TIC Vault by Andrew Crowell

This design by Andrew is outstanding, melding Turning Interlocking Cube design with Sequential Discovery.  Most know many of his TIC designs and I’ve blogged about many but this puzzle box bumps it all up a notch!

Here’s Andrew’s description from his Shop:

“TIC Vault is a hybrid puzzle, combining Sequential Discovery puzzle box aspects with a Turning Interlocking Cube (TIC) puzzle.  The TIC portion has a unique feature, but should not frighten anyone, it just requires a bit of logic.  There are 2 goals to the puzzle. First, is to unlock the vault.  Second, is to find your unique ID number.  Because each puzzle will have a unique ID number associated with it.

I am not sure how I would categorize the number of steps involved in solving this puzzle.  If I include every step along the way including building the TIC, it could easily be over 30 steps... But I think it might be better to think of it in terms of sections and there are around 10 completely separate sections that have to be solved.

This design is without a doubt the most complex thing I have ever created. It weighs almost 2 pounds (about 1kg for you people who use logical units), and there are 44 separate pieces, 51 magnets, and dozens of moving parts.

Due to some smaller pieces, this puzzle is not suited for children.  Though I did let a 7 year old fiddle with it (while under adult supervision), and he had a lot of fun... though actually solving the puzzle was definitely beyond his ability.”