* Revised - 23 Sep 2019
This is another of Carl Hoff's creations. As was also the case with WOW5, he adapted one of Bram Cohen's designs (SIXTH SENSE) so that the woven section was now spread over the whole ring.
This means that the re-sizing of rings (apart from a bit of stretching) is not possible, so once again I need to have a whole bunch of masters, one set for each whole ring-size. And once again (as with WOW5) these masters were created by simply scaling the 3D modeling, so as the size of the ring increases so do all the other dimensions as well.
Since WASS (Wrap-Around Sixth Sense) lacks a certain appeal, he changed Sense to Perception, and in this manner WASP was born.
It has taken a long time to see the light of day, for the simple reason that once again Carl couldn't find anyone to solve it after he had created it. This resulted in it sitting neglected for something like a year.
Since I'd had so much practice assembling Sixth Sense I offered to try my hand at solving WASP, so was sent a large colour-coded sample plus another smaller sample, both of them in the solved state.
And if you're wondering how I could have samples in the solved state when I've just finished saying that no-one knew how to solve it, the answer is simple. Shapeways (the company that 3D-printed the samples) has machines that are able to print rings in the solved state, after adding a small (0.3mm) tolerance so that the bands aren't actually touching each other. Without that added tolerance the bands would fuse together where they touched each other.
Anyway, my experience with Sixth Sense came to naught, since WASP solves in a completely different way. Also, I'm not particularly interested in solving puzzles, so after my initial efforts I too left it sitting on a shelf gathering dust.
Eventually I had the bright idea to ask a Chinese customer of mine for his help.
had already demonstrated considerable talent for solving puzzles by quickly (at least by my standards) solving his WOW5, even though he had asked for its markings to be removed before I sent it to him, and had not referred to the assembly video. As it turns out he used to enter Rubik's cube speed-solving competitions quite frequently a few years ago (competition ID 2009FENG08), while his last competition was in Turkey in January this year.
He agreed to help, so I sent both samples to him. By chance work required him to travel for a while, so I didn't hear from him for some time, but in the end he came through, and provided a video showing me how to assemble it. Unfortunately for him, in the meantime another customer,
had stolen his thunder.
She had previously asked me which of my rings were the hardest to solve, and I had mentioned in passing how WASP was sitting doing nothing because no-one had been able to solve it.
Unbeknown to me, Jen took this as a challenge and proceeded to buy a large copy from Carl's Shapeways shop. It would have made the rest of us look better if she had had to struggle mightily to tame the beast, but the fact is that she had done so within hours of first starting.
I knew nothing about this until I received an email from her, and an assembly video as well.
Eventually (after Carl had provided me with another colour-coded sample) the time came for me to tackle WASP myself, at which point I had a brief look at both the assembly videos, to see which one I would start with. This was an easy decision, since Cheng had used my colour-coded sample in his video, while Jen's sample, having been purchased directly from Shapeways, was of a uniform colour.
Using Cheng's video as a starting point I was able to streamline and make more clear the process involved in getting WASP to behave itself, and then made my own video, with which Carl was then able to finally solve his latest masterpiece.
Now that WASP had been tamed Carl decided he wanted to use it as his Exchange Gift for this year's IPP (held in early August), and since one of the conditions for the exchange gift is that it must not have been available commercially beforehand the idea was that I would have WASP ready for release on my website as soon as the IPP concluded. Things haven't worked out that way however, and although the IPP is already over for another year WASP is still nowhere to be seen.
* WASP is now released - 30 Sep 2019