Brass Monkey Sixential Discovery Announcement

Final Update

We have now shipped all reserved BMSD puzzles. Thank you to everyone who bought one and for all the fantastic feedback you have shared with us.  The remaining copies of the first batch of BMSD are now available here

Update 14 Jan 2024

Turns out we are brilliant. BMSD has been completed and is ready to ship a couple of weeks earlier than we originally intended. We will start sending invoices out later today.

As we are earlier than expected and, recognise that for many January is not the best month to be spending after the festive season, we have made a couple changes to our original announcement :

Any invoice we send out will remain active until midnight (any time zone) February 2. A payment before then will still include free shipping. Originally we'd indicated payment within 96 hours.

BMSD will be available to buy on our site from February 4.

Although the deadline for reservations was Dec 31 we have decided to re-open the list for one more week. If you would like to be one of the first to own BMSD just drop an email as detailed in the announcement below.

Cheers and Happy Puzzling!

Steve & Ali


Our original announcement follows:

 

The latest puzzle in our Brass Monkey series is coming in early 2024 and we are launching this one a little differently.

What it is

Like Brass Monkey 2, 3, 4 and 5….. Brass Monkey Sixential Discovery (BMSD) looks like a "standard" burr puzzle on the surface but hides even more trickery than usual beneath. It requires multiple discoveries to achieve the ultimate goal: Can you find the bananas and feed them to the monkey? There are in excess of ten steps needed to find the bananas.

How to reserve one for early 2024

Send us an email. If you do, you'll be sent Brass Monkey Sixential Discovery at least two weeks before it goes on regular sale. AND shipping will be FREE. The price will be 245 GBP. To reserve one, email info@twobrassmonkeys.com letting us know. When BMSD is ready (likely early Feb) we will send you an invoice through our website. If you pay within 96 hours we will immediately ship BMSD to you. If you miss the 96 hour window or ignore the invoice we will cancel it and you'll still be able to buy the puzzle at a later date, in the usual way, with regular shipping costs added. Note: BMSD is currently in production and we will not send any invoices until all reserved BMSD’s are ready to ship.

If you don't have a BM4 or BM5 and would like one at a special price of 75GBP , just let us know in your email and we'll reserve one to send with BMSD and add it to your invoice.

The list will close on December 31.

How to get one before Christmas

We will be auctioning three of our five "production prototypes" on Puzzle Paradise (https://puzzleparadise.net/) later this week (starting Thursday). The auction listing(s) will have more details on these.

More background on BM Sixential Discovery

When we decided to make the Brass Monkey series back in 2018, we always had six puzzles planned. BM1 being a standard burr with all the others having different tricks. Way back then we knew the solving mechanisms we wanted (never did want a BM…”the one that spins", "the one that taps" or "the one with magnets") and we always knew that BM6 would be "the sequential discovery one". We wish we'd made BM1 bigger as cramming the tricks into BMSD has been a puzzle for us!  We've never given any hint to the secrets hidden within each BM and we're not doing so this time. Beyond saying there is more than one trick to find those “bananas”. 

We've held the price of all of our BM puzzles pretty much consistent for 6 years but with BM6 the cost is noticeably higher. This reflects the changes in material and manufacturing costs over a six year period and the significantly increased manufacturing complexity of this puzzle.  We've been through countless Kebab planning sessions, 3D printed prototypes, metal prototypes and play testing. Special thanks to Allard and Rich for their valuable feedback. 

We have always sought to keep our prices competitive, both when buying our puzzles new and also in the auction after market.  Not easy when you manufacture in the UK, but one of the ways we have achieved this is by investing in larger production runs and ensuring our puzzles remain in stock.  With BMSD this is changing. Although not strictly limited in quantity, we will be limiting the number of production runs we do to a maximum of two.  We'll make a few more BMs 1-5 to ensure that any collector who wants a full set is still able to obtain the earlier designs from us. Once BMSD is out of stock, the others will be allowed to go out of production too. (BM3 is currently out of stock, a handful more will be made in 2024)

There is no BM7 planned. There'll be more puzzles from us and collaborations with other designers. But BMSD will be the last in the "pure" 6 cylinder form factor.  

And yes, it required enormous restraint on both our parts not to call it Brass Monkey Sexential Discovery.

Thanks for reading this far. BMSD is definitely our favourite of the series and we hope you email us to reserve one and it becomes your favourite too. 

Cheers and Happy Puzzling!

Ali and Steve