It’s been a couple of weeks since my last puzzle blog post. Hence I thought this weekend, I will write about this wooden puzzle box that captured my intrigue.

Of Mice & Mazes is a rather interesting looking puzzle box. Designed, manufactured by Thomas Beutner, it was also his Exchange Puzzle at IPP38 in San Diego this past August. It’s an all wooden puzzle box. At first glance, I even thought it looked very much like a Karakuri styled box from the Japanese master craftsmen. Measuring 13cm x 9cm x 5.3cm, the box is constructed out of glued strips/layers of wood. The outer surface is some sort of light coloured veneer. It has a round ball knob at one end of the box. Obviously for the purpose of pulling out the drawer. And on top there is a little wooden mouse “attached” by a magnet. Construction, fit and finish is more than good enough for an exchange puzzle, but of course, not to the level of Karakuri quality.

The object is to open the box and retrieve a deck of cards stored within. I would classify this puzzle as a “sequential discovery” puzzle where the trick to solving the puzzle is to use whatever “tools” that come with the puzzle. But you need to “find” those tools first. Take a look at the Angel Box for instance.

Solving the Mice & Mazes box took a bit of fiddling and experimentation. I started with the obvious of tugging at the knob and expected, I could pull a drawer out but only partially. I was stuck at this stage for a while. So I decided on a more careful examination of the box. In doing so, I was able to successfully navigate four or five other steps which eventually saw me extracting the drawer. Inside the drawer was a deck of new unopened cards. A quick check with the provided solution confirmed that I had solved the puzzle box correctly. Oh by way, no force whatsoever was needed too.

The mechanism/trick of the drawer is rather clever, and so is the solution. What aided my solve was that I was able to see part of the insides which gave me the idea for the solution. Made it much easier of course! And where does the mouse feature in all this?…for those who have this puzzle, I will leave you guys to figure out for yourselves!

The deck of cards itself is not an ordinary deck but came from a Kickstarter project according to Thomas. These cards called “Bicycle Mazing Playing Cards” are “maze cards” (hence the name of the puzzle) and every card in the deck has a picture of a maze.

Reassembly was just the reverse and I easily got all the parts back to original. Overall a nice puzzle box with an interesting design and trick to it. 

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It’s been several weeks since my last puzzle blog post. Sorry, I was very busy with work and other commitments. I had also spent quite a bit of time producing and listing new puzzles in my shop. If anyone is interested to see what is available, please feel free to click here.

Just last week, my friend Frederic Boucher emailed me to say he was sending a new puzzle design of his for me to try. I received it this mid this week. I always look forward to Frederic’s puzzles.  He has this uncanny knack of coming up with designs that are rather unusual. Not only that, he designs different puzzles across several genres as well. Click here and you will know what I mean.

There are many good puzzle designers out there and the puzzle community knows who these folks are. But many of them focus on just one or two particular categories, most typically interlocking burrs, dissection and packing puzzles, just to name a few. Well, Frederic is a bit of a Jack of several trades; which is good, because I never know what I will receive from him. Its usually a surprise!

LOOKS DECEIVE!

The puzzle consist of an ordinary square box with an acrylic cover (which can be removed). The pieces are all identical rectangular shaped sticks. All contain either one or two magnets embedded within except for one piece. The size is about 5.5cm x 5.5cm x 3.6cm. Quality of construction, fit and finish is very good. The pieces fit nicely into the box with just enough tolerance.

Anti-Gravity Box is a 3D packing puzzle. The goal is to place the box on a flat surface and fit all 6 pieces into the box through the two holes on the side. Really nothing to it it seems. Except there are certain restrictions which make this a much more challenging puzzle than it looks. Firstly, you can’t move the box like shake or tilt it etc to get the sticks to move inside. Secondly, you can only use your fingers and the sticks to aid in moving the other sticks. You also cannot turn the box upside down. The lid must remain on top except for reset and storage.

With all these rules in place, the difficulty quotient goes up many notches. Oh, there are those magnets there as well. They are either there to help or hinder, depending on how you want to look at it. When you start playing, they’re both, as I discovered.

GREAT DESIGN AND GREAT FUN

To solve the Anti-Gravity Box, a bit of thinking (in fact quite a lot, for me at least) of thinking outside the box is required (no pun intended). I don’t want to place any spoilers here but there is a sequence to follow, just like how an interlocking burr works. Pull or push the wrong piece or in the wrong direction and you are stuck.

I had to reset (dump out the pieces inside) the puzzle well over half a dozen times and plan (and re-plan) the moves before I finally got the last piece into the box as intended. Any one who has studied some basic science would know that magnets attract and repel and this had to be taken into consideration as well. Very challenging to say the least and a fair amount of dexterity is also required. I checked my solution against Frederic’s and yes, mine and his were about the same. It take approximately 18 moves to fully pack in the 6 pieces.

Overall, a rather unique and I would say, a very clever design. I enjoyed the thinking process and the fun factor was great. Challenging but not to the extent you would want to tear your hair out. Just need to ponder the moves ahead to save you all the trial and error. A must have for packing puzzle enthusiasts.

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