I return to JL Puzzles for a quick follow-up to last month’s Flight Case post. As it turns out, I actually own two Smetsers items. When I purchased Flight Case, I couldn’t resist getting Leo Smetsers’ other trick “box” called The Vault. It is worthy of the name, I assure you. But before we get to that I need to provide a little snippet of information on Flight Case that I forgot to mention last time. Although produced and sold by Leo Smetsers, the Flight Case mechanism (or loading principle, as they say in the trade) was developed by fellow magician Gijs Benneheij who hails from Limburg, Netherlands. Credit where credit is due.

Now back to The Vault. I should start off by stating up front, in no uncertain terms, that The Vault is NOT a puzzle box. Unlike Flight Case, it is quit impossible to open this box from the outside once locked. So don’t rush out and buy this expecting a cool, refreshing solving challenge. Why am I reviewing it on a puzzle blog, you ask? Well, simply put, because bloggers like Jerry and my day-job boss Kevin let me get away with it. It’s as simple as that. But there is actually a puzzle element to The Vault which I will divulge at the end of the post, so read on.

The Vault is a very high quality machined aluminum box composed of four basic elements: a box frame, a half-cylinder lid, a stainless steel rod to bind them, and a diminutive padlock that secures the whole affair. The box frame is fashioned from separate front, rear, side, and bottom panels. The front and rear are anodized black while the sides and bottom are polished to a mirror finish. Four screws secure the front and rear panels. The semi-cylindrical lid is especially beautiful. It supplies the box with a cross-section appropriate to its moniker. The interior floor and walls are carpeted in velvet to prevent unwanted noise when an item is magically deposited. In the buttoned-up state it is quite hefty, considering its size, and feels very solid in the hand. It could surely be scuffed and dinged if abused, but it is not likely to ever break. All said, it is a very fine piece of work. All this beauty and craftsmanship however, does come at a price. The Vault retails for US$150.

Now, if it is not a puzzle box (i.e., not solvable) what exactly is it? In today’s parlance, it is known as a Lippincott box. This is a handy shorthand used by the magic crowd for a whole family of boxes, most of which employ similar mechanisms. The name comes from Mal Lippincott’s Quarter Go, which hit the market in 1949. Although Mal was quite successful with his product, the box and mechanism actually date back quite a bit further. From what I gather, the earliest published version of such a box is in Professor Hoffman’s 1876 Modern Magic. This audience is surely familiar with Professor Hoffman (pen name of Angelo Lewis) from his 1893 Puzzles Old and New, the bible for collectors of older puzzles. Much as we puzzlers would like to think that Hoffman was a fellow puzzle guy, it appears that magic was his first and best love. He wrote four books on magic between 1876 and 1918. Professor Hoffman can, in a certain sense, be considered the original spoiler for magic. Prior to his publications, magic was a highly secretive, well-guarded art form. That is still true today, to some extent, but after Hoffman the cat was out of the bag (excuse me, the rabbit was out of the hat). It was bound to happen at some point, of course. Today you could fill a library with books on magic.

In Modern Magic we find a nice puzzle box in the form of the Watch Box (pp. 219-220), which can be solved from the outside. As you know, Hoffman’s books are simply compendia of tricks and puzzles known at the time, so the actual “invention” of the mechanism must date even earlier, perhaps very much earlier. It seems that the Lippincott mechanism is a variation on the Watch Box, made smaller for a coin and, critically important, not openable from the outside. Although a “Lippincott” box should probably only refer to such unsolvable boxes, it seems that the term is now widely used for either internally or externally open-able boxes.

It would be the very definition of bad taste to reveal the secret of the Lippincott mechanism here, so of course I won’t. But the interested read can find plans, explanations, and how-to’s all over the interweb. For the solver, it will likely be the solvable versions that are of most interest. The renaissance puzzler, however, with an abiding interest in all puzzle-adjacent phenomena, may find it unobjectionable to own an impossible box like The Vault. As a bonus, that routine you’ve been working on with Flight Case can be used equally well with The Vault.

I promised to provide a puzzle aspect for The Vault, so here it is, simple though it be. In order to have a problem to solve, you first need to resist the urge to research The Vault, Lippincott, or anything related. Simply order The Vault and 1) figure out the mechanism (not hard for a true puzzler), and 2) figure out to vanish and reappear items. How do you do magic with a box you can’t get into? You can check your answer against the video provided by Smesters (it comes with the box). You don’t have to be a magician to figure it out, just work deductively. As for convincingly performing the vanish/reappear? That, my friends, requires practice.

OK, that concludes my short but sweet second JL Puzzles guest blog post. A warm mahalo nui loa to Jerry for once again giving me space here. I promise to review a proper puzzle next time around!

