Cast diamond

From the 3 newest cast puzzles is one from Scott Elliott (his first puzzle to be produced by Hanayama, if I am right), and what a start!

This cast diamond is only ratted as difficulty 1, so the easiest, but I am sure you will take more time to solve it than what you first expected!

Usually cast puzzles come attached to each other and your goal is to disassemble them. But here, the 2 pieces of the puzzle come not attached. Well, obviously (after you know how to solve the puzzle) the real challenge is to assemble the 2 pieces!

I do love the shape of the pieces and the very nice way both pieces come together.

I definitely advise it for anyone and I would even put it in my favourite from group 1 of cast puzzles along with cast loop.

Buy it!

Don't look at the solution!

X-Y-Z burr

Not sure why it's called a burr nor why XYZ are used for, but the thing I know is that this is a very nice metal puzzle designed and made by R.D Rose some time ago.

The colors are nice and the shape as well. You cannot go wrong with a R.D Rose puzzle as I think they belong to the most original metal puzzles.

The goal is to disassemble it, but if you have the opportunity to play with it, I advise that it's shown to you disassembled. Indeed, separating the pieces is very easy and can be done even by a child. Reassembling the pieces is the real challenge!

The pieces are identical and there is no clear hints how the pieces could go together and it can even seem that they cannot be put together...

Obviously a co-motion move will have to be done at some point, this is not a spoiler!

I think this is a pleasant puzzle to play with either by burr lovers who can think they will have to solve a burr or by non-burr lovers who will actually play with not a burr (yes, this is not a burr at all despite the name!!) :-)

Opened lock!

Sorry guys, the name can be disappointing, but the lock is not opened...but transparent, or almost!
Hence its name: transparent lock

Yes, you can see what's inside the lock and what you're doing. Easy then? Not complicated indeed, but we'll see.

First a picture!

So you notice pure quality, right? A lock that is firmy locked and a T-shaped tool.

This is a pretty big lock, but a pretty light (compared to its size) as well because most of the lock is just....empty space !!! :-)

I feel this is one of the most original trick locks because of its design. Regarding the puzzling aspect: this is definitely a nice one to solve, easy to repeat, but overall a not too difficult puzzle.

You should not have too many difficulties to find the steps needed (there are several) that are pleasant.
I was blocked on a step, the last one, that I managed to solve though. But it appeared to me a little bit fetched and I would have prefered a more elegant step!

It's not easy to put a picture of the lock solved without spoiling too much, but I am sure you imagine how it should look like once solved, like all trick locks: when the shackle is opened!!!

To conclude, definitely a puzzle to have in your collection or to have played with. However, a little bit more difficult would not have been bad :)

Ze chinnyhedron

Here is my first review of a Chin's puzzle!!

First you noticed the strange title, right? ("ze" instead of "the") and the name "chinnyhedron". Well, all the puzzles from Stephen Chin have a strange and pretty funny name. Maybe to remember them more easily?
A chinnyhedron is just a solid...or a strange geometrical solid made by Chinny (one of the several nicknames of the designer!) which goal is "just" to disassemble the puzzle. Easy? Not so!

The first difficulty is you have to put your fingers on the right pieces and there is no hints where you have to push/pull the pieces. So actually if you have 3 fingers pushing, maybe you're pushing 2 in the right direction but you're making the wrong move with the 3rd one, resulting in doing nothing :-)

So even if you have only 2 pieces to separate, well this is pretty challenging for only 2 pieces!!!

The puzzle is made even more difficult that the fit is pretty tight (too tight in my opinion, but maybe a bit less tight would make the puzzles disassemble by itself?), so you have to PUSH/PULL and not only push/pull, you get it?

Stephen Chin created other geometrical solids with the same goal but not the same number of pieces, hence several levels of difficulty for puzzles that looks the same!

I feel this is a pitty that the design does not release more of his puzzles and does not sell them. Sure it's not his job and more a hobby, but I am sure many people would like to enjoy his puzzles.
Stephen if you see that, make some more puzzles please!!! :-)

Revenge lock

No! It's not a puzzle made by Gary Foshee, even if it has some shares features: a lock with no key nor no keyholes, and a rod in the center of the lock that can be moved up or down and that is blocked sometimes.

