Time Traveler 36/50 down to the last mile

[Again, being careful not to post spoilers that will ruin things for Ted. The description of the chains is taken verbatim from the rule book and I try to avoid giving too much away. That said the links to Flickr photos DO provide spoilers and do give away some of the secrets.]

Ok, since Saturday night, I stepped away from the puzzle, but Sunday was a new day and with the help of another friend we began fixing history.

As previously noted this is a four bolt () trick puzzle which means pieces go in multiple locations. I had already figured out the basic mechanics of the time machine portion of the puzzle so I knew where to begin searching for the chronological disturbances.

I started with the earliest one and began to work forward. Each disturbance is a chain of events. For example if you are looking in the 1400's (made up) for a disturbance, you might find something from the 1800's (also made up). That 1800's event needs to be put back into the 1400's and so on until you've unraveled that chain back to the key event that caused the problem.

As I began unraveling the chains I made some quick progress, but also some false starts. After all why was I ending up with pieces left over and empty interlocks? Most Stave trick puzzles come with a rules tableau that says this is a no-no. This one doesn't. Was that right? And what were these key events?

Needless to say this stumped me and my friend for quite a while and we took a dinner break.

After dinner, a new puzzling companion and I began again on the puzzle. First we set everything back to the initial assembly (except activation of the time machine) and then began a new to search the puzzle for anything out of place to see if a mistake had been made in making out the chains the first time. We came up with about five items that we had a hard time placing due to not being able to match pictures with items in the "Guide to the Millenium Book". Could those be involved in the tricks and the chains, maybe even the key items? But that didn't match up with the rule book.

Further, much as we tried solving the chains of tricks, we stubbornly ended up with extra pieces and extra open interlocks which was annoying and again, what the &*%^# was a key item.

Eventually, the puzzle mostly gave way. [Intentionally being vague here to avoid spoilers.]

That said, where I stand now is that I've identified all of the time disturbances and solved all of them except one last pair. I even managed to get a bit ahead of myself--and the instructions--and solve what I believe to be all of the remaining tricks in the puzzle, but I could be wrong. I did this by solving all of the tricks I could find involving the time machine itself.

Anyhow, I've got some spoiler photos up on flickr showing where I'm at, the Flickr comments provide some more color.

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Current status (although one trick is unsolved, I did get ahead of myself and solved some later tricks, do not believe that is preventing solution): SPOILER 1 -- almost done

Let's compare two photos:

Time Machine initial assembly: initial setup

And with all tricks solved: SPOILER 2 -- time machine fully active

Let's look at a century with a key item:

SPOILER 3 -- Key Item Pointed Out

The Intended Final Trick Result SPOILER 4