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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Needless to say, with the PPWKP, Keith had a couple of new tricks up his sleeve which wasn’t too obvious to me while I played with it. The PPWKP is made from Maple and has a Walnut packing strips screwed to the sides to prevent the puzzle from coming apart accidentally. It even comes with its own numbering.

Although not shown in the photo, Keith did provide a small screw driver for removing the screws in the Walnut strips. The PPWKP measures about 90mm x 90mm x 22mm. Quality and construction is very good and I might add, necessary for a puzzle of this nature, where accuracy of the cuts and fit is paramount. Accompanying the puzzle is a sheet of instructions and some history of the Wedge Key Puzzles.

The object of course is to take apart the 4 jigsaw looking pieces and trick or mechanism for the PPWKP differs from the IPP35 version.  This is a sequential discovery puzzle where you utilise whatever “tools” and parts that come with the puzzle to solve it.  No other external tools are allowed. As mentioned, removal of the walnut strips is necessary so the puzzling begins from that point onwards. The provided screw driver however does not count and honestly wouldn’t help unless you wanted to use it to pry the pieces apart by force.

I would consider this latest design of Keith’s to be rather tricky. It isn’t too difficult once you discover how the mechanism of the puzzle works but finding out the mechanism to it is the fun part. Surprisingly, it took me longer than I had expected to solve; I wasn’t paying enough attention

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I received the  Euro Falle 06 courtesy of Allen Stein during the IPP37 Puzzle Exchange in Paris this past August. This puzzle is shaped like a crescent moon, with the silhouette of a man’s face. Hence the alternative name of La Luna. The puzzle measures about 10.5cm x 8cm x 2.5cm. It is made up of layers of laser cut wood glued and held together by two screws. A top-plate made of acrylic covers a Euro 20 cent coin inside its own recess. On the back is a Euro copper 1 cent coin which is held within its own little hole. Quality of construction and finish is very good and the puzzle feels very thick, heavy and solid. There are identification marks and etchings  on both sides of the puzzle and the detailing is decent.   The object as mentioned is to remove the 20 cent coin from its slot. I guess you could consider it as a wooden puzzle box, just shaped differently.

An initial inspection would seem to suggest that it is impossible to remove the coin, there are no visible exits and all the layers are screwed and glued tight…but then again, there is often a hidden trick to it. Except sadly to say that I wasn’t able to discover it. My other experience with an earlier Euro Falle puzzle was the Euro Falle 03, co-incidentally also an exchange puzzle from Allen two years back at IPP35 in Canada. Now with that one I didn’t have much problem.  The current puzzle I had a lot of problems and after several days of play, I still got nowhere with it. I tried all sorts of stuff, the usual tapping, shaking and of course tried to figure out if the 1 cent coin had anything to do with the solve. In my mind, I had a rough idea of how the puzzle functioned but it was the execution which got the better of me. Nothing seemed to work and I promptly shot an email to Allen asking for a clue. He did come back with an explanation which I still couldn’t grasp (on hindsight, my own inability to understand) and I asked him to clarify.  Allen decided to send over the solution instead.

I wasn’t too surprise when I saw the solution. I just didn’t execute the critical move correctly. With the solution in sight, I solved the Euro Falle 06 in a jiffy. The mechanism has a very neat trick to it I would say that the Euro Falle 06 may even come under the class of Sequential Discovery puzzles, which requires a puzzler to find and use certain tools (that come with the puzzle) to solve it. Can’t say anymore without spoilers. The entire solve takes about 5 steps. But they are not easy steps, again depending on who is solving it. This is one of those puzzles that if you can figure out step 1, the critical step, the rest becomes fairly easy. Unfortunately I was stuck at step 1 for the longest time.

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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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