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.

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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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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.

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If you have seen or played with the famous “impossible object” puzzle called 4 Street Elbows, you will probably know who Saul is. Double Feature is also similar in concept to his IPP35 Exchange Puzzle called Restricted Area, another Coffin design.

The Double Feature is produced by Saul himself under the brand name Here To There Puzzles. Measuring 6.5cm x 6.2cm x 6cm, it’s a cuboid packing puzzle made out of two different woods. Construction fit and finish is decent. There is a top cover consisting of a sliding panel with slanted edges. Keeps the packed pieces in nicely.

not so “straight” forward

The goal of the puzzle is to pack six irregular pieces (five of which has 5 units each and the 6th with 2) into the box, under the lid. The box is also also affixed with two obstructions (once the sliding panel is removed). So it’s not just a matter of just trying to drop the pieces in but figuring how to navigate the pieces through the opening.

It is obvious given the obstructions that removal and assembly of the pieces would not be that easy. Especially more so for the latter. A good memory helps of course.  This is aided by the fact that the puzzle already came fully assembled. If you can figure out how to remove the pieces completely, the return to the box should not be much of a problem. But if not, forming a cube outside the box with the six pieces may help you to re-orientate. Burr Tools would not help here since the solve requires more than rectilinear moves. You probably figured out what this means! From my count, about 14-15 moves for complete disassembly.

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Naoaki Takashima designed this sliding block puzzle way in March 1985. From what I have heard, Takashima-san owns the largest collection of mechanical puzzles in Japan. The collection it seems is well in  excess of 10,000 puzzles. IPP37 was Takashima-san’s 30th IPP party todate! So far I have played with one other of Takashima-san’s puzzles and that was his IPP36 Exchange Puzzle called Seal, another sliding bock puzzle. The Puzzle 9 was first given out by Takashima-san at IPP9 in Tokyo in 1988.  Back then very few copies were distributed as there was no puzzle exchange as what we have in today’s IPP gatherings. Last year in Paris, Takashima-san decided to use his Puzzle 9 as his Exchange Puzzle.

classification

Sliding block puzzle. For more information on sliding block puzzles generally, you may want to take a look at Edward Hordern’s 1987 book called Sliding Piece Puzzles available from Amazon. Takashima-san’s Puzzle 9 design was featured in Hordern’s book and numbered as “B25”.

MANUFACTURE

Produced by a company called ASOBIDEA in Japan. There is not a lot of information about this company. They do sell a small range of products including some folding puzzles. The assembly of the puzzle was done by Takashima-san.

The Puzzle 9 is made from laser cut acrylic and quality is outstanding in my opinion. The puzzle measures 14cm x 8cm x 0.4cm. The pieces which resemble playing cards have their design etched on, no stickers used here. Very good detailing indeed. Having produced acrylic puzzles myself in the past, such detail and quality would not have come cheap at all.

solving

The object of the puzzle is to position the pieces in the START position and move rearrange the pieces to arrive at the END position. The Puzzle 9 is similar in some sense to the very well known 15 Puzzle which has a pretty long history. Aside from rearranging the pieces to the desired format, the Puzzle 9 also requires the solution to show the uncovered #9 at the top of the tray, an additional challenge.

The Puzzle 9’s solution eluded me for quite a few days. Even just getting the correct order of the cards right I had problems. When I finally took a look at the provided solution, I realised why I was not able to solve it. I can’t say more here without giving away anything. It has a nice rather unexpected solution which awaits the successful solver.

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The Eiffel Six Cube was designed and manufactured by Alistair Morris of the UK. It also served as his first Exchange Puzzle at IPP37 in Paris last year. I had played with one of Ali’s earlier designs a while back, the very brilliant Bolt & Nut Puzzle, which stumped quite a few puzzlers too.

The object of the puzzle is to form a cube with each of the 6 faces bearing the image of the Eiffel Tower. Like most puzzlers that have played with this puzzle, the initial impression is that it would not be too difficult. But it remained unsolved for me for more than several days over the past week.

“EIFFEL FOR IT”

Yes, I did…I FELL FOR IT! This was the title that puzzler Lionel Depeux had suggested to Allard to use for his blog post. Why? Ali had cunningly designed the Eiffel Six Cube in a way that if you are not observant, you will “fall” for his trick. During my sessions with this puzzle, many a times I had come to the final stages of forming a cube but the last piece would always elude me. And this came to a point where I wondered if Ali had mistakenly printed the Eiffel images on the wrong places or mis-glued his cubes which resulted in the wrong shape of a piece. The correct solution just seemed impossible to achieve.

