Moulin Rouge

Up next, ladies and gentlemen, we have Moulin Rouge. This was Roman Götter's exchange puzzle this year, designed and manufactured by IPP newcomer Stephan Baumegger. Of course, Stephan's made a name for himself recently with his delightful burrs, many of which have a theme.

Packaging: Comes in a very nice tube, printed on the outside and bubble-wrapped on the inside.

I was feeling a bit tired after Monday's travel home, so of course I popped by Starbucks for some puzzling.

To start: I picked up the puzzle and looked for the seams for hints as to what I could do. Of course, there's the obvious step of spinning the windmill, and that does in fact work - to a point. As it turns out, even revealing the classification of this puzzle would be a bit of a spoiler.

After a few minutes of aimless fiddling, I find the Main Move. That gives me a slight clue as to what's happening, but I need to fiddle a bit more to figure out exactly what's going on here. It's a fairly nice implementation of one of my favorite puzzle types, too. A few moves later and I can examine the puzzle and plan out the final moves. The last move got me, though. The solve was nice and satisfying, and just what I needed to get my confidence back after a bit of a break from puzzling.

Inside the puzzle, there's a small "dancer" figure. I'm not sure if Stephan made this dancer, but it's a nice little addition to the puzzle (her name is Collette). The box included an allen key taped to the inside of the box with a sticker, so that you could free the dancer from the inside of the Moulin Rouge.

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