic symmetrical world of Luc Shuiten’s Nogegon, to the labyrinthine tales of ancient Greece, to the aerial fantasia of Miyazaki’s Lupita combined with the dimensionally perplexing architecture of Escher’s Relativity, we now find ourselves in an old fashioned theater, wide eyed at the B movie camp of space invasions. TETRA, Christophe’s newest design, takes homage to old sci-fi in the most delightful way.

TETRA is another fantastical, fun creation from NKD that satisfies a number of elements found in any great puzzle box. The intrigue starts with a story, a theme to pique one’s curiosity. In this case, an alien robot space ship. The limited edition version arrives in a mysterious crate which would not be out of place in a secret government storage facility.

Christophe recalls the earliest ideas for this box came from many old classics of Sci-Fi cinema. “I thought of all these films from the 50s to 80s with this retro aesthetic: The Time Machine (1960), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Forbidden Planet (1956), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Kronos (1957), When Worlds Collide (1951), Moon Trap (1988), 2001 space odyssey (1968), Les Maîtres du temps (1982).

As for the inspiration for this box, the first version dates from 2014, originally it was entirely 3d printed with PLA. There were three different versions, the last one is much more complex than the others. With a lot more movement.”

The “space ship” one discovers inside the storage crate is so interesting, begging to be explored from the moment it is held. There appears to be quite a lot going on, although nothing seems to be happening at first. Exploration is rewarded by many options, and things begin to “activate”, leading to surprising and dynamic movements which might make you wonder as to how this clearly advanced alien technology is working!

The box is made from poplar and birch wood, and features futuristic transparent green acrylic, although that is not immediately apparent. Christophe found that “it's a beautiful material but quite capricious. It supports compression but not the slightest tension. But the result was just perfect …” and I have to agree.

“For the design, I wanted to change the style a little by doing something with angles in the science fiction style. On the first versions the box cover was not attached to the body. It was by changing that that the thing with the chameleon head appeared, by observing the new opening of the lid. I found it absurd and funny, so I obviously kept this configuration. I found that all these back and forth movements in the enigma resembled the gait of a chameleon (two steps forward, one step back).”

The “chameleon head” Christophe is referring to is something extremely unique about the puzzle box, a charming detail that only reveals itself at the end, and creates a sort of “meta” finale to the story of the box. He hinted at this in a cryptic drawing he placed by the box in an early teaser photo. If you are curious to see what it refers to, click the photo with the drawing below, but it is definitely a spoiler of the open box.

Perhaps Christophe was channeling “area 51” with his final design, but he added an extra hundred to the address – TETRA requires at minimum 151 moves to solve, a new record of complexity for an NKD puzzle box. In reality, unless you are already familiar with alien robot chameleon space ships, you may find yourself utterly lost, backtracking and reversing steps, which will undoubtedly add to your final move count.

Paths diverge, and become entangled, and you may find yourself heading back to the starting point to contemplate something which seems critical for this cryptic container – a strategy! Perseverance and patience pay off and eventually you feel like you may be starting to understand this alien language, only to realize there are even more defenses guarding this ship than you expected!

As your confusion, or perhaps, understanding, grows, Christophe’s comparison to a chameleon becomes more and more apparent. I was not previously aware of how chameleons move, but look it up, like I did, and you will surely be amused.

Opening the box, at long last, is incredibly rewarding. You can almost imagine an audible hiss and see steam pumping out of the cracks as the inner chamber is revealed, in a sensationally dramatic finale that spares no small detail to complete the story and flies in the face of what you may have expected.

Christophe spent a lot of time thinking about this finale. “The challenge was the hinges. I had to learn how to offset the pivot point to save space outside the volume. In the end, a parallelogram joint solved the problem (even if there is still a lot of play in the mechanism).”

“I hope this riddle won't be too taxing on people (and fingers...). The number of moves and sometimes having to backtrack can be a bit confusing. There is also the orientation of the box which is not obvious, there are few reference points and we quickly lose our bearings. I tell myself that it's part of the box itself.” As usual there will be a kit version to build yourself available for TETRA eventually and you can participate and follow the progress on Kickstarter.

I once posited that if aliens drank cocktails they would surely be mezcal Negronis. I’m not entirely sure what type of drink an alien robot chameleon might prefer, when lounging at the intergalactic space cantina, but that never stopped me before. In this particular case we are clearly forging new territory, so something bespoke appears to be in order. I focused on the name of this enigma for inspiration, TETRA, and therefore decided that a four-ingredient cocktail would be required for this toast. I do like to reference the source material when possible, so that meant selecting a few French spirits for my friends in Lodeve.

The cocktail references the “Last Word”, a well known classic, four-ingredient drink made with equal parts gin, green Chartreuse, lime and maraschino liqueur. That cocktail is attributed to Frank Fogarty, a Vaudeville era comedian known as the “Dublin Minstrel”, famous for his show ending monologues. Originally served at the Detroit Athletic Club over one hundred years ago, it was resurrected in more recent times by Murray Stenson, a beloved bar legend at Seattle’s Zig Zag Club and mentor to many in the hospitality industry.

Murray died on September 22, 2023, so the toast is also to his memory. The “Outer Syntax” version of the Last Word features Genepy in place of Chartreuse, which is lately hard to source (the Carthusian monks work at their own pace). Genepy is a French herbal liqueur with a similar but softer, sweeter profile. In place of maraschino liqueur I used Lillet, which is technically not a sweet fruit liqueur but does have a sweet, floral and dessert-like flavor. The result is excellent, a tantalizing, tart tipple to tickle the tentacles of the most temperamental extra-terrestrial. Cheers!

Outer Syntax

¾ oz gin

¾ oz Genepy

¾ oz lime

¾ oz Lillet

Stir with ice and strain into a silica space receptacle. Alien chameleon space ship citrus garnish, optional.

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 Stay tuned for NKD’s next great adventure, early in development, code name: MYST