Heavy bolts: they may hide a secret...

If you like metal puzzles, if you like trick bolts and if you like Strijbos's puzzles, these 2 puzzles are for you!

Let's begin by their shape: well they look like big bolts, but pretty heavy bolts.
You know that you won't be able (unintentionally!) to damage them.
The goal is to remove the washer but the nut does not move, and here begins the puzzling part :-)

Hard to distinguish which bolt it is...

You can distinguish the Nipple bolt by the small ball at the bottom of the puzzle. Moreover, the Low number bolt has smaller protuberances on the nut.

These 2 puzzles have a different solution and they don't require external tools (however, for Low number bolt external tools help, but are not needed for solving the bolt!)

Both puzzles have a simple mechanism, but you know with Wil Strijbos, simple mechanism often means hard puzzles :)

For the price and the quality, I would advise you to buy them when Wil has some to offer.
You just need to wait for his new newsletter. By the way, it's been long time since we've not had any newsletter... :-) Big surprises may come sooner

The wooden snowball

This wonderful puzzle box made with holy is the Puzzlebox n°9 crafted by the famous and experienced Robert Yarger (aka Stickman).

Rob considered it to be close to the most perfect box he has ever made because of its simplicity: only 6 panels that are blocked by one another. At the beginning there was a small rope on one side of the puzzle to hold it as X-Mas tree ornament. But honestly if it had a small loop rope, I would not try to hold it because if it falls, it may break...

This holy wood has something special as you can see: it has many knots that make the puzzle very special and unique. The knots can also help to recognize each panel to remember the correct sequence to open the puzzle.

Even if this wood is supposed to be enough strong, the joints of the puzzle are quite thin, and thus I would recommend not using force...

Once the lid of the puzzle is opened, the puzzle can come apart into 6 pieces. As you can see from the picture below, each puzzle is signed with the Stickman's signature in the inside.

A really nice puzzle to have in your collection!

Roll, roll, roll......

This time I will review a very different game from Lonpos company: rolling games!!!


The goal is to make a small plastic piece roll from the starting point to the finish point without rolling on the 2 obstacles.
There are 48 challenges (not a lot in my opinion...) but as the difficulty increases a lot, don't worry you will have enough to do with those challenges.
So you put the card challenges below the acrylic (notice that you can also put your 2 pieces in the hole under the acrylic) and you take the appropriate plastic piece and then you can start playing!

There are some challenges with the red piece and other with the blue piece. With the red you cannot roll on the obstacles, but you can with the blue piece!
For the most difficult challenges it can take up to 20 moves, which is very huge!! The number of moves required are written. Sometimes you can solve one challenge using 9 moves, but it requires 8 moves, so you have to think more...When I had some difficulties, I started from the finish point and went to the starting point. It can help if you're blocked, but not always :-)

Again no solutions are provided but there is a sheet of paper in which you can write the directions to follow for each challenge. But to remember all the 20 moves in the right order is more than tough...
I really enjoyed this game because it's easy to understand and fun to play. And also I don't see a lot of those kind of games. So here it's an opportunity to try rolling games :-)

The challenge below is the easiest: it requires 2 moves. So as you understand the directions are: one right and one up.

  

The second puzzle looks almost the one above except that it has more plastic pieces (4 vs 2) and so more challenges (around 230). The rules are the same. In the small booklets are written the number of moves required for each piece.

In my opinion, I prefer having the playing card as with the 1st game rather than this paper booklet that you put below the acrylic. But I assume that, as there are more challenges, it would have been too thick.

So which one to choose? Well I recommend the second one because there are more challenges. But if you have already the first one, no doubt that you will also like the second one.

You can buy your rolling puzzle(s) from Lonpos HERE