The post The Vault – Guest Post By Mike Desilets appeared first on JL Puzzles.

Before I go any further, yes, you are at the correct blog! This is JL Puzzles, not a certain other highly esteemed blog I frequent. I have not turned colors, just indulging in a bit of moonlighting between Puzzlemad assignments. Jerry has very graciously offered me space here to write and I thought it best to take full advantage. What I post here at JL Puzzles will be a little different from my current fare. The intent is to put out shorter, quicker posts on individual puzzles. Something easier and faster that won’t take up my whole weekend, but which will still be of interest to the solver/collector/designer community. It remains to be seen if I can actually pull that off. It’s hard to sit down and write, but once I do things seem to get away from me.

So today let’s look at a puzzle which wasn’t even intended as a puzzle, per se, the Flight Case. You may recall a blog article a couple years back concerning a pair of de facto puzzle boxes produced by Joe Porper? Flight case is along these lines. Precisely along these lines. It is a “gimmicked” box employed by magicians to convincingly, and impossibly, disappear and reappear items. Although primarily useful for magical routines, it is also very interesting as a puzzle box.

Flight Case was designed and produced by working magician Leo Smetsers from Holland. As such, it comes complete with a routine which, with a little practice, even I could pull off. But that was not my intent in purchasing it. I wanted to solve the box.

Upon arrival of my Flight Case, I duly locked it with the miniscule brass padlock provided and then proceeded to explore. Within about 10 minutes, trying this and that, I managed to get it open. The mechanism is actually very simple, but also well hidden. Quite invisible, in fact. Examination of the exterior provides no clue to the mechanism, although there is plenty of room for speculation. In terms of difficultly, I would say it is moderate to low for the experienced puzzler. It is much easier than Strong Box 2.0 and perhaps equivalent to Strong Box original. It could be handed out for examination during a routine, but not for too long!

How does it fly?

Although Flight Case is not difficult from a solving perspective, I think it would be of interest to serious puzzle box aficionados. Difficulty is not necessarily the defining quality in a puzzle box. Craftsmanship, beauty, and design ingenuity all play their part. Certainly within the very narrow subcategory of trick magic boxes, Flight Case stands out as a very high quality item on all counts. It functions flawlessly with perfect fit between moving parts.

Construction-wise, with its faux-wood panels and riveted aluminum and steel frame, it stands apart from everything else I have seen. I’m not a puzzle box guy by any means, but I do keep my eye on them (often lustfully). Like the best puzzle boxes, Flight Case is a hand-crafted item made in small numbers, usually to order. The price reflects this, running north of 200 USD. Though not in the stratospheric range like some boxes, it is a serious purchase.

I wouldn’t recommend Flight Case to anyone who is principally interested in the solving aspect. It probably won’t provide sufficient value based on that criterion alone. But if you take the broader view, this box may be something to consider. There are a very small number of high quality trick boxes produced by the magic folks. Joe Porper’s Strong Boxes are probably the premier example, but Leo Smetsers’ Flight Case is in the same class and is a necessary item for the committed collector. And hey, once you have it, why not put it to use? The routine can be mastered by anyone willing to put in practice time. It would be great for friends and family entertainment. And on the practical side, it’s the only way to get full value for your money.

That concludes my short but sweet maiden JL Puzzles blog post. Thanks so much Jerry for this opportunity! Back over to you….

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A big thank you to Mike for a very nice write up on the Flight Case. I am already looking forward to his next article!

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One of the puzzles I picked up during the Puzzle Party was the Hanayama Cast Arrows. It’s the latest puzzle in the Hanayama stable. At the time of this writing, the Cast Arrows has still not be released outside of Japan. Those interested in purchasing may try Ebay Japan. I got my copy from the good puzzle folks of Torito Japan. Lucky me, it was also the last copy they had.

The Cast Arrows was designed by my puzzle friend from Russia Andrei Ivanov. Made of cast alloy, the Cast Arrows consist of 4 arrow shaped pieces and a heart. The puzzle comes with the arrows all arranged in one direction “pierced” through a hole in the heart. The hole is a rectangular slot and has some grooves cut along the insides. The object is to remove the 4 arrows from the heart.

All the 4 arrows look identical and most puzzlers would probably look at the grooves and notches and come to the conclusion that these are useful for positioning the arrows through the heart. The space of the slot is rather limited and only one arrow can come out at a time. The challenge is how to get the first arrow out.

simple looking and is anything but…

The Cast Arrows is rated 3 out of 6 stars by Hanayama, meaning it’s of average difficulty. But I would personally assess it to be at least 3.5 or 4 stars. While it is not frustratingly difficult, it is pretty tricky.

