Some new cool puzzles & toy

Some new stuff arrived at home from Art of Play webshop company: some wooden puzzles and some toys.

So let's start with some wooden puzzles!

2 puzzles designed by Iwahiro: rectangular jam and pentangular jam.

Both consist of 4 pieces and among them 1 (the thinner one, which is also the one with a different color) that has to be freed from the small hole on a side of the puzzle.

Obviously you have to keep all the pieces flat on the tray. It looks impossible, doesn't it?
Well you will realize that several rotations are needed to solve the puzzle and to make them possible the size of each piece must be super precise. Else the rotations are impossible to make, and so the puzzle impossible to solve.

I must say that both puzzle check the box "perfect precision" :)

Start with rectangular jam puzzle, it's easier... not easy :)
I really like these "unconventional" puzzles, not the ones you're used to playing with.
They took my some time to solve and the solution is very nice!


Next is the famous packing puzzle designed by Iwahiro as well called "4 M" puzzle, consisting of a box with a protubing part under the lid and 4 pieces (with "M" shapes, hence de name of the puzzle).

This is a very clever packing and not super difficult (yet satisfaying to solve). I asked a friend of mine to solve it (he never plays with puzzles !!) and he managed to solve it. You will see that putting the pieces on a "normal" way does not give you the expected result. I mean, you have to think a bit outside the box to solve it. Mathematically interesting and fun to solve, this one is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of what a good puzzle is: challenging, but not too much, great design and clever solution!


The other packing puzzle from the same designer is Dango Box.
So far I have not solved it, but it seems super hard with, I am sure, a not so super difficult solution, but still a clever one!

The other puzzle is Bird in cage. It's what we know as "hedgehog puzzle", consisting of a shape (here a bird) trapped in a cage and the goal is to manipulate the bird so that it can go through the cage.
Usually, for these kind of puzzles, some space between some cage rods are larger, but it's hard to tell with the eyes. And for this one, the other thing to take into account are the wings of the bird: they can move. And that has an impact on the solution of course :)

I like these puzzles, and again they are suitable for any people, as long as they are gentle while manipulating the puzzles! You need to be gentle with birds :)


I told you about puzzle and toy, right? So final item is a toy! A shashibo cube!!
It can even been considered as a fidget toy. The goal is to create many geometric shapes by flipping and moving the magnetic parts. I managed to make some chapes (see below) but it took me a while to make the initial shape (the cube) again. So this was my puzzling part of the toy :)
Highly recommended!!

You an find other puzzles on Art of Play website as well as other toys as well.