Caged Block Puzzle Box by Bill Shekels

Bill’s craftsmanship is really spectacular and this PuzzleBox is gorgeous.  One of my favourite woods is Lacewood so when I received a message from Bill I knew I just had to pick one up!

Drop by Bill’s Black Dog Puzzle Works to grab yourself a copy!

Here’s Bill’s description:

“It looks just like my "Caged Block Puzzle”, only it is bigger and has a hidden compartment. The object, of course, is to open the box. Difficulty of 3.”

Dimensions: (outside) 5 1/2" x 5 1/2" x 5 1/2”, (compartment) 2” x 2" x 2 1/2” Lacewood and Walnut

Coordinate Motion Puzzles - Kumikiya Nobu

 These three very cool Co-Mo puzzles are very intricately laser cut pieces with a Japanese coin trapped inside.

The three are Square, Pentagon and Hexagon, the sliding motion is very smooth but that all ends abruptly once they are disassembled, that’s when the puzzling starts..

Lazy salesman - Rik van Grol - IPP 29

Rik created this souvenir puzzle for the IPP 29 held in San Francisco in 2009.

Your goal is to wind the thread to all the locations on the map and ending with the red marking on the thread.

Rik wrote:

“You are likely to know the ‘Travelling Salesman Problem’ (TSP).  For those who do not:  the TSP is the problem of finding the shortest path between a number of locations.  The salesman may visit each location once.  The TSP is an NP-complete problem.

Rather than the shortest path, in this puzzle you have to deal with the ‘Lazy Salesman’.  He would like to take the longest path visiting each location, thus minimizing the number of clients he can visit during one working day.”

Mall-Function by Rik van Grol IPP 32

Rik designed this puzzle to reflect the location of the IPP 32 which was held in Washington DC in 2012.

Your goal is to place the tiles so that you loop the five sites and following the path around the ‘Mall’.

Complete insanity - Rik Van Grol - IPP 25

This puzzle was an exchange gift from Rik for the IPP in Helsinki, Finland in 2005.

Erika. B. Roldan Roa wrote an article called 'The Mutando of Insanity' and here’s an excerpt:

“In the book A Lifetime of Puzzles, Rik van Grol wrote a paper about the Insanity kind of puzzles. In this paper, he gave a wonderful account of the history of the ”Instant Insanity” puzzle and related puzzles.”

IPP 1819 Packing - Rik Van Grol - IPP 19

This is a cool assembly puzzle that requires you to change the number 18 to 19 to reflect the IPP that was held in London in 1999.

Rik wrote:

“This puzzle uses a subset of the set of shapes from ‘Rik’s Cube Kit’, which was the subject of my exchange gift for IPP 10 in London in 1989.”

Rik’s Egg Balance - Rik van Grol IPP 30

This clever little dexterity puzzle was designed by Rik for the IPP in Osaka and Hakone, Japan in 2010.

Here’s instructions from Rik:

“Standing the egg on its tip is a weight balance problem.  If you can’t get it to stand on its tip, you probably didn’t solve the puzzle yet…”

Brian Pletcher wrote:

“The goal of this puzzle is pretty classic: to get the egg to balance on its short end. This type of puzzle has been done a number of times and as Rob Stegmann notes, the U.S. Patent Office devotes an entire sub-class to "Balancing Ovoids" (ccl/273/154). This one is made out of plywood that has been laser cut and glued together.” 

To open space - Tatiana Matveeva IPP31 Berlin

I was completely stumped by this neat PuzzleBox.  Goetz helped with the opening sequence as I had pretty much tried everything I could think of!

“Reach Open Space”

“This puzzle is a exchange puzzle by Tatiana Matveeva for the International Puzzle Party 31 held in Berlin, Germany 2011

The puzzle is devoted to the flight of the first man in space Yuri Gagarin performed 50 years ago (April 12, 1961). This gave us the key TO OPEN SPACE.”

Hidden by Teijo Holmsten

This aptly named puzzle was quite a surprise for me as there are a couple of things required before solving.  It’s a very clever design with a twist at the end that I thankfully received help with from a fellow puzzler on the Discord.

Your goal is to separate the somewhat hefty pieces of Maple and Mahogany.

Teijo designed and made this for IPP 25 in Helsinki, Finland.

Plop by Stephan Baumegger

 

This puzzle is basically a six piece burr with each piece attached to a rectangular frame or ‘Ring’ similar to Hajime Katsumoto’s clever ‘Burr with Rings’ design.  Stephan however has bumped up the level count to 12 with his awesome puzzle!

Stephan cuts out his frame pieces from one piece of wood, which really adds a nice touch to his puzzles, if you’ve never had one of his puzzles in your collection I urge you to head on over to his ‘Puzzleisure’ page on Facebook to order some.  