I spent quite a bit of time studying the pieces to see if they yielded any clues. None I could find, at least on the surface. All looked the same shape and size. Next using the trial and error method to see if by chance I could pop out an arrow, but no luck. Most of the time, after what I had thought would be the correct positions of the arrows within the slot for removal, I was confronted with a quiver of stuck arrows. And had to start over again.

But my puzzliing experience as taught me that one cannot defy physics. Given Hanayama’s tight tolerances for their puzzles, I know that somewhere within the puzzle, there must be a way to remove an arrow(s) without use of any force. And like many Hanayama puzzles, there is usually a correct starting point for the solve if you know just where where to look. I won’t say more as I don’t wish to publish any spoilers here. All in, it took me well over half an hour before I managed to get the first arrow out. Very “elegant” and smooth solution…but not obvious at all.

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A while back, I had designed a 3D Skull using Burr Tools. I planned to use this design but there was only one (major) problem; I could only fabricate the steel pieces by laser cutting. Which meant that I could only cut on flat sheets of steel, not in 3D shapes like those done by CNC machining. Given this limitation, I had to re-design my Skull entirely.

After a week or so of designing on and off, my ninth revision resulted in my “final” design. With the help of my friend and fellow puzzler Rex Perez who created the design in DWG format, I was ready to have Skull fabricated. The plan was to use 5mm thick 304 stainless steel like the Dirty Dozen. Completed and assembled, the puzzle would measure about 55mm x 35mm x 30mm. I took the opportunity to try out two other metal cutting vendors instead of the one who did the cutting for my Dirty Dozen. Files were emailed and payments made. A week later I received 25 loose pieces from each of the vendors.

The 3-unit locking piece that goes right through and into the top of the skull

Skull with shaky bones

The first prototype from Vendor A was a dismal “failure”. The tolerance was so tight that the pieces could not fit at all. I could use a small file to sand down the pieces, but too much work. Wasted effort and money. The second Vendor B’s work is what you see here. All 25 pieces fit nicely, but with a bit too much free play between the pieces. A lot of shaking and rattling! Rex commented that the power output of the laser may have been too high. Thus “burning” away too much metal, making the notches and grooves bigger than intended. But at least when assembled, a semblance of a skull comes into play. You can recognize that the puzzle is a skull afterall. Another saving grace is that with the little 3-unit locking piece in place, none of the pieces will fall apart even when shaken hard.

As of this post, I have just finished design revision #14. A much improved design with re-shaping almost every piece. In fact its now been reduced to 24 pieces only. See the screen shot of the Burr Tools file shown here. In theory at least, the whole puzzle is better reinforced and supported and should not shake and rattle so much if the tolerances are improved. I will go for a second prototype. Have to explain to the fabricator how the pieces are supposed to work (they have no idea what the pieces are for!). Hope this one will turn out better.

The post 3D Puzzle – Berro(Skull) appeared first on JL Puzzles.

I have been very fortunate to get my hands on Shane’s Haleslock 2 and Haleslock 4 previously as well as a couple of his other non-lock wooden puzzles The Circle and Turn The Plug. All fantastic puzzles! The Haleslock 3 comes to me courtesy of Peter Hajek during the IPP37 Puzzle Exchange in Paris last year.

Shane has based his Haleslock 3 on one of these old lever padlocks. The lock comes with a key and has a shiny brassy looking front plate with a little sliding door. Externally nothing very unusual about the look and feel of the lock, so Shane must have done something to the internal mechanism to make it a puzzle lock.

simple elegant solution…but damn, i am nowhere near!

Having played with Shane’s Haleslock 2 and 4 (and a number of Popplocks), I thought I would have more experience and figure out this one pretty quickly. But apparently not. The key goes in as one would expect and even turn in both directions. At various points there is resistance when turning the key and this was all I managed to find out and the progress I made. Which was not a lot.

I tried the usual prodding of the rivets, maybe something would move (a trick I learnt from one of the Popplocks) but nothing budged. I also examined the lock a lot more closely after my “slip-up” with the Haleslock 2 but there was nothing unusual I could find.

After spending the better part of several days on and off trying this and that without any success, I threw in the towel and emailed Shane for a clue. Over the course of our email exchanges, I realised that the clues he shared with me were already some of the things that I had done, but perhaps not “far reaching enough” or the right way. Finally after some more trying, wa-lah… the shackle unlocked.

Like most puzzle locks, you cannot see the internal mechanism with the lock in the solved state. Re-locking the shackle were the steps in reverse. And I was able to do it without a cinch.  Essentially, the solution lies in just a few steps…of course easy to state now on hindsight. A rather elegant solution I might add.

