Teaser Balls - Anneke Treep/Christian Greeling by John Rausch

I never write about disentanglement puzzles but felt the need to mention this very cool puzzle by John, he recently posted about it in the Mechanical Puzzle group on Facebook:

“Between 15 and 20 years ago I made a quite a few Teaser Balls puzzles. When I took them to IPP or G4G, they were gone in a hurry. At one G4G I gave one to Jerry Slocum and Bill Cutler. The next morning Jerry told me he went to sleep with it unsolved on his chest. Looking down into the hotel atrium, I could see Bill meandering around with it unsolved. Lennart Green always wanted a bunch, and even asked if I could make a large version. I made a couple BIG ones from 3" balls and 11mm static climbing rope. I have no idea why he wanted them.

It's a deceptively difficult puzzle for most people. Untying the square knot for the first time is usually luck, but luck doesn't help much getting the square knot retied. There are a few ways it can be presented that make it more confusing, especially to someone who has solved one before. A good thing is it's almost impossible to make a mess of things. More often than that not, after doing some  things, you find yourself right back at the beginning. My name for it is "Back to Square One".

Teaser Balls was designed by either Anneke Treep or Christian Freeling. I'm not sure which one, but I always paid Anneke a royalty from selling them. I have been asked for them ever since, so I made up a bunch. I made them with both 2" with 6mm line, and 1.5" with 4mm line. The line is Climber's utility cord -- smaller, but the same as 11mm line.”