We keep in semi regular contact with Andriy Bruns of Ukraine and I've known Sniper Scope has been in the making for quite some time now. However given the obviously difficult conditions he finds himself in it has taken around 2 and a half years to release it. For those unfamiliar with Andriy, his previous work includes the Machinist's Stash, Bomb Destroyer and other puzzles alongside some non-puzzle items, all hand machined in his workshop.
Andriy had built a reputation for himself through his youtube channel EngineerBruns where his off the wall humour style combined with super skilled machining has built a big following. For anyone who follows him you'll have noticed he's been pretty quiet for a while now. Being based in Ukraine his life has been turned upside down in the last few years and he still tries to produce some puzzles while also doing volunteer work for the army.
Sitting in a safe, comfortable house it really hits home when you watch one his most recent videos about how life has changed.
'What in other countries is a disaster or a tragedy, in Ukraine, we call - Tuesday.'
With calm stoicism he relates how he and his family are mostly safe but did have a drone shot down over the heads and a factory was bombed 200m from their house. If you want to get a feel for how things are we recommend checking out his channel.
You can really see the inspiration the war has on his machining with one of his previous puzzles being Bomb Destroyer and his latest Sniper Scope. For an outside observer it seems pretty dark creating these war themed puzzles but of course that is the reality of daily life for Andriy.
So to the puzzle itself. I had a chance to carve out some time over Christmas to sit down and work through it. The aim is to find a brass 'bullet' somehow and it looks pretty much like a sniper scope (I haven't ever seen one in real life but I imagine it looks very similar). There are dials that turn and ends that twist.
A small amount of just turning things and I discovered the first move which to be honest I didn't really realise at the time but after going back later discovered was not as easy to find as I had thought. Once that was done the next step was fairly intuitive some turning and tipping and I seemed to be making quick progress.
In the accompanying sheet from Andriy he advises working in a well lit space and to watch out for small parts coming out of the puzzle. The first part started to make sense and at this point I became stuck for a while.
Certain dials could be moved but seemed to move more than made sense and things would get stuck only to move again for some reason. After quite a while of trying to picture the internal mechanisms and trying to over complicate things I discovered I was doing things all wrong and the next move was another relatively simple one.
This next step then opens up the final part of the puzzle, from here the theme really comes into it's own. I found it fairly obvious what needed to be done and again an eagle eye was needed. Getting my sights sorted something dropped against my hand and dropped to the ground. Having of course ignored the advice to work over a table I found myself scrabbling around trying to find what turned out to be a tiny brass bullet and resurfacing with a smile on my face much to the bemusement of my other half.
Well the puzzle must be solved! It actually turns out re-setting it is also part of the puzzle and not as easy as you'd think.
So overall a really solid puzzle. Considering it is all machined by hand some really impressive work and it follows the theme of the puzzle quite well. I would say it is not an overly difficult puzzle, once you find certain moves working out what to do is not really hard. As a puzzle it's really unusual though and certainly worth a look if it's look appeals to you.
You can find the Sniper Scope Puzzle here.