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This rather unusual disentanglement puzzle came to me courtesy of Roxanne Miller during the IPP37 Puzzle Exchange.  For those who attended IPP last year and did an exchange with Roxanne, you will have realised that there is a certain sort of theme going on. Planned by Roxanne (and George Miller) of course. This theme runs through the outfits (or lack thereof) which Roxanne and George wore during the Exchange, right through to the puzzle itself and its packaging.  Rather devilish you might say!

Where’s the serpent?

The object of Adam & Eve is to “get the heads of Adam and Eve together”. At the starting position, Adam & Eve are joined somewhere around the lower limbs. The trick is to be able to navigate the two parts around and “along” each other to the final position as shown. It might have been relatively easy if the two circular metal rings and the red apple on the chain had not been present. The way the metal part have been bent and cut also causes some restrictions of movement.

I spent a while experimenting how the two figures interacted with each other, how to move Adam and Eve and so on. Not easy but later I figured out that I had to “dump” the apple to progress. It looks impossible to do so but like all good disentanglement puzzles, there is way of solving which is not obvious. Eventually with further trial and error, I got the two heads to lock together.

If I can solve this one without help, I would imagine that wire and disentanglement enthusiasts would not have a problem with this one. Its challenging no doubt but not frustratingly difficult at least IMHO. It will not get you into knots which you can’t extricate yourself, unlike some types of really complicated wire and rope puzzles. If that really happens, you can always dismantle the chain holding the apple. The Adam & Eve is one of those puzzles with just the right level of difficulty for an Exchange Puzzle. And did I mention that it was pretty fun to play with too? Nice design theme and concept, great to look at and a must-have for collectors.

The post Adam & Eve appeared first on JL Puzzles.

The Concentric Arc is a maze puzzle.  On both discs  there are curved channels cut out. These form 3 layers of “concentric circles” spanning out from the centre. The puzzle is made of trespa, a strong and durable material widely used for home table surfaces. The puzzle is precision laser cut and the quality of construction and finish is very good.

To solve, one needs to rotate the two discs (held together at the centre by screw) and navigate a rivet “floating” along the maze channels to a point where it can be fully removed. And to remove the rivet, the round hole on the top disc must coincide with a similar hole on the bottom disc.

OH NO!, another maze puzzle which i can’t solve?

When I first looked at the Concentric Arc, it reminded me of the Cross & Crown, Dr Goetz Schwandtner’s IPP34 Exchange Puzzle. This is another maze puzzle with two similar looking discs having all the cut-outs and such. However the latter is a N’ary style puzzle, requiring a lot more moves in a particular sequential fashion. Moreover I was not able to solve the Cross & Crown successfully either.

Nonetheless as I fiddled with the Concentric Arc, I found it to be less intimidating than I initially thought. In fact, after several minutes of play, I managed to remove the rivet. But to really solve a puzzle fully, you must be able to return the puzzle to the original state, at least one senior seasoned puzzler has exclaimed. Here is where I had a tad more problem than before. I had forgotten the moves. So I thought again with my random fiddling, I would be able to get the rivet back in place somehow. But this was not to be for quite a while, in fact quite a long while.

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The Security Lock is manufactured by German based board games and puzzle maker Siebenstein-Spiele. It measures about 13.5cm tall (including the shackle), 11.5cm wide and 1.7cm thick. It comprises three layers of laser cut wood sandwiching a single acrylic layer all screwed together. The overall quality of construction and fit is very good. All the pieces move and slide smoothly. The Security Lock also comes with a laser cut wooden key.

A puzzle lock?

While the Security Lock is shaped like a lock with shackle and all, it is essentially a sliding block puzzle. This seems to be recent new trend in design. This lock is similar to two other wooden locks in my collection, using a sliding block concept. The “n-ary” locks  and their variants are still around and will remain so, as designers come up with new ones.

The body of the lock acts like a tray holding eight square and rectangle pieces. The layer of acrylic functions as a cover (with some cut-outs) to prevent the sliding pieces from being removed (in order to cheat). The blocks restrain the shackle in its place. The goal is to slide the pieces in such a way that the shackle can slide upwards and be freed.

The key has is useful too. Obviously it does not function like a real lock key does, but it helps to prod and move the blocks around inside the constrained space. The acrylic cut-outs are too small for most adult fingers to shift the blocks.

Solving

The blocks can only move up down left and right. In the starting position, two blocks are obstructing the shackle. The shackle needs to slide upwards to the opened position. So obviously these two must move out of the way for the shackle to slide free. Hence the movement of the rest of the blocks in a certain way to achieve this. I cannot remember how many moves it takes to solve this “puzzle lock” but I would rate this puzzle as much more than a moderately difficult puzzle. Although not frustratingly so. I hit dead ends several times before I figured out the sequence of the moves.

