Snail by Pelikan

This cool puzzle is the second release in Pelikan’s Animal/Insect themed series.

There’s 8 pieces that interlock with each other as well as the base frame.  It’s really a lot of fun to play with and fairly confusing to reassemble unless you carefully note the disassembly.

My copy is #45 of 48

As can be seen in the photos I have made a presentation box for this cool puzzle using some nice Peruvian Walnut with Holly Slipfeathers and Roasted Ash Sleeve.

Kevin Sadler wrote about it:

“This is the second of the puzzles designed and made by Pelikan themselves (I really hope this becomes a series). Yet again it is a “creature” and this one is absolutely adorable. The snail is constructed from Am. Walnut and Maple with dowels to produce eyes on stalks. As before the aim is to disassemble it and then put it back together. It is not a difficult puzzle but the process is wonderful with a couple of nice little Aha! moments. You end up with quite a few pieces. I love it – it is fun to play with, good for beginners (as long as they can be trusted to be gentle with the fairly complex pieces) and will look great on display. It will be another one kept in the menagerie in my living room.”

Safe Keys by Tamas Vanyo

I received this cool puzzle directly from Tamas, he sometimes offers puzzles that he has crafted via his Facebook page and that’s how I got this one, which surprisingly only took 8 days to reach me from Hungary.

Your goal is to manipulate five keys and two sliders in an effort to completely disassemble it.  The metal ‘fob’ piece assures that you keep to a rather high move count of 59.2, in fact Tamas pointed this out in a note “the wire ring is foldable so you can rearrange the keys so the puzzle has more solutions.”

You would think that with the mechanism in full view that it would be rather trivial but it still has me stumped..?