Haleslock #1

A newscommer (well, not really new now!) in the beautiful world of puzzles came, and guess what: he crafts very nice puzzles!
His name: Shane Hales!

His puzzles are pretty rare because made in very small quantities, so don't expect to play with one! Just enjoy the nice looks, and that's it. Yes, I know it's frustrating and I am definitely the first person to be furstrated to see that I won't be able to own his beautiful wooden puzzles.

Pretty recently (some months ago) he released some sequencial discovery trick locks. Being good with locks, offering services related to protection and lock, he naturally made lock puzzles. Logical way :-)

If you see some comments on blogs about his puzzles, you notice that the guy does not show off and modestly says that he produces puzzles that are far from being perfect and won't be able to achieve as good quality as compared to other craftmen. Come one! This is false, totally false. Even if I cannot judge about his wooden puzzles, in my mind the Haleslock #1 is a very nice first steps into trick lock puzzles. Sure, this is not a popplock, but who cares?!

So what about the lock itself? This is a modified lock obviously with a stange thing on a side under Shanes' signature and a key attached with kind of a key ring.
Sure, the key will be useful, but how to free it? This will be the first step of your journey. I am sure, for those who played with this puzzle, they may have had some difficulties with this steps. But you will definitely smile with an "ah-ha" moment when you solve this first part of the puzzle.
Then you will have to perform several steps to solve the lock.

Solving the puzzle was not super hard but very pleasant and I can say that this is a nice lock for anyone who likes this kind of puzzles. In my mind Shane did a very great job and the feeling about this lock is shared among the puzzlers: a nice lock to have, to play with or both!

The puzzle had a lot of success and demand was way higher than offer. Hence, Shane, for his other lock design, chose to make more puzzles.....but again demand was higher than offer. I will talk a bit about his other lock in another post later.