Getting the shackle back to the starting position is a matter of reversing the steps, but similar problems persisted and I had to again try several times before everything went back to their original state. Puzzlemaster of Canada rates it as level 8 – demanding, but I think their assessment is a bit on the high side. I would rate it more a level 6.5.

The post Security Lock appeared first on JL Puzzles.

I have met Tomas on a couple of occasions during the past IPPs. Not only did I buy the Ring Bottle Puzzle but also a couple of other bottle puzzles. One of the latter had already shown some signs of mould inside! And you can tell by the marks and stains inside the Ring Bottle that I have not touched it for a long time!

The Ring Bottle is the design of Wil Strijbos, who also entered the puzzle for the IPP21 Puzzle Design Competition in 2001. The competition version featured a red plastic rod and balls. It is also not your typical looking bottle in that the body is slightly curved like a hip flask. Not sure whether the shape was intended to have anything to do with the puzzle or merely co-incidence. Dimensionally it is about 16.5cm tall (including the stick) and about 8.7cm wide.

IMPOSSIBLE OBJECT

Bottle puzzles like the Ring Bottle are usually classified as “impossible objects”, meaning that it looks physically impossible to solve. The majority of impossible objects are  of course possible to solve. Some of the impossible puzzles that I have played with include Smiley In A Bottle, Cast Vortex Puzzle In A Bottle, Puzzle Jam, and truly impossible looking stuff like 4 Street Elbows and of course Wil’s Coke Bottle series.

Impossible To Solve?

At first glance it looks difficult to solve. The Ring Bottle Puzzle is like a hybrid between a bottle puzzle and a disentanglement puzzle. The goal here is not to remove the stick or the balls attached to the string. Rather the puzzler is required to remove only the metal ring that is resting on the larger of the two wooden balls. The ring appears to be trapped by the larger ball  and the stick with no chance of release. Like most bottle puzzles, some form of dexterity is required in the solve.

For such puzzles, some initial thinking is required prior to play. Otherwise you just end up wasting a lot of time and effort and no solution. I would imagine that puzzlers who are experienced with entanglement or string puzzles would more or less figure out quite quickly how to untangle the ring. While it may look impossible, it does not defy physics and there is a solution. It took me a while and bit of trying this and that before I managed to the ring off the large ball and then out of the bottle,

The challenge doesn’t end here. The trick is also to be able to get the ring back to its original position. Now this second task was for me far more difficult as I had to wreck my brain to figure out the reverse steps. I must have at least tried 4-5 times before finally hitting upon the right strategy and then the solution. Now one thing that still puzzles me; how to get the two balls in and out of the bottle??

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I have never been good at nor too interested in disentanglement puzzles, hence my collection is very small as I generally don’t buy any. As far as I can remember the only one that I have ever bought was the Tricky Dick puzzle. Those in my current collection come mainly from Puzzle Exchanges over the last several years.

Anyway, as I was rummaging through my Exchange Puzzles looking for something interesting to solve this week, I couldn’t help but notice this large zipper bag. Inside was the Simplexity designed and made by the late Markus Gotz of Germany. This disentanglement puzzle was Markus’ IPP35 Exchange Puzzle in Ottawa, Canada in 2015.

Unusual Design & CHOICE OF Materials

Disentanglement puzzles come in different varieties and choice of materials. There are the metal tavern type puzzles and wire puzzles (usually thick heavy wire twisted together). Then there are the wooden ones with ropes and/or combination of ropes and wires. There are also those made frombamboo which I call jungle puzzles. What is unusual about Simplexity is the materials used by Markus. His puzzle “uses wood in its natural form by using a forked branch” This is in combination with a rope and a looped wire piece. I do not know what tree the branch came from but it must have been quite a feat to find about 100 similar looking fork branches to make the minimum 100 copies for a puzzle exchange. Moreover the branch of my copy is smooth, so Markus must have debarked and sanded the surface as well. Loads of work no doubt.