Squary Pack No.7 by Yavuz Demirhan

 

This cool packing puzzle is the seventh design in this series.  This is my first experience with this series so can’t really comment on it’s difficulty level compared to any of the others but it’s certainly not trivial.  Yavuz’s craftsmanship is certainly top notch!

Here’s an excerpt from ‘Five Sinatras Blog’ about this series:

“Some puzzles push out into their own territory, their movements and solution sitting somewhere amidst or between those that already exist. Yavuz Demirhan’s Squary Pack series is a great example of such a design: they are 2D/3D packing sliders that require you to navigate four dual-leveled pieces through a restricted one-piece-size opening at the center of the space to cover the bottom of the square box. The pieces are all flat-bottomed, with various voxels of different dimensions further complicating the solution, requiring you to slide your pieces around as you attempt to find a way to insert whichever piece needs to go in last; some of the series are further encumbered by blocks affixed to the box. You need to get all pieces in with the blocks facing up and you will find varying degrees of difficulty identifying where and when in the dance of pieces you can insert the final pieces.”

Ironing by Hideaki Nikikawa - KCG

I’m always impressed by the Japanese PuzzleBox Masters and this ‘themed’ masterpiece is particularly exquisite!

Here’s the description from Karakuri:

“This work was produced by Karakuri Creation Group’s craftsmen, from a selected idea of “12th Karakuri Box Idea Contest”.

The size of the plug and iron are overtly emphasized. Please enjoy the unbalance.

The knob on the drawer is cute and is designed as a button.

Think about the mechanism... If there is no electricity the iron can’t work. When you figure it out, the drawer will finally open.”

Crafted in Cherry - Maple - Walnut

Original idea by Yuri Nishikawa 

Push Box by Simon Nightingale

 

This PuzzleBox is very cool, I’m quite impressed by Simon’s use of ‘Corian’ which gives it a unique feel, while the design is outstanding!

Jerry Loo wrote:

“The Push Box Puzzle came courtesy of Simon Nightingale during the IPP34 puzzle exchange. If you didn't already know, Simon was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for the 2014 IPP34 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design competition for his "Six Locks 2 Keys" puzzle.

The Push Box is made from Corian (the stuff that you would normally find on kitchen and sink counter tops). The puzzle is pretty heavy and well made in a nice light blue colour. The joint lines are well hidden and not obvious at all. It looks like Simon had dug out the insides to create the box. I am not sure how strong Corian is but I would think the box would likely crack if dropped onto a hard floor from anything more than 3 feet. The object is the push and "open the box" like a drawer.

The drawer is spring loaded and allows for some movement (several mm) inwards but there is hidden mechanism which keeps the drawer from coming out of the box. Inside there are a couple of ball bearings spinning around, which may or may not have anything to do with the locking mechanism (yes, there are some puzzles where ball bearings are red herrings; serve no function but to merely to confuse).

I fiddled with the puzzle for a while, trying to guess how the drawer is locked inside the box and how the ball bearings come into play. I pushed and released the drawer over and over again, turned the box at all sorts of angles and in all orientations, and all of a sudden, pop out comes the drawer. The drawer cannot be fully withdrawn and part of it remains inside the box. Again I am not sure if the drawer is intended to fully come out, but I don't think so. And the box also cannot be taken apart.

I managed to solve it a couple more times, more through trial and error, but not fully understanding how the hidden mechanism/trick works, at least not until I see the inside.”

Please check out Jerry’s blog

Small Box No.8 by KCG

This diminutive PuzzleBox has a neat opening sequence that I’ve never seen before, here’s the description from Karakuri:

“Karakuri Small Box #8” was created based on “3D Box (K-20)”. “3D Box” was created 10 years ago. If you know the “3D Box”, maybe you are one of the veterans about Karakuri Works. 3 bars cross in a cube, and they influence each other. Of course, this works also has a space inside. The bars are unstable while making this work. It makes difficult to make. Especially, we need to pay attention to the process to make.”

Crafted from Keyaki - Walnut

Oli wrote:

“I think it's safe to say that No.8 is the odd one out in this little series of puzzle boxes. It is completely different from the others in several ways. Although it is symmetrical, it does not have even sides, you can see two wood colours on the outside (keyaki and walnut) rather than just the one and also it has no visible logo.

No.8 was actually designed by Akio Kamei and used as an exchange puzzle at IPP16 under its original name 3D Box. As a puzzle it again isn't very difficult, but I do like the solution. It has a very satisfactory feeling when opening, although it could take some practice to get the method just right. This box is no longer produced by the Karakuri Creation Group due to the difficulty of manufacturing and subsequent failure rate.”