I decided to ask Allard for a clue and so shot him a message. After a couple of cryptic responses which I didn’t find of much help, his last reply to me before I went to bed (yes, Singapore is about 7 hours ahead of the UK) was to examine the puzzle carefully.  The next morning I took out the Eiffel Cube again and this time I played with it more slowly than I did before, taking my time and looking at how each piece interacted with the rest. Suddenly it hit me….and I found the solution! I first reaction…WTF!  At last I got to build a cube with the Eiffel Tower on each of the six faces. What an incredible A-ha moment! Totally brilliant design and  a real surprise ending!

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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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OMPIC was James Dalgety’s IPP37 Exchange Puzzle. I have met James during the past IPPs and also corresponded with him on occasions. His Exchange Puzzles have always been rather interesting, intriguing and challenging. Take for example his past exchange puzzles that I have played with; the Perplexing Palace Puzzle and Dot Box. Incidentally the Dot Box also won the Jury First Prize in the IPP35 Puzzle Design Competition. And for those interested to learn more about puzzles, their history and classification, James Dalgety also runs the Puzzle Museum, a private collection of tens of thousands of puzzles, which started in 1886.

REALLY A ONE MINUTE PUZZLE?

First off, the OMPIC looks very much like a hollow cube that has been pressed from all three sides.  It looks bent and squashed! Yes, it was intended this way. The OMPIC was produced for James by Vaclav Obsivac of Vinco puzzles. Made of two types of wood, the puzzle measures about 5cm all round. Construction, fit and finish is very good. And during play there was no jamming of the pieces even tho the tolerances were cut quite tightly.

GETTING THE CUBE INSIDE

The goal is to first “build” a cube with the four odd-shaped pieces inside the squashed hollow cube/cage. Can it be done in a minute? Well, I am sure some expert puzzlers could, but I certainly coudn’t. In fact I took about 8-9 minutes to solve the thing! To get the cube into the cage, one needs to know how to first form a regular cube. Now this already took a couple of minutes alone.

The next challenge is of course to remember the orientation of the pieces and then figure out how to insert each of the pieces into the cage. The cut-outs on each of the sides of the cage are identical rectangular shaped. They do (intentionally) pose an obstruction to the entry of some pieces and a certain order of movements is needed.

Initially I tried the usual random sort of thing and of course that got me nowhere. Some thinking is required. Given there are only four pieces, the logic and steps and what needs to be done while challenging, are not overly difficult. Some of the pieces can only go inside the cage in a certain way. And one needs to make sure the last piece can be inserted without hindrance. The question is -How?

The OMPIC is an interesting and fun puzzle to solve and it has IMHO just about the right level of difficulty. Not to mention the puzzle displays very nicely and even comes with its own ring support which holds it at the correct (tilted) angle.

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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.

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I think a wooden puzzle coming from Wil Strijbos would be usually somewhat of a surprise. Most puzzlers know Wil Strijbos as a designer of challenging, high quality (and some rather expensive) puzzles made of metal!  Well, don’t let the title of this post fool you. This wooden puzzle from Wil was actually his Exchange Puzzle during IPP37 in Paris last August. And this wooden puzzle was designed by someone else. This is not to say that Wil has never designed wooden ones. He has many years ago, and one of them called Just Fit (The Cut) also happen to win  the 1990 Hikimi Puzzle Competition for wooden puzzle designs.

Back to the puzzle. This interlocking burr goes by the  name of Framed Sticks 4U and is designed by a Mr Gong. Now I have never met Mr Gong, but I understand he is a close friend of Wil and resides in China. Mr Gong has designed a number of wooden burr puzzles (made out of bamboo) which have been sold by Wil in the past several years through Wil’s distribution email list.

design & construction

The FS4U is a 6 x 6 x 5 solid. It is an interlocking framed burr consisting of a square frame and 4 typical burr pieces (sticks) with the usual type of notches. Nothing overly unusual. The frame (box) spots a couple of obstructions glued to the insides which restrict the movements of the pieces and thus brings the level of difficulty of the puzzle to a Level 24 solution. This means that it takes 24 moves to remove the first piece. And a total of 30 moves to disassemble the entire puzzle.  I checked Mr Gong’s design against other 6 x 6 x 5 size puzzles on PWPB and I didn’t find any which were similar in design or number of pieces. Only one other design had a similar shape. So Mr Gong’s design appears to be very different from the rest.

The FS4U is made of two different woods but as to the exact species I don’t know. The burr sticks consist of two pairs with dark and light colours to give the puzzle some colour contrast. Construction and fit is good. Although the copy here is not the kind of very impeccable standard that one would get from the usual few North American or European puzzle craftsmen.  Everything worked properly and the sticks slid smoothly. No issues. The puzzle is produced under Wil’s Streetwise Inc brand, the same company that manufactures all of Wil’s metal puzzles. Size wise, it is about 7.5cm x 7.5cm x 6cm and surprisingly quite heavy in the hand, so the woods used  must probably be some exotic wood.

