Nicholas Phillips earned his PhD in Physics from the University of Maryland-College Park. He worked with NASA for over a decade before leaving to start a second career as a woodworker in 2011.
During that time, he became fascinated with the Japanese technique of Yosegi, and the types of puzzle boxes it is often used to decorate. After years of experimenting, in 2016 he got the opportunity to study these techniques with their masters in Hakone, Japan. As he likes to say, his art/wood pieces are what happens when a mathematician takes up woodworking. He grew up in Fairfax City VA and now lives in Silver Spring MD.
The Farhan Ali Memorial Puzzle Box
a review by Bob NordlingAugust 11, 2018Ada Chest #2 ( aka 'The Secrets of a Happy Life' )by Nicholas PhillipsAffine Creations
It is fitting that our inaugural Curiosity Shoppe exploration be the design and construction of the 'Ada Chest #2' by Nicholas Phillips of Affine Creations. This puzzle box was commissioned in 2017 by the Curiosity Shoppe to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of our dear friend Farhan Ali, a 'student curator' and webmaster who supported the Curiosity Shoppe's first steps to create a 'public' presence.
Farhan, whose name in Arabic translates as 'happy', inspired his friends & teachers through his kind & generous actions, curiosity, and everpresent smile even as he struggled with cancer during his 8th & 9th grade years. The theme guiding the design of our puzzle was the discovery through perseverance of a 'secret' inside each opened draw, aka 'The Secrets of a Happy (Farhan) Life'. Each 'secret' was a traditional attribute of God etched on a wooden symbol which Farhan's life reflected for his friends: dependable, forgiving, gentle, grateful, kind, patient, wise, a friend, a designer.
But the question remained, who could create such a puzzle box, one with a solution guided by binary logic and the type of geometric patterns adorning Islamic art & sacred spaces? Months passed until I discovered a review of Nicholas Phillips' 'Binary Chest #1' on Allard Walker's 'Puzzling Times' UK blogsite. After rehashing the review several times, I headed to the Affine Creations website, all the while wondering where might a retired NASA mathematician turned 'Master Artisan in Wood' reside. Where might one of the rare westerners invited to Hakone Japan to study the Yosegi marquetry technique under a a 7th generation master have set up his workshop? Next to a Shinto shrine hidden in the dense forest at the foot of Mt. Hakone? The answer came as quite a surprise -- SIlver Spring MD just off the ever-congested Washington DC beltway and by happy circumstance a mere 5-mile detour on my way home from our school and Curiosity Shoppe.
That same week, Nicholas and I met to discuss the purpose & design of what would become the 'Ada Chest #2'. The exterior dimensions of the puzzle box are 14"w x 11"h x 6"d with 9 drawers in a 3 x 3 configuration. The external case is two-tone, the lighter wood being figured cherry with a shimmering finish. The sequence and number of simultaneously open drawers is determined by physically programmed wooden plates located between the levels. As each new drawer is opened, the puzzler discovers another 'secret of a happy life' inscribed on a 3" x 3" eight-pointed star (laser cut & inscribed by Dave Janelle, Creative Crafthouse). Currently there is one solution to the "Ada Box #2" discovered by three of our 'student curators' the night of the puzzle's unveiling. However, in the future Nicholas Phillips will be altering the box to include a second significantly more difficult solution which will serve as a milestone for our journeyman 'puzzle box specialists'.
The slideshow included with this exploration is a scaled down version of the presentation given by Nicholas Phillips at the unveiling ceremony of the 'Ada Chest #2' on November 2, 2017 at Glasgow Middle School (Alexandria, Virginia, US). In attendance were the parents, siblings, relatives, friends, and teachers of Farhan Ali. Nicholas' daughter, upon hearing of the purpose of the event purchased a beautiful plant which Nicholas presented to Farhan's parents after his presentation. Nicholas stayed well into the evening discussing with our 'student curators' what engineering & math careers are like in an organization like NASA and even demonstrated in the school's woodshop the techinque of shaving the thin Yosegi sheets which cover the drawers of the 'Ada Chest #2'.
Metagrobology (the study of mechanical puzzles) is a dynamic learning community of mathematicians, engineers, tinkerers, crafters, artists, researchers -- amateurs learning beside respected masters and over time vice versa. They are creators, collectors, and disseminators of intellectual delight and aesthetic experiences - pursuers of The True and The Beautiful. But also present in the mix, and not always as celebrated, is that the Puzzle Community has its share of pursuers of The Good. It is the persisent curious pursuit of these three classical triad of excellence that qualify Puzzlers (& Makers) as exemplars for contemporary K-12 education.
Other puzzles by Nicholas Phillips: Bernoulli Chest #1, Turing Chest, 'an unnamed box'