Another difference is the goal of the puzzle. The aim is not to remove the rope or any other part of the puzzle (like most other disentanglement puzzles). Rather the objective here is to “reposition” or move the rope from one side of the wire loop (where the longer fork is) to other other side (the shorter fork). The rope is permanently attached to bottom end of the branch and cannot be removed. However it can slide back and forth through the hole it is in.

still in a state of disentanglement

Markus did warn puzzlers to be careful not to entangle  the rope around the branch or wire piece, otherwise there would be loads of problems. Well I didn’t encounter this state of affairs. In fact I managed to disentangle the rope “off” the wire loop…which for me was quite an achievement. However, I was stuck at this stage of the solve for quit a few days and as of this post, I still have not figured out how to “reposition” the rope. Frankly, it does not look as difficult as it would appear. But here’s a classic case of a deceptively simple looking puzzle  but damn difficult. Apparently, according to Markus there is a “trick” to it and once discovered, the solution is very simple! I have yet to see the trick. Let’s see if I can do better over the coming weekend.

The post Simplexity – “Natural” Disentanglement Puzzle appeared first on JL Puzzles.

Unlike the IPPs with hundreds in attendance and a planned 3-day agenda and side tours, our little SPP was just a small gathering over dinner with just 8 of us, including Oskar! David Ang of Cubewerkz came with his gang of twisty enthusiasts and speed-cubers (all students by the way – Bin Jie,, Seung Ha, Ryan Peh and Daryl Tan) plus the two of us from the non-twisty domain, Goh Pit Khiam and myself. As you might imagine, given such a small group, the number of puzzles that went around were rather few. I showed off to Oskar some of my recent designs and prototypes such as my Handkerzzle, L(8)tice-2, Micro-Hex and a 2014 design but recently reproduced-Ball In Cylinder #2.  David brought a number of twisties he was currently selling on his new site and Pit Khiam took out a couple of his own designs and also displayed his Android platform digital puzzles. Oskar had a number of goodies in his bag, mainly his 3D printed and incredible looking gear mechanisms and twistie-style puzzles. All in all, it was a pleasant evening of catching up with Oskar and the rest of the gang  and a chance to handle some of Oskar’s newest toys!

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Like the Straight Up two years ago, French Point’s objective is for the puzzler to open and close the blade. But David has upped his ante a notch. What is quite different now for the French Point is that the “blade” this time is actually made of metal, not plastic as in the Straight Up. Three layers of thin aluminium (I think) sheets joined together form the entire length of the blade. The handle while plastic, retains that lacquer covered shiny look. The blade has some curved cut-outs which looks (very) precision cut;  by CNC cutter maybe? Could David have used a real  razor blade for his puzzle? Well, maybe since there is machine cutting anyway, but it might have been too dangerous for play! All in, very nicely executed and the quality and finish is very high; even the box it comes in looks expensive.

The French Point comes unsolved, so the blade is locked into the handle. Without going into too much detail about how the mechanism works, which surely will be a spoiler for sure, a series of tilt and flip motions are necessary to unfold the blade. One can hear some rattling noise inside and you know for certain that there is something restraining the blade. It didn’t take me too long to feel my way to the solution-since nothing is visible on the outside and obviously trial and error here and there is required to solve this puzzle. But I had a bit of trouble and it took me a tad longer to fold the thing back together, even tho’, ironically, I can now see the “hidden” locking mechanism and how the trick works. I reckon there is an efficient and correct way to get the blade open in a jiffy and I thought I had nailed it. But still it eludes me now and again.

If you are interested to get a copy, its available from David’s website at US$70/-.

The post Another Sharp Looking Puzzle appeared first on JL Puzzles.

The Cast Ring is one of the older Cast Puzzles around having been released 17 years ago in the year 2000. Not only is it one of the older puzzles (the first Cast Puzzle, the Cast Star came out in 1983!), it is also a fairly large sized puzzle and hefty, compared to some of the other Cast Puzzles around today. Measuring about 58mm x 53mm  x 30mm, the Ring is made from zinc alloy and finished with a two-tone polished gold and chrome surface for the four pieces.  My copy comes from the early versions of the puzzle and thus has that shiny look. The packaging is also the old style transparent window black box with gold text.

Today’s Cast Ring, while still retaining the silver and gold look, has a matt finish. Personally I feel the older version which has a polished surface all round looks better than the current matt copies today.  And the Ring looks like a real (giant) decorative ring which will probably fit the small wrist of an adult or a child. In terms of aesthetics, I think the Cast Ring is also probably one of the best looking Cast Puzzles around!

There is no information who is the designer of the Ring is, but it seems that the design came under the “supervision” of Nob Yoshigahara, the famous Japanese puzzle collector and designer. Today the annual IPP Puzzle Design Competition is named after him in his honour.

The Ring consists of 4 pieces which are looped against each other inside and cannot be separated. The puzzle does not “interlock” in the usual sense. Hence, the moment you take it out of the packaging, you can quite easily dismantle the puzzle and it comes apart (sometimes without warning) and automatically becomes unscrambled.