Actually this is a puzzle made by Wil Strijbos long time ago (no idea when...) with a pretty funny name. One can try to think out why this name. I have some assumptions: maybe Wil could not solve the lunatic lock crafted by Gary Foshee and wanted to take his revenge on him by crafting an even more difficult trick lock? Or maybe Wil was challenged to craft a trick lock, but failed and took his revenge by releasing this puzzle...other assumptions in the audience??

When playing with this puzzle you will notice the common features with the lunatic lock and then you will try to repeat the same steps...Well, this is a more difficult puzzle and you will see a more complex mechanism once opened (yes, when it's opened, you can clearly see what's inside!).

No doubt, you will have a lot of fun solving this one and get your "ah-ha" moments and your "what's wrong with that" moments as well :-)

You are not really blind when solving with the puzzles as you can get some hints from it. First you will hear things ratling from the inside. Then, you will see something moving in the hole on a side of the lock. Sometimes it moves, sometimes not. Maybe it's related with the solution or maybe it's just a trap.

Being a fan of trick locks, I think this is a nice addition to any collection and it's highly collectible! Especially when you know that it was crafted by Wil Strijbos, who is not used at all to crafting trick locks.

Hope that Will will come sooner or latter with another trick lock!!

String octet

Recently crafted by Brian Menold and designed by Goh Pit Khiam, this is not only a puzzle, but 13 puzzles itself!

Well you have to solve 13 challenges, so it will take you some time to solve all of them :-)

You have several pieces on which a path is drawn and 2 filler pieces. The goal is to make a continuous path from the starting piece to the end piece by using all the pieces (sometimes you can complete the goal with less than all the pieces, but well, it just means you failed...) and the 2 fillers. Brian includes a paper with hints, which consists in telling you where to place these 2 fillers. But I am sure you will not look at the hints, will you??

Almost....

Obviously you have 2 sides for each piece and then depending on the orientation of the piece, the path is changed. The initial design was with straight lines, but I feel this is nice to have these curves, and maybe it can confuse people, making the challenges even more difficult?

When I saw the puzzle, I thought it would be super (or too) easy, well....definitely not. This is challenging, and so far I have not yet solved all the challenges. This is not the common packing puzzle you're used to seeing and this is what makes this puzzle very interesting.

The quality of the puzzle is nice and Brian is a very friendly craftman, always replying to emails and questions, even if he is very busy....If everyone could be like him ;-)

The puzzle is still available HERE. I am sure Brian will be happy to sell it to you, but don't wait too long because the puzzles are sold out quickly! It's worth the money!

Bolt #7

Marcel Gillen, designer and maker of this puzzle, is not only known for his maze puzzles but also for his bolts. There were several bolts, the look is pretty similar but the challenges are not exactly the same.

This is not a spoiler what I will say: this is a maze! You will find out soon that you need to solve a bolt maze, as you will hear the famous "click" sound that indicates you've been trapped and may restart from the beginning.

This is a challenging puzzle (like all Marcel Gillen's by the way!). I like the feature with the pin as I think this was a very advanced stage of the puzzle maze puzzles in its kind before the revomaze puzzle. This is the most challenging bolt puzzle you can find. But well, usually bolt puzzles are also called "trick bolts" and don't involve a lot of steps. This bolt puzzle is not a trick bolt.

Needless to say that the quality is very good and that you will have to deal with a pretty heavy brass puzzle

Maybe I can submit you another challenge whether you have or not played with this puzzle: find a way to cheat to solve quickly the puzzle.
Cheating is a way of puzzling sometimes ;-)

Time to fold....some kinetic origami

Some new creations with nice papers.

The size is not that big, but it requires very long strip of papers...and it's time-consuming to fold. But the result is worth the effort.

As usual, the foldings can be sold if interested.

There are several shapes: the basic one is the square. Then you also have a rectangle and finally an hexagon. I must admit I am not really happy with the hexagon as I feel it's not very beautiful because of the proportions, and it's a bit too tricky to fold. It's enjoyable to play with though. But it was my first try, I will improve myself :-)

Honestly the square is the easiest to fold, and it has the best looking in my opinion. Simple is always good!

