Danlock A

What a nice trick lock made by Dan Feldman!
Especially when you know that it was made using an existing lock, which is far more impressive than creating a puzzle from scratch, because you have to modify with a lot of precision in such a way that the puzzle can still be opened, but with more moves!

The goal of this puzzle is to open the lock, not difficult to guess :-)

The original thing with this puzzle is that the lock is provided with a real key that is blocked and with another key broken (2 pieces).

How to use this broken key, you may wonder? Well just try things and don't be afraid: everything has been well thought. So you cannot loose anything nor damage the puzzle trying things. Not force however and not bangging!

To open the lock you cannot use the complete key, so you have to use your broken key!
To reassemble the puzzle you will not just do the same steps in another order, you will have to do other things.
Thus, the puzzle is not only opening it but also closing it, and I am sure you will have a lot of fun with it.

To conclude: a very nice puzzle, not difficult but with many tricks!

Do you prefer the A model or the B model?
If you had to choose 3 trick locks (from any designers) to bring on an island, what would they be? ;-)

Solution: not HERE (joke!)

Crazy magnets

Magnet mania (the real name of this puzzle) was designed by Chris Morgan and is composed of a tray with 9 holes in which you have to put the 9 balls, of course!

Easy you think? Not at all, this is much trickier than what you may have thought !!
Because when you try to put a ball, which is actually a very powerful magnet (take care of your fingers!) in a hole and then put another ball, they fastly stick with each other...which may pinch your fingers but also mix the different kind of balls. They are not all the same even if they look like the same...

You will become crazy that each attemps fail or if you succeed to put some balls, then the next attempt ruins what you have done before...

Actually there is a trick that I did not discover not use to solve this puzzle. But if you discover it, then it will make your solving process easier (does not mean "easy" remember^^). You need patience and a little bit of dexterity: do not shake nor make any moves when trying to put a ball, otherwise the other balls could not like that :-)

The good thing when you solve this puzzle is that the box prevent you (once closed) the balls from leaving their holes. Thus you can keep the puzzle is the solved position, which is very nice I feel.

To conclude: a nicely thought puzzle which will puzzle and frustrate you for hours!

The great (great) escape

This puzzle was designed by Simon Nightingale and was made from corian (now I know what is this kind of material). Many different versions exist: one was the exchanged puzzle in 2009 and another one won honourable mention at the Design competition in 2009.

The puzzle feels pretty heavy in your hands and the quality os perfect. Moreover you can solve it again and again. But if you want to be faster, you can put only 1 ball instead of all the 4.

The goal is (seem to be) easy: you need to put the 4 small balls in the holes of the puzzles and them try to get them out of the puzzle.

When you look at the picture above, you may think that it's easy, but perhaps you don't know how tricky Simon is :-)
It's just that here you cannot see what is inside and prevent you from solving this puzzle and it's dark inside. Everything is so well hidden that the puzzle does not give you any clue.

You should play with it on a carpet (for example) but not outside of the street. Because you may manage to free one ball by chance, and it would be a pitty to lose it.

To conclude, a good puzzle to play with and to solve again and again !!

Ice(solute) difficult puzzle

Sometimes you want to try things, you want to experiment some kind of puzzles...
Metal puzzles, wooden puzzle, etc. that's common. Ruber puzzles a bit less. But ice puzzles...never seen any in any blog. So I thought I needed to try that first!

So let's begin with the pieces: there are 9 pieces composed of 4 cubes.

With the pieces, it's obvious that you will not be able to build a cube, but a rectangle, and mostly on only 2 levels:

Sorry for the quality of the picture, but it's not easy at all to take a picture of an ice puzzle ;-)

So as you can assume, there are a lot of issues with this puzzle, which makes the solving process all the more challenging:

• The pieces are not regular (because you won't likely put exactly the same quantity of water for each pieces...), thus the puzzle is not flat, and the pieces don't fit well with each other. 
•  You have a natural timer: the pace of the melting of the ice pieces and believe me they melt fast when you manipulate them.
• The ice pieces slip a lot on the plate and the puzzle falls a lot, but you need to hurry!
• And finally your fingers are frozen :-)

That was a good experience/experiment and a new concept I feel, not usual. I like it, but perhaps if you have some plastic cubes it's better because you can try many combinations before.

I wonder how many solutions there are for this puzzle...Any idea?

Will you try also to play with ice puzzles?

But anyway, if you don't try to solve this puzzle you can still use the ice for some cocktails: puzzler's cocktails of course ! :-)