Free Willy !!

Designed by the Dutch designer Oskar van Deventer, made by George Miller and exchanged by Nick Baxter in 2005, this nice little puzzle was the first one crafted using 3D printers.

Willy has to be positioned properly so that the puzzle completely fits inside the box.

This is a pretty fragile puzzle due to its materials used and you should play with a lot of care: no force at all, but gentle moves only.
As you have guessed the goal is to free Willy (the blue plastic dolphin) from the maze. On each side of the solid are pegs that prevent Willy to move freely, so you will have to go through many sides of the white solid while turning Will to finally free it.

Oskar has accustomed us to mazes and this one is no exception to the others: you will get lost easily inside the maze....Poor Willy!! ;-)
Actually, when I played with this puzzle, I had the feeling that I went back to previous steps many times and what I considered as moving forward was more stepping back....but perhaps I also went back making some moves inside the holes. Anyway, after many (more than what is needed) moves, I solved the puzzle.

 

Don't judge a puzzle only on its size: this one is pretty small but will keep you puzzling for some time. And mazes like this one (not hidden mazes) are always fun to play with. Especially because you usually know the goal but cannot remember all the right steps in the right order!

 Which maze(s) from Oskar is/are your favourite one(s)?

Number blocks

Number blocks is a puzzle designed by the very talented Pit Khiam Goh (Goh is his last name by the way) for IPP 2015 and was awarded as "Honorable Mention" by the Jury, which was well deserved!

This puzzle was crafted by Tom Lensch. No need to speak about him because I assume that everybody already knows how good his craftmanship is.

Number blocks is composed of 4 pieces of wood with protrusions that fit inside a box. Each piece has a number on its top and the goal is to rearrange the numbers, hence the name.

Below on the left the starting position and on the right the solved position:

I see you coming and wonder how can these pieces move. Well the number 4 does not have any protrusions and thus you can just take it out, which creates a hole in the tray to be able to move the other pieces. Simple as that!

The moves are smooth and it's really fun to play with this puzzle and notice that at some point you're stuck....whatever you do you cannot achieve what you want...and that will prevent you from solving the puzzle :-)

I tried many combinations and was always stuck. Damn! How is it possible?! Well it is, but there is a clever features that you need to use!! And you will have to think out of the box! And no force (even small) is needed nor advised.

So after the puzzle is solved you can still try to arrange the pieces to find other combinations. If there were no protusions at all you could have 24 possbilities. For example (1st two numbers for top row and last two numbers for bottom row): 1234, 1243, 1324, 1342, etc.
Actually you have fewer possibilities due to the constraints of the pieces. I managed to find all the possibilities:

 

 

These extra challenges are not really difficult, but it's still fun to try to see how we can increase the fun of a puzzle. I am  almost sure that no other combinations can be found, but in case you find others feel free to add a comment :-)

To conclude: a really nice and enjoyable puzzle for a reasonable price.

Sweta cross

I know that this puzzle has been reviewed many times over the past recent weeks, but nevermind I also wanted to give my feeling about this puzzle.

This metal puzzle was designed and made by Wil Strijbos with a reference of the Swiss flag (hence the wooden cross shape that goes with the puzzle) and also of the name of one of his friends. Makes sense, right? :-)

The puzzle looks like clearly Wil's past puzzle called the aluminium cross, but that where the similarities end. With of course the same goal: separate the 2 parts of the puzzle.

 I like the shape of the puzzle and I feel it's really nice that it comes with a wooden stand (unfortunately it does not protect the bottom of puzzle, which would have been even nicer). The finish of the puzzle is good and the precision is, of course, very good!

The big difference with  the aluminium cross is that this puzzle has many ball bearings that go in and out of small metal rods and you can see that through plexi windows. So actually the puzzle would have been harder without this windows, but less nice. Sometimes you have to choose between two difficult options :-)

When you play with this puzzle you notice the ball bearings that randomly enter the metal rods or leave out of them but you cannot clearly see what going on in these rods. No matter what would be the outcome you still move again and again the puzzle just to admire the movements of these ball bearings...Yes I know pretty useless. But perhaps you hope secretly that with a bit of luck you will manage to solve the puzzle. But you will never solve it with luck. Don't worry, this is not a difficult puzzle at all, you just need to have good ideas at the right moment...

For the moment only 2 ball bearings...but after maybe more...or less...

I solved it and could admire the mechanism which is simple but efficient. It works all the time and once you know the method you can solve this puzzle easily and very fast! No need to say that it is much simpler than the alu cross and less painful for your fingers. If anyone has already played (I am sure!) with the alu cross they should know what I am talking about...

Solved!! Doing my best not to spoil....not easy...maybe that was the puzzle...

To conclude: a pretty easy puzzle, a nice one though and well, either you collect metal puzzle and/or like Wil's puzzles, I am sure you will like this one!

Some wooden wonders from Brian Menold

I recently received a nice package with one packing puzzle and one co-motion puzzle, packaged and crafted carefully by Brian Menold who is running a puzzle company in the USA.

I could say the same things about Brian Menold than for Pelikan puzzle: that was my first order to Brian because he is used to making burr puzzles, and most of the time when I can be interested by a puzzle, between the time he puts some puzzles on his website and when I can place an order they are all sold out....!!