The goal is to twist the layers to make nice shapes

I thought I had to make a video, sorry but I was alone to hold my smartphone on one hand and press the start button and twist the layers with my other hand...Not practical....

 If you were wondering, it's perfectly normal not to have perfect geometrical square or rectangle. There is always a little something that is "out" of the square for example, and it allows to have these kinetic origami with layers such like that. If you have a perfect square, the layers will be put each over the others and you won't have the same design. I prefer the ones I folded.

Havana box #4

Made and designed more than 2 years ago, this wooden trick box belongs to a series of 4 puzzles. The goal of each havana boxes is to open them to free the cigar (a real one!) which lies inside.

The fit is very precise and the grain of the wood used is just awesome! Judge by yourself:

Ok, now, what about the mechanism and difficulty?
Eric said that the difficulty increases even more for the next box, so #4 should be the most difficult one. Actually, maybe yes, maybe no, it's not easy to compare when you have not played with the other 3 :-)

What you clearly notice is that you can more some pannels on the top, but that not going to help you that much. Of course, it may be part of the solution, but Eric put more steps in this puzzle than a simple move! Honestly this is a challenging puzzle, but well after all you have to deserve the cigar (not being a smoker, I hope it won't turn out "badly". Will it, if it stays in the box?)!!

I tried many things and after some time and soar hands (...) I managed to free the cigar. Opening the box won't reveal the mechanism, but maybe you can still guess how it works inside.

I saw the solution and I must admit I did not solve with the intended solution and I managed to find a short-cut, with which I am pretty happy (and it works!!).
Have you solved yours with the intended solution?

In my mind this is a great puzzle to have in a puzzler's collection, for the design, the material used and the quality.

Which Havana box do you prefer? And why?

Frist Cylinder by Wil Strijbos

Not a new puzzle but still a "classic" one by Wil Strijbos. This rather small (yes, I was surprised by its small size and I imagined it bigger) puzzle is a nice challenge, whether you're a new puzzler or a seasoned one!

What you notice is the small hole at the bottom and things ratling inside the puzzle. You soon discover that these mysterious things are just ball bearings and from time to time when you depress the cap, these balls fall down. Do they block the cylinder and provide you from opening the puzzle? Well, this is something you will have to figure out or discover when the puzzle is opened!

Actually I opened the puzzle with luck by depressing and shaking the puzzle. You do not really have clues about how to open it, even with the sound of the balls.

When it opens the cap pops up with a satisfaying sound, nice opening!

OK I managed to open it, I looked everything and thought I could have opened it again, so I closed the puzzle.
Damn it! I could not. Same random process as the first time: a bit of shaking, a bit of "cap depressing" and it opens after some time...

Actually I know what to do, but doing it is not that obvious (well, if you have a technique that allows you to open the puzzles in 30 seconds, I would be happy to hear it!).

I like a lot the puzzle because the mechanism is nice and it's a nice challenge for the money spent on it. Its size has an advantage: you can carry the puzzle easily with you.
The thing that I do not like it that the mechanism damages a bit the inside bottom of the puzzle. I cannot say more without spoiling...I am sure nobody likes spoiling, but I am also sure that most of the readers own and/or have solved this puzzle :-)

I don't know if Wil Strijbos still have some, but in case not, you can still find it HERE!

4L puzzle

4L is a packing puzzle designed by Yasuhiro Hashimoto, crafted by Mine and awarded by an honorable mention at IPP 2015.

The puzzle is composed of some plexi, a wooden cage and 4L shapes pieces to pack inside the box. To be more precise you have 2 pairs of L: one kind of L piece is a bit thiner.

The goal is easy and the puzzle looks so easy....Well how can a puzzle be hard with only 4 pieces you can wonder. Well, wonder more! :-)  This is a difficult puzzle and it has given a lot of pain to the puzzle collectors who have this (nice) puzzle.

Indeed you have many ways to pack the pieces and you have also rotations. Some rotations are (or seem?) impossible, other are not that difficult, but in any case you need precision. 
I worked on this puzzle for long time and at some point I thought it was impossible and that there was a fit issue with my puzzle...sign of despair maybe...I could not really find other collectors who played with it (or solved it), so not easy to get some hints.