The puzzle has a shiny finishing to the external surface, as if coated with some form of vanish covering, which seems rather unusual since.  Most wooden puzzles would have some form of (tung) oil rubbed into the wood to smoothen,  nourish and preserve the wood But this is my first wooden puzzle I have with such a smooth and shiny surface.

SOLVING & PLAY

At Level 24.2.2.2, the FS4U is not easy. The disassembly took me a while to get the hang off, given there are some dead ends during the solve at the beginning. But because you can see the movement of the sticks from both the top and bottom openings of the frame, it is not as difficult as other similarly high level burrs. At some point I was able to figure out the moves to remove the first piece. Once that came out, the rest just popped out of the frame. Re-assembly was a different thing altogether! Despite my best efforts to remember the moves (and even photographing the process, because I know burrs like these are quite beyond me), I still had to resort to the provided solution sheet. Thankfully I was also further aided by Burr Tools, which helped me get all the pieces back to their proper places.

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The Coffin’s Four Piece Cube is very well made out of white oak and finished with an oil finish to give it a smooth touch and allows the pieces to slide smoothly but remain snug in the solved position. Dimensionally it measures about 6.8cm cube all round. Pretty hefty in the hands. The puzzle comes packed in its own box and even wrapped with orange wrinkled paper. What’s unusual about the puzzle is also that the packaging comes with accompanying notes to the puzzle; which describes the puzzle and gives various references to other publications. A good read for those interested to find out more.

The object of the puzzle is of course to take it apart and put it together again.  This is an interlocking cube after all, and the pieces fit so very well that I took a wee bit of time to find the first piece that moves. After that, it was a matter of tugging at the remaining pieces for them to come apart. Putting it back was not so easy if you scramble the pieces and happen to forget the orientation and positioning of each piece.

The other puzzles I have exchanged with Norton include his Octassembly and Packed Pyramid. Both of which are quite different in design from Coffin’s Four Piece Cube. Norton is a retired maths and computer science professor from Amherst College.

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During IPP37, we exchanged puzzles and his puzzle to me was Deadly Romance, a pretty cool and intriguing name I might add. Deadly Romance was Markus’ own design and the production duties went to Pelikan Puzzles of the Czech Republic.  Quality of construction and finish is very good up to the usual Pelikan standards. The puzzle is an interlocking cage burr…but with a twist. The goal is to “put the two pieces into the cage with the colours of the pieces and the cage matching…”. Both the cage and the pieces are made of a combo of maple and wenge to provide the dark and light colours. The puzzle comes assembled and you need to remove the pieces from the cage and replace the same pieces according to the instructions. To remove was not too difficult since there are only two pieces. However, to fit them back into the cage AND match the colours at the same time…a much more daunting task, which I failed miserably. It was only with the help of Burr Tools that I discovered the way the pieces were supposed to go in and the type of moves required. And it (with hindsight) wasn’t so that difficult it would appear, if only I had kept at it and not give up. Well, whoever said I was with good with burrs anyway? which I am not.

Markus Gotz has a number of puzzle designs to his name and I have a couple of his exchange puzzles that I have yet to play with. He is also responsible for the very unique looking packing puzzle Framework II.

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Now back to the puzzle; the Eye Fill Burr is shaped oval like an eye and the instructions come as followings: “Swap out one piece of the iris and fill the eye with the pupil”. The entire puzzle is 3D printed as Steve usually does with his Exchange and other puzzles, such as his Vapors,  Helical Burr and  Pole Dancers. It is  around 11.5cm x 5.5cm x 4.5cm in size.  As you can see from the photos, the puzzle comes assembled with three pieces of the blue iris and separately there is another iris-piece and the pupil. When I first took out the puzzle, I thought that the separate blue piece was a spare, just in case someone broke one of the other pieces during play. But I realised during play that actually the 4th piece was to substitute one of the three inside the eye. And you need to add the black pupil piece in as well.

Well, what resembles a free-form looking puzzle is really an interlocking burr using the triangular format on the inside, with the frame and pieces shaped appropriately to resemble an eye. While only three pieces in the frame during the start position, removal is not a simple as it seems. I did have to manipulate the pieces around a bit to figure out how best to remove one of the three identical pieces. Rotations appear to be necessary but once you have figured out the orientation of the pieces relative to the frame, removal of the pieces is not as difficult as one would imagine, but nonetheless the execution can be rather tricky. It did take me a while to get it right. Now for the re-assembly with the pupil, it is harder since now four (instead of three) pieces need to be inside the frame. Again, some thinking through how the pieces should go and it becomes fairly manageable. I am not sure about this but I think a slight bit of force may be necessary to insert the black pupil since the puzzle is 3D printed and the tolerances are not as tight and precise as wooden burrs finely cut and crafted in a jig.  I hope I wasn’t doing it wrong tho’. All in, I think Steve came up with a great (and unique) concept for the design and nicely executed.

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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/-.

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