Drop Out - Stewart Coffin Design #202 by Henry Strout

This excellent puzzle was crafted by Henry and used as his Exchange puzzle at IPP 26 in Boston, Massachusetts.

I found this puzzle a lot of fun to play with!

Here’s Stewart’s description:

“For a while I became interested in the so-called sliding block puzzles, which I suppose don’t really belong in this book since they don’t usually come apart. But my favorite design, Drop Out, actually does come apart and so happily gains admission. The one square and four rectangular pieces slip and slide merrily around inside the rectangular tray with transparent cover. The round disk (ceramic magnet) is dropped in through a hole in the cover at one end, and the problem is to allow it to drop out the bottom hole located symmetrically at the other end. The smaller center hole is just for 

access to move the pieces about. It requires 26 moves, some of which are counter-intuitive when the disk is moving away from its goal. But the real fun begins when you hand it to someone already partially solved and let them easily finish it. “Nothing to it,” they say. “Oh sorry, I wasn’t watching. Could you please do it again?” So they drop the disk into the hole, and they can then shift the pieces back and forth until kingdom come without ever solving it because the other pieces got rearranged in the process. They must be restored by eight moves to their original positions as shown before starting again. Pretty neat, I thought.”