I worked again a bit later on the puzzle and tried to focus myself of the shape of the plexi and how I could use the space between the plexi and the pieces, trying to see which piece can go between this space and in which positions. No success but I tried.

After I came back to my first ideas of how to pack 2 pieces and then how the 3rd one could be put inside. At the beginning I tried to pack the pieces outside of the box with the constraint of the 4th piece but I could not really make progress. So well, I came back putting pieces inside the box, that's the goal, right :)
After a sequence of moves I managed to put the 3rd piece and after some sequence of moves the 4th piece was packed! A very satisfaying puzzle and it's worth the money!! And the solution is easy to repeat. I fear burrtool won't help you because of the rotations...But your brain is more powerful, isn't it?

I always have the feeling that packing puzzles are too frustrating because of all the possibilities to pack the pieces and solving a puzzle should not involve frustration but satisfaction! So when I buy packing puzzles, I try to choose the ones that have a little something different regarding the solution or the design. I was right to buy this packing puzzle because of the "ah-ha" moment with the 3rd piece packed and because you realize that a puzzle can also be difficult with few pieces!

All pieces packed, but this is the only orientation where it does not spoil too much

My first attempts to craft puzzles!!!

It's good to collect, buy from time to time or just play with puzzles. But at some point you aim at either designing and crafting, just designing, or just crafting some puzzles. Maybe it's a way to see if you could compete with other craftmen? Well....normally you will not reach the high top of puzzle designers in a couple of days! It's a long process ;-)

Many (if not most) people trying to craft puzzles craft flat packing puzzles because they are the easiest to craft. Sure, it's way easier than crafting a 3D burr puzzle or a complex sequencial discovery puzzle, no doubt about that. And flat packing puzzle (or just flat puzzle) can be "easily" done with some plexi and a laser cutter. So guess what I crafted??? Flat puzzles isung plexi!!!

I will show you what I have done so far and the difficulties that one can experience.

The first question to ask yourself is the choice of plexi (if you want it transparent or not) and the thickness. If it's too thick, maybe it will not be useful and maybe the laser cutter will not properly cut it. If it's too thin, well you might break it when playing with it...I decided to use a 3mm thick plexi.

Let's begin with a flat puzzle:

The goal: use all the pieces to make the same shape but bigger.
Yes, this is a very simple-looking puzzle, but I liked the idea and decided to craft it. There are several puzzles in the same spirit, but I just wanted to craft one.
About the difficulty, I would say it's pretty easy: you should not take too long before finding the solution. And all people who tried this puzzle (most of them are not really puzzlers) solved it without too much trouble. It just takes a couple of minutes.
I like this puzzle because it's simple but efficient. And easy to carry with you!


Now another flat (but packing) puzzle:

Obviously the goal is to pack all the pieces inside the tray. At the beginning I cut the pieces in absolutely transparent plexi and well it was not only difficult to see the pieces inside the tray but also the look was not that good. Thus, I decided to cut the pieces in non transparent blue plexi. Moreover at the beginning, I thought it would be a nice idea to carve some section on each piece. I mean: instead of having for example the plain piece of 3 octogon, there were marks so that we could clearly see 3 different octogons. The idea was nice but even if it was only carved, these marks made each pieces more fragile resulting in some cracks.

I am not used to crafting puzzles, so well my issues or questions may seem obvious to you but were not to me at this stage. I thought it would be nice to have a tray, so that the pieces do not slip out. Obvious? Definitely. How to do? Well, screwing plexi is not an easy task because you can break it. My only solution was using strong glue. I even managed to put a bit of glue on my fingers....s**t! It sticks so quick...Next time I will be using gloves!
Using glue is a pretty good idea, but the bad thing is that when glueing 2 transparent pieces of plexi, you can see the glue between both layers. And this is not nice! :-(
I like the fact of using a transparent tray and opaque pieces however. And the blue of the pieces contrasts well with the yellow of the tray.

If you look well, you will also notice that each piece has like a small square and I cut 7 small square on the tray. My first idea was that it could be a nice idea to be able to push the pieces out of the tray. Sure, if you have very very small fingers... ;-) but you can still use a pen. I feel it's also more beautiful.