The Ring is rated 4 out of 6 stars for difficulty, meaning that it is above average difficulty. Hanayama Cast Puzzles are for me a bit of a 50-50 thing…meaning that I can usually solve them about 50% of the time. The Ring is one of those in the -ve 50%. When I took it out of the box, it didn’t look that difficult with the pieces all stacked together. But the moment I disengaged the Ring, I knew I would have a hard time re-assembling…and boy I did! Luckily Hanayama has a more mainstream and mass appeal and a lot of casual puzzlers (and non-puzzlers) buy Cast Puzzles for their affordability as well as their overall good quality and playability. Hence there are usually more than several videos from zealous folks on YouTube showing the solution to probably every Hanayama Cast Puzzle on the market today.

The post Hanayama Cast Ring appeared first on JL Puzzles.

Dimensionally the Dial measures along each side at about 55mm. Like most Hanayama puzzles, this one is made of cast zinc alloy. Quality of the Dial is very good and despite there being moving parts, I didn’t feel any “looseness” and the puzzle feels heavy and solid in the palm.

The dark triangular portion houses two light coloured “dials” that are pressed flat against each other.  The objective of the Dial is to remove the two dials from the triangular “cage”, which itself can be separated into two parts. So disassembled, there are altogether 4 parts. The dials can rotate on all axes within their housing and you can turn each dial in a counter direction against the other.

This is a level 4 (or 4 stars) difficulty puzzle meaning that it is “Fairly Hard”, with level 5 being “Hard” and level 6 “Very Hard”. Like many Hanayama Cast puzzles where it is not obvious what needs to be done (because the mechanism is hidden), I started with gentle manipulation of the dials and trying to turn them and also tugging at the two pieces that form the triangular cage. The packaging itself also has some cryptic clues “Turn the dials on the front and back, both sides and proceed. It is important not only to go forward, but also to step down one step at a time”…and I duly followed these instructions. And pretty good clues they were too, provided you have a good sense of feel for the pieces.

Without adding any spoilers here for those who have not solved the puzzle, the dials interact with each other and need to be turned in such a way that will enable a release of the dials themselves and the cage. I took approximately ten minutes or so before the various parts started to separate.  I had a pretty good idea of the mechanism holding the parts together…and hence was able to turn both dials and cage to the point where they separated nicely. No force needed whatsoever. Putting everything back together should have been simply the reverse but I had more trouble doing this than taking the Dial apart. And it took me a tad longer before I secure all the parts back to their original positions. The difficulty rating is about right here IMHO; challenging but not frustratingly so. Once you see the progress you are making, persistence will probably take you through the end. Then comes the harder part…reassembly!

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I decided to up the ante and see if I could come up with an 8 piece version with a (higher) unique solution. After several days of toying with Burr Tools, I managed to design a version, L(eight)tice-2 having a level 5.1.2 single solution. I contacted Andrei and told him about my design and asked if he would consider making copies of L(eight)tice-2 in aluminium.  There were several exchanges of Facebook messages and Andrei agreed to cut a prototype out of 5mm aluminium sheet.  This was several weeks before IPP37 in Paris in August.  Andrei said he would try to have the prototype ready and show it to me at IPP.

On the Awards Night Banquet of IPP37,  Andrei walked over to my table and plonked this heavy hefty aluminium L(eight)tice-2 down. It was pretty massive at 70mm x 70mm x 40mm! I played with it for a while but very gently. I did not want to unravel the pieces as I knew I wouldn’t be able to put everything back together at the dinner table without help. It felt fairly stable and none of the pieces dropped out even after being shaken pretty hard. This prototype was returned to Andrei and he said he would try experiment with 3mm thick stainless steal to produce a smaller sized puzzle. Andrei later reported that another attendee at IPP37 solved the puzzle by hand without too much difficulty. Well, kudos to him for being such a good solver.

After I returned home from IPP, I tried to improve on my design; unfortunately there is only so much one can do with board burr pieces confined to dimensions of 70mm x 40mm. But after quite a fair amount of tweaking,  I did manage to increase the level of difficulty from Level 5.1.2 to a Level 6.1.1.2. However the downside was that I could not get it down to a unique solution. So this latest version would have 2 solutions, one Level 5, the other Level 6. The Level 6 solution with 13 steps (on paper at least) seems to indicated that the whole ensemble would be harder to solve and also appearing even more stable than the earlier version.