Self Titled by Tito

I received a gift of this wonderful puzzle from Tito that he not only designed but crafted into a packing puzzle that is surprisingly difficult!

This clever design started as an assembly puzzle with two solutions so it was later tweaked to a packing puzzle with a unique solution!

Here’s Tito’s description:

"Self Titled is a restricted packing puzzle with a unique solution that originated from my efforts to teach myself Burr Tools.  My initial goal was to make a 3x3 cube assembly with one solution, using pieces that looked like the letters in my nickname, Tito.  I was able to create this, but it used redundant pieces and was quite bland, so I attempted to find a 4x3 brick with the same criteria.   I then found a configuration of 8 different pieces that formed a solid brick, but there were two solutions.  I sent a prototype of "Tito's Brick" to John Devost, who seemed to enjoy the design and encouraged me to craft a finished version enclosed in a box.  As a budding woodworker I took this opportunity to learn some basic woodworking skills to create a nicer hardwood version, but I was still unhappy with it having more than one solution.  After some thought and experimentation with adding restrictions to the box, Self Titled was born."

Wormhole Burr by Juno

I was fortunate to have acquired this Juno puzzle in a swap!

Be sure to see what’s available at Pluredro

Here’s Juno’s description:

“This is a kind of board burr which consists of six board-shaped pieces with one inflated end. The puzzle has a unique level 17-1-2 solution. There are only five assemblies to the puzzle, so by checking which piece can go where, a good solver may be able to find the solution without computer aid.

The light-colored timber used for the end pieces is the sapwood of a Bubinga and it is prone to grub (tiny insect) holes. We chose not to fill them, so pieces may have visible holes. Please be aware of this when placing your order. Three of the six pieces are reinforced with bamboo dowels to give extra durability since quite deep checkouts are made and the pieces would split following the grain if too much force is given without reinforcement.

We couldn't decide on the name of the puzzle until the last minute, so Juno desperately named it Wormhole Burr because it has worm holes. He also designed the puzzles Pulsar Burr and Black Hole Burr in the past so he can say the puzzle is one of the universe series.”

Crooked 6 Board Burr #2 by Juno

This is another Board Burr from the brilliant puzzle craftsman Juno, drop by Pluredro  and snag yourself a copy!

Bottom photos show the Test version that I won at Juno’s animal welfare auction that preceded the sale copy release.

Here’s Juno’s description:

“This is a fun, "what the heck is going on" kind of burr puzzle. If you make the first move from the assembled shape, you will know that this burr is not normal at all. It looks like an ordinary 6 board burr, but the opposite ends of the pieces that appear to be connected are not connected. Each piece has a crooked shape, and the concept of the puzzle is very similar to one of our products Crooked 6 Piece Burr. The burr makes a very unusual transformation and it is very confusing to solve despite smaller steps of a level 9 solution.

In 1998, Juno designed the first version of the Crooked 6 Board Burr in a simpler configuration consisting of three sets of mirror image pieces, but he himself never built the actual product. Decades later, he looked back on his old design and decided to produce a more challenging puzzle with the same concept. The new version can be solved without computer aids because the number of six assemblies is relatively small, but that does not mean it is easy.

Due to the nature of the puzzle design, each piece tends to move in all directions and may not seem to stand on its own. Therefore, we set two magnets in each piece, for a total of 12 magnets, to stabilize the puzzle. This modification has resulted in a much better feel when playing with the puzzle.

It was difficult to produce this puzzle with good accuracy and tolerances. A board burr puzzle requires higher durability because of the shape of the pieces, so we used our original plywood, and two elements were glued together using tongue and groove joinery to form each piece.”

Partially Crooked 6 Board Burr by Juno

This is another Board Burr from the brilliant puzzle craftsman Juno, drop by Pluredro and snag yourself a copy!

Here’s Juno’s description:

“This is a hybrid design of a normal 6 Board Burr and a Crooked 6 Bobard Burr. Since crooked 6 Board Burrs do not seem to have higher level solution due to the shapes of the pieces, Juno decided to make only three pieces crooked out of the consisting six board shaped pieces in this design. It was a good guess and his piece selection was successfully derived with a unique solution of a level 15-5-1-2 puzzle, a large number for a 6-piece burr.

The puzzle can be solved by a human being without computer aids even if you are handed the puzzle disassembled. There are only six assemblies, and carefully observing which piece can possibly fit where, you will eventually be able to find the assembly that leads to the solution.

As with many of our board burr puzzles, our original plywood is used for the puzzle. This time, Fijian Mahogany is used for the outer layer and New Guinea Walnut for the middle layer. For some reason, Juno forgot to brand his work and discovered this when we were taking product photos. It was a bit too risky to add branding after the pieces were glued and lacquer coated, so we decided to leave it be. We hope that the work itself tells that this is our product.”