Regardless the technical thing and the issues I faced, some quick words about this puzzle: first the fit is perfect! And I am sure it will not move with humidity :)
About the difficulty, this is not a difficult puzzle (even if more difficult than the first puzzle above). All people I gave this puzzle to managed to solve it. I like it!


Now the last puzzle made with plexi (and the most difficult in the series):

This is a famous puzzle. You need to use all the pieces, put on the right order with a right rotation so that when looking through the stack of pieces you can see a rabbit shape. This is a very difficult puzzle because you have so many possibilities to stack the pieces. I like the idea and it's easy to carry with you on travel, for example.


I couldn't not try to 3D print a puzzle as well!
So here it it:

Each part of the sphere took around 30 minutes and each part of the cage took around 1 hour to print.
The cage measures around 3.5cm x 3.5 cm x 3 cm, which is not too small and fine to manipulate.
The quality is pretty good. But the bad thing is for the sphere parts, the 3D printer had difficulties to make it perfectly round. I mean, it's round but there was a little residue of filaments that needed to be sand-papered. The round shape is the most difficult thing to 3D print because obviously when the printer starts to work it puts some material that is flat. So, any sphere shapes will have a flat base that we have to be rounded with sandpaper.

Apart from that the fit is tight with the cage, luckily the parts are strong enough to resist pressure when putting the 2 parts together.

The goal is to open the cage by manipulating the sphere inside. Maybe you have recognized a similar puzzle? Well, the cast marble crafted by Hanayama uses the same mechanism. But for the cast puzzle you need to twist the cage which is more difficult than just opening the cage, and metal is always nicer than 3D printed puzzles! :-)



To finish this post, I also wanted to craft a mathematical structure.
It uses 30 identical pieces and stay together. Indeed, the friction with plexi with each end part of each pieces makes the structure pretty sturdy. When using plexi, you do not have to put glue. But glue is mandatory is you do not use plexi because otherwise the structure will collapse!

Believe me, this was a lot of pain assembling the structure. But you get easily confused about which piece goes where. The more you make progress on building it, the more you will feel tnesion between pieces. And plexi can break easily, don't forget that! Also plexi can cut like paper sheets. It's pretty sharp. And when I finish building it, my hands were a bit painful.

I really like the shape but I need to have a severe critic about the design: in my opinino the design can be more improved so that you could use any kind of material without glue and have stronger "key-ends" on each piece. I mean, it's like modular origami: usually it does not require any glue if the modules are cleverly designed (so that they hold by themselves with each other). If you need glue, it means the foldings is weak. Here, I would make the same comment. You can manipulate the structure if it's in plexi but you still need to be careful.

Summary of cast puzzles (Hanayama) level 1

I have reviewed all the level 1 puzzles so far. I am sure there will always be new level 1 puzzles.
I don't think I will update this page (but I will see later) because it would be long to find it.

So far, you can find:
Cast ABC
Cast bike
Cast flag
Cast hook
Cast key
Cast loop
Cast seabream
Cast shark

My favourite is the Cast loop: it has a nice design, is tricky to reassemble even if you disassembled it few minutes ago and is always fun to solve. I like the feature with the magnet.
I like also the Cast shark.

My less favourite puzzle is cast hook. Well, the puzzle is far from being obvious, but what I like less is that there is a bit of friction and you really need to make tiny moves to solve it.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice puzzle, but just not my favourite one :-)

What's your favourite level 1? And your less favourite level 1?

For more Hanayama cast puzzles, look at here ot buy them!

 

Cast loop: level 1

A nice puzzle, designed by Vesa Timonen, that could easily be a nice necklace if it was a little bit smaller though :)
The puzzle is indeed provided with a small rope.

The puzzle is put as the below position. At the beginning I thought the puzzle was almost solved, but actually this is the starting position. You need to disassemble the 2 parts of the puzzle and then make a complete closed ring.

Note that there is a magnet which provides the ring from disassembling by itself, a very good idea!!!

Reassembling the 2 parts to get the final closed ring (as shown on the right above picture) can be pretty confusing. Even if you manage to do once, the next time you try it, you may fail. It requires a good brain to remember what to do.

In my mind, this puzzle deserves a 3/6 difficulty ranking and definitely not a 1/6. It's not super hard, but enough confusing to puzzle the best solvers :-)

This puzzle is very cleverly designed and is my favourite so far in the 1/6 difficulty ranking.
It's very fun to solve it again and again and to torture people's mind trying to solve it.

