Thursday 29 October 2015

Rightangular Jam

In a previous review I talked about rectangular Jam from Iwahiro, time to speak quikly about another one: rightangular Jam.
The original material used is MDF

The principle is still the same: free the colorful piece out of the tray. This time with rightangular triangles.



The puzzles includes a lot of rotations and is very tricky and hard to solve. Much harder than rectangular Jam.
As far as I know there are no other challenges (contrary to rectangular Jam). If I am wrong, just let me know.But perhaps it's possible to invent some?

Again, the precision if perfect, the design is handsome. I really wonder how the designer came to this idea. How is it posible to imagine so many movements?...

So the fit is so precise that sometimes it seems impossible to move or rotate a piece. Just make small and slow moves and it will work!

As you may assume, I put the pieces as they appear at the beginning of the solving process :-)

To conclude a beautiful and interesting puzzle to play with!

Still looking for the some other Jam's...

Thursday 22 October 2015

Bottle coke #9

This bottle is quite unusual because it is in aluminium and not in glass, and thus you cannot see what you're doing, which makes things even more difficult!
By the way, if it were transparent, it would have been too easy :-)
There is a marble inside the bottle, and again the goal is to free it. This time, you don't have to worry about the rigidity of the bottle because this one cannot break, at least from my experience.



As if the fact of not having a glass bottle was not enough, there is a washer that provides you from seeing what the mecanism is, this makes the puzzle more difficult to solve.
You can notice that a hole is pierced in the place of the bear's nose, so maybe this can be useful...
But anyway the hole is pierced in a "designed way". I mean if it were just in the red it would not have looked really nice, whereas here it's almost normal to have a hole for the nose of the bear.

Wil Strijbos adds 2 glowing sticks along with the puzzle. They can be used to see what is inside of the bottle. Try to make good use of them because they don't last forever. But, keep them even after they don't produce light any longer. Usually you should not throw away anything with Strijbos' puzzles.

The fashioned way to find treasures inside your nose :-)

The bottle is very very tricky. The mechanism is simple but cool. Only Strijbos can design such a devilish mechanism. And when you've solved it, you will see how simple things can be so difficult sometimes. But don't think, however, that it's too simple; the mechanism is very well thought.

No shaking, banging is allowed (nor useful) and use of external tool is not useful. Remember that external tools are everyting that do not come along with the puzzle...

I advise you to buy it if Wil make it again, I am sure that it will fit well in your bottle puzzles collection or/and un your Strijbos' puzzle collection.


Thursday 15 October 2015

Push box 2

After the Push box that I reviewed some time ago, here is the next one: Push box 2 !

Same designer (Simon Nightingale), same kind of material (corian), pretty same dimensions, but not same mechanism (luckily!).

Again you do not see what you're doing and unfortunately you will not be able to see the internals. The good point is that the drawer cannot fall on the floor :-)


Now, what about the mechanism? Well, nothing new...So, nobody will have difficulties to solve it quickly. It took me around 10 seconds.

Nightingale is famous for his puzzles with clever and interesting mechanism, I wish he invented a new mechanism and did not simply took an already existing kind of mechanism, even if it was an exchanged puzzle.

Anyway, whether you like corian or just collect Nightingale's puzzles, I recommend it. If you want a bit of challenge, that's not the puzzle for you!

Thursday 8 October 2015

Confetto box 2

I have already reviewed the first Confetto box, so now it's time for this second Confetto box, which was designed by Iwahara for the 2014 X-mas presents.



As with Karakuri, you always know that the puzzles are well crafted and put in simple but nice box.

If you have already played with Confetto box 1 (I strongly advise so that you better know the principle of these confetto puzzles), you notice that this puzzle is a bit smaller (why??) but still have nice wooden panels.

The goal is to find a secret compartment (there is only one contrary to Confetto box 1) by moving the panels. The moves are a bit tricky but you will know pretty quickly what you have to do, because you cannot do anything if the previous steps are not done.
Perhaps a Confetto box 3 would have some kind of "dead ends". I mean you can move many panels and moving one panel may lead you to a dead end. That would be a bit more challenging. Because again, like Confetto box 1, you have to do the previous steps to do the next steps and there is only one way to do that.
So Confetto boxes remain pretty straight-forward puzzles.




However, this puzzle is very good and you will have fun whether you like trick opening boxes or Karakuri's puzzles.

I still prefer Confetto box 1 because I prefer the color of wood of Confetto box 1, because it's a bigger puzzle, because there are more secret compartments and finally because the moves are much easier to make with it (it slides smoother, but it's also due to the solving process of Confetto box 2).

Which one do you prefer? The 1st Confetto box or the second one? Why?


Thursday 1 October 2015

Enigma orbs

They need your help!

There is a new crowdfunding campaign on kickstarter to create a new kind of puzzles. These puzzles are in concrete, yes you read well! The goal is to assemble the pieces (that have magnets inside) to create an orb.

They look really nice with the inclusion of colored pieces of glass. Different size will be produced with many more colors (stains and glasses). The smaller orb can fit completely in the medium one, and the medium one can also fit in the bigger one.







I took the pictures from the website because I cannot have any since they are not yet released.


Which combo do you like?


If you want to own one of them, then help them HERE  :-)

I reall hope the guys will reach their goal and raise the money to supply us with these wonderful puzzles!!!