I subsequently dropped Andrei a note about this second iteration of my design and when the time came to produce copies in stainless steal, he adopted my “improved” design ie L(8)tice-2. While waiting for his metal puzzle, I decided to cut a copy out of acrylic. The plastic version confirmed my theory above; fitting pretty snugly together and harder to solve. A couple of weeks later, Andrei finished producing his copies and listed them for sale on his site. He had experimented with various tolerances and the copy I received from him was firm and “tight”. The puzzle feels very solid and heavy in the hand and no way would the pieces be shaken loose unless it was violently thrown to the floor.  My copy of L(8)tice-2 had nicely rounded corners and polished to a smooth matt surface, very nice to the touch. Very good construction and high quality indeed.  At either level, the L(8)tice-2 is not an easy puzzle and I still cannot solve it without the aid of Burr Tools. And I must add that it is quite a challenge to handle all 8 pieces at the same time during assembly! Metal interlocking burr puzzles are rare and hard to come by. I am really delighted  that Andrei Ivanov has made available the L(8)tice-2 (US$48) and other of his metal puzzles for sale.

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Apart from being hosted in the beautiful city of Paris, France, IPP37 is also an event to remember for the wonderful exchange puzzles; most notably the exchange of not one, not two but three trick puzzle locks. Not your usual 3D printed, acrylic or wooden pseudo locks but solid metal and brass ones that are either the real thing or crafted to feel like a real lock.

My post here covers the 1st of these three puzzle locks and that is Shane Hales’ Haleslock 4. I already have the Haleslock 2 courtesy of Shane a while back and I was looking to his new offering. The Haleslock 4 was fellow puzzle blogger Allard Walker’s exchange puzzle. Like most of the exchange puzzles I receive, I would typically store them away and take out one at a time to play…whichever captures my fancy for the week. But not too long ago, a Facebook thread appeared on my social media feed which mentioned the Haleslock 4. And of course once I participated in the thread, I just had to take my copy out for a play. More of this below.

The Haleslock 4 is a typical looking brass padlock with a steel shackle of a normal size. Upon external examination, nothing unusual could be can be detected, even if it is obvious that some modification must have been carried out to a normal lock to make it a puzzle or trick lock. Additional touches include Allard’s initials at the top of the lock body and Shane’s squiggly signature on the side (can’t be seen from the photos sorry). The Haleslock 4 comes with a key that has a “+” cross-section and with a chain attached. I have never seen such a key before but the key didn’t look very out of whack for a padlock key.  The “hole” for inserting the key is a “+” slot where the key should go in. Was the original lock like that or not? I can’t tell, but it certainly appeared that the Haleslock 4 fell within the class of trick locks where a normal off-the-shelf lock was modified into a trick or puzzle lock by the designer, much like a Danlock, and not a puzzle built ground up to resemble a real lock, the latter of the Popplock category.

As with all trick locks, I started with the obvious…insert the key and try to turn. For the first few attempts, the key would not turn. But having played with more than several trick locks over the years, I tried a couple of other tricks. And surprisingly, after less than a minute or so later, the shackle sprung free and I had solved the puzzle! This was too good to be true and I half suspected I had stumbled upon an unintended solution, which was the subject of of the Facebook discussion I mentioned earlier.

The intended (and correct) solution required a different way of solving and Allard even suggested in let in a drop of oil into the lock itself which will prevent the unintended solution – not sure how this would work. I also shot an email to Shane and he confirmed that there was a correct but much more challenging way of solving. Well, I have yet to find this solution even though I have enough info on what I need to do. I won’t divulge any more here so as not to create any spoilers. I will update this post once I make further progress on the Haleslock 4. But hey, I did open the lock after all!

Chinese Combination Locks 

I was shown these two locks by a dear friend over a dinner party over the weekend. She had bought them in Hong Kong while she living there. She is not a puzzler and had no interest from a puzzle aspect, but she thought they looked interesting and matched some antique Chinese cupboards she had at home. And they were functional too as a tool to secure her cupboards. But they were in a locked state and she could not use them other than as vintage paperweights. 

The lock came with stickers which apparently showed the combination for opening but the Chinese text had faded somewhat over the years. The right combination would spell out a Chinese proverb/phrase of sorts. So she could not get the locks to open and as there were 256 possible combinations, she enlisted the help of yours truly to unravel her problem.

These two Chinese locks are somewhat similar to our modern combination locks (the type where you press the correct 4 buttons etc)…except they used a rotating combination (similar to the book/movie Da Vinci Code’s Cryptex). I took a stab at the locks and to my surprise, I could actually feel my way around to unlocking the shackle…with trial and error, rotating the dials and gently pulling and pushing the shackle of course. Amazingly easier than the run of the mill combination padlock that one sees on luggage and suitcases.

Pretty nice as a collector’s item (there is a whole community of vintage lock collectors out there as well as puzzle/trick lock collectors) and functional too.  And of course I took the necessary photos less I forget the combinations.

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