 

I can only advise to buy it soo :).

 

If you're puzzled, look at the solution!

 

Cast hook: level 1

This intriguing puzzle was designed by Vesa Timonen, who designed several cast puzzle by the way, with usually a common point: some twists involved.

The shape of the pieces is pretty strange and I feel it may be a nice idea for earings ;-)

Anyway you will have to make several steps to separate the pieces, many more than what should be required to solve a level 1 cast puzzle. Moreover, the steps are not that easy and the last one can be forgotten easily. Plus if you have a bit of friction between both pieces (unfortunately, even if Hanayama's puzzle are mass produced and are usually of good quality, you will likely not have a whole collection of perfectly made cast puzzles....unfortunately), then it may be difficult to guess some steps.

In my opinion, it deserves a level 3 for ranking difficulty, and certainly not a level 1!
Not sure how Hanayama classifies the cast puzzles....obviously it goes with the wrong rating (too) often, even if it depends on one's skills.

Don't start with this puzzle if you intend to start from easy to difficult. A beginner will have a lot of difficulties.

Not my favourite among the level 1 cast puzzles, but still a nice one!

 

Puzzle Master will be happy to sell it yo you!  They provide also the solution here.

 

Cast shark: level 1

Second puzzle in the marinelife series designed by Akio Yamamoto, this puzzle is (much?) more difficult than the cast seabream: the shapes of the pieces make the puzzle a bit confusing and if your puzzle has some flaws (it can happen with mass-produced puzzles!), then it's pretty hard to discover the moves.

I like the design of a shark going through jaws without being bitten ;-)

The puzzle is less easy than what you can think at a first glance because you need very small moves and good precision when you manipulate it so that it can move. So if you're blocked, try to make small and slow moves, and maybe it will help you....And obviously you need some idea to progress.

It's worth more a level 2/6 difficulty in my mind. I think it's an interesting puzzle. So try to buy it, you won't regret!

Solution here!!

Cast seabream: level 1

Designed by Akio Yamamoto, this puzzle belongs to a marine series of cast puzzle with usually 2 metal colors. As it's about marine sealife, the moves are not regular ones and can be very hard to discover and manipulate the pieces.

Actually this puzzle is not difficult and the moves are easy to discover: you will have to move and rotate the fishes.

I think this puzzle is a nice introduction of using rotations when solving a puzzle, and it's definitely easy to repeat. But still, it's fun and nice. Good puzzle for beginners....and for more seasoned who want to complete their collection :-)

 

Solution here!!

Cast key: level 1

Designed by Nob Yoshigahara, this puzzle embodies perfectly what a level 1 cast puzzle should be: a puzzle with several steps but not too many, not confusing but pretty straight forward steps.

The puzzle can be solved by anybody, it's really not difficult. The sequence of steps are nice and I love the idea and the design.

Starting with this puzzle in your cast puzzle journey is the best idea you can have :-)
Even if you won't have any difficulty to solve and reassemble the puzzle, it's pretty addictive to play again with this puzzle.

Can you also try this challenge below (the position of the right key is not the same)

I usually try to find if you could have several challenges for a given puzzle. For this puzzle, yes you have 2 challenges in a way, for more fun!

 

Solution: here!!

Cast flag: level 1

One of the several puzzles designed by Nob Yoshigahara, the goal of it is to free the flag from its cage.

The core is composed of 2 moving parts and depending of where the flag is in its cage, you can move one part or the other on different side of the cage.
You really need very good precision, because otherwise you cannot move the flag and think you're blocked, even if it's not the case at all!

Honestly, this puzzle has a lot of moves for a level 1! And I am sure a beginner would have difficulties. I would classify it as level 2.

With my old packagings I did not have the writting below, so it made me smile.
Well, when the solution doesn't go along with the puzzle, it just means that the designers/puzzle firms are too lazy to write a proper solution. The solution is part of the puzzle, it should always be included.
Luckily, it's not too difficult to find the solution of the cast puzzle on the internet if you're ever blocked.

You can buy this puzzle at Puzzle Master Webshop!

Solution here!