Frederic comes up with ingenious designs and this one is quite clever.
Tye from ‘Nothing Yet Designs’ offers this one in his shop and is well worth picking up.
There’s two different challenges to this one. Your first challenge is covering the ‘Y’ piece and it had me going in circles for a bit. The second challenge is equally as daunting to solve.
Symmetry puzzles can be some of the toughest to solve as they’re really hard to envision once completed.
I struggled for a while with this awesome design by Zohar even though there’s only two pieces!
I highly recommend dropping by ‘Nothing Yet Designs’ and grab yourself a copy.
I had a ‘3 The Peg’ and I found it to be a high quality metal puzzle so when this ‘Key Ring’ puzzle was released I certainly had to grab one from ‘Nothing Yet Designs’.
This puzzle had me stumped until I fully understood the clever mechanism. It’s not quickly understood and kept me guessing, I highly recommend this awesome puzzle.
Here’s the goal from MW Puzzles:
“Remove the key. Replace the key.”
Heres an ‘about us’ blurb from the MW website:
“MW Puzzles is the brainchild of Matthew Williams, a mechanical engineer from the UK.
MW Puzzles only offer premium, hand machined and hand tested metal puzzles.
Our run rate of each puzzle will be relatively low to allow us to focus on the quality.”
Box is made from:
Red Zebrawood
Zebrawood
Thuya Burl
Peruvian Walnut
Wenge/Holly Slipfeathers
Rare Earth Magnets
I received my copy of Mat’s ‘4 Directions’ which marks his foray into Japanese style puzzle boxes, what first struck me was its size, (it’s very reminiscent of Eric Fuller’s work RIP).
As most know Mat is an accomplished puzzle craftsman and has since taken seminars with Master Puzzle Box Craftsman Kagen Sound!
This is an absolutely gorgeous puzzle box that offers up four separate challenges of varying degrees of difficulty. Trust me when I say that you will regret not picking up this piece for your collection, Mat currently still has a few available of a rather small batch of 30.
My copy is #23
Please drop by Boxes & Booze’s to read a more in depth write up!
Here’s Mat’s description from Nedeljko Woodworks:
“4 Directions is the first Japanese style puzzle box designed and crafted by me! It has been in the design/prototype/testing and production mode for the past year and is now finally ready for release. This is a pull up style of puzzle box, where the goal is to open the box by moving the slider and the lid while navigating the hidden maze in order to free the lid. There are four separate challenges, North (Level 14), South (Level 19), East (Level 21) and West(Level 28). This puzzle is finely crafted from gorgeous golden brown Mahogany with Poplar as the secondary wood. Hand rubbed to a high gloss and silky smooth surface finish.”
Presentation Box is made from:
Frame is Bird’s Eye Maple
Sleeve is Yellowheart (removable)
Slipfeathers are Wenge
This cool animal themed puzzle follows Pelikan’s other puzzles as you can see from Kevin’s description below, however this one is a burr rather than an assembly type.
It features 6 burr pieces trapped in a ‘Crab’ frame, it’s very reminiscent of Alfons Baumegger’s style of burr puzzles. The craftsmanship is absolutely amazing with the fit tolerances spot on!
I also made a box to house this beauty..
My copy is #33 of 50
Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“I had to start with this one! It is just so cute! It is stunningly made from Bubinga, Wenge and Ash. This puzzle continues the line of the animal themed puzzles that Jakub and Jaroslav are producing from their own designs (I don’t actually know who is responsible for the actual design of these). So far we have had Turtles, Snail, and Ladybug. All of these have been Kumiki style puzzles that are interlocking rather than burr puzzles and have required less in the way of sequential move exploration than many of the burr puzzles have. I was sort of expecting something along those lines but very quickly realised that this is actually a framed burr with the exoskeleton of the crab being a frame and the main body being the burr sticks… Except these are not traditional burr sticks – some of them are hooked. The exploration of these is great fun with only a few short blind ends and some really interesting moves. I did get stuck for a little while towards the end of the first piece removal because I was not looking at it properly but found my way after a short break. After that short break I had my first piece removed and then the rest were removed relatively easily after that – the level given to me by Burrtools is 19.6.3.3.2 which is perfect for me. Having done my usual to and fro approach to the disassembly and retained the orientation of the pieces as they came out, I was even able to reassemble it all the way to the beginning from memory giving me a huge sense of achievement. I think that if the pieces were scrambled then only the very best of you would be able to manage this assembly from scratch.”
The Box Frame is Roasted Birch with Holly Slipfeathers, the Bottom is Canarywood with Wenge Slipfeathers. The Top is Canarywood & Tigerwood with Wenge Slipfeathers.
Tamas kindly sent me a copy of his wonderful design, shipping times across the continents seem to be quicker than ever and I received this in just over a week!
As you can see by the description below your goal follows the rules set out, I’ve also added photos showing the amount of work required for such a puzzle.
Here’s a description from Tamas:
“It has a frame included 15 pieces (with symbols) that cannot removed just slipping in it. It has 4 success pieces that can be remove (and can variable from its two side).
The rules are:
1. Put success pieces into right frame (the four black is always on bottom).
2. Rearrange symbol pieces to fit success pieces rules.
There are many solutions.”