So this time I was lucky enough to order on time a packing puzzle designed by Laszlo Molnar and one co-motion puzzle designed by Gregory Benedetti :-)

Front: co-motion puzzle / Back: packing puzzle

The first puzzle is a co-motion puzzle called "Little Slide Plank" and is composed of 3 (pretty weird) pieces. It is not difficult to solve. Actually you just need 2 fingers (from the same hand) and if you hold the puzzle with your 2 fingers correctly placed then the pieces disassemble by themselves. So in case you're lucky I would advise you to hold it on a soft surface....

The craftmanship is very good: not too tight, not too loose. Just the right fit that allows you to solve the puzzle in a "peaceful way" ;-)
With co-motion puzzles it's usually (well, that's my feeling) more difficult to reassemble them than solving. If you try to reassemble it just after disassemble this puzzle that should be easy. But just wait one or more hour(s) and "scramble" the pieces, then it's more challenging.

But normally you should not be stuck because there is a features that is very useful: the color of the wood, especially the color of the small bands on each side, which form a cross. Just looking at the colors then with a bit of trial and errors your life will be made easier :-)


The second puzzle, "No Holes Barred", I ordered is a packing puzzle designed by Laszlo Molnar and which goal is, of course, to pack all the pieces inside the box.

The pieces are almost the same and then you think that it will be easy....Sorry, but no it's not...It's challenging! So it's definitely good!!

The thing you notice is the small cube already attached to the box. So well, it's not a surprise that you will have to take it into account when putting the pieces inside the box (because it blocks pieces in some orientations).

In my opinion, there are 2 challenges with this puzzle: try to make a cube with the pieces and then try to find the way to make these pieces fit inside the box. The 1st challenge is the most difficult one.
Indeed it's pretty difficult to make a cube because it will not be a "regular cube" but will have some holes. I managed to make a cube but could not put the pieces inside the box: one was just not possible to fit inside...So I needed to give up with this idea and as I could not figure out any other configurations I asked some help from Laszlo who was kind enough to help. Thanks!

It seems that this puzzle is not the most difficult from Laszlo, I whish I could have tried some of the other, which were also crafted by Brian.


To conclude: nice and original puzzles crafted with great woods by the seasoned Brian Menold. Next update for Brian's puzzles will be at the end of the month. So check out often his website and be quick!
HERE you can find some of the other puzzles Brian crafted. Some puzzles are still available but only burr puzzles.

Some wood from the Pelikan woods

Recently a package arrived somewhere from Eastern Europe, guess from where? From Pelikan company, what did you expect?!
They sent the package with priority mail and it took less than 1 week to come, that's a top quality service, you cannot deny it, and if the quality is as good, then I understand why so many people only say goods things about Pelikan!

I had a bit of time to take some quick pictures during the week-end and was luck enough that it's was pretty sunny (or not to rainy, depending your point of view).

That's my first order from Pelikan. Yes, I know I should be ashamed, but well I have never been a super fan of burr puzzles, and most of the puzzles they craft are burr puzzles. So guess what I ordered?.....burr puzzles!!

No, just joking, honestly....



I ordered the 3 wooden ball puzzles: convolution ball, Mochalov ball and the slideways ball

Back left: convolution ball / Middle: Mochalov ball  / Front: slideways ball

Three things that you notice first: they all come with wooden stand, which is very very appreciable since you may not always have stands for your puzzles (that usually stand whithout stands). The second thing you notice is the size of the puzzle: not small at all (9cm diamater for the 2 biggest). And finally you also notice the quality of the work!

The convolution ball designed by Stewart Coffin is made out of wenge and maple, the look is absolutely wonderful due to the the checkered pattern, the fit is perfect (well, same comment for the two other puzzles!!) which makes the solving process not easy at all. Indeed it's so precisely cut, not too tight (but tight enough not to fall apart by itself) and not loose at all. I managed to disassemble 2 pieces, but for the third one I wonder how to proceed, it's a puzzle after all ;-) I have not considered yet rotations which seem to be required (no spoil, it's written on Pelikan's website), that may explain why I am blocked...
But no worries, I will win!!! I just need to try it again :-)

The ball in the middle is designed by Leonid Mochalov, a Russian puzzle designer who has invented many puzzles and luckily some companies (because Leonid does not produce puzzles) like Pelikan decided to produce them. That would be a pitty it you see many designs, but never the puzzles...
What strikes you is the diversity of woods used: 8 different nice woods (purpleheart, wenge, mapple, padouk, american walnut, acacia, bubingo and jatoba). As far as I know, I don't know any other puzzles made with so many different woods, and these are not common woods. They are colorful, almost "precious", just judge by yourself below:

Wenge is one of my favourite woods, I love the grain and the natural lines of it.
Fit, quality and craftmanship are still on the top level for this puzzle!
The difficulty is first to find out which is (or are) the piece to take first. Then, it's pretty straight forward, but that's not so easy to start. It's more complicated to reassemble but not impossible at all. The design is clever, which makes the pieces hold to each other and not fall apart easily.
I think this is nice to have made another puzzle ball with different wood and different pattern, so that you can reallt differentiate which is the Mochalov one from the convolution ball.
Definitely a nice pair!

I could not have avoided the last puzzle ball made with simpler woods (cherry, acacia, mapple) but with the most original stand which results in making you believe that you have a real golf ball in front of you! Yeah, you have the ball you have the stand...Humm but I doubt you would like to use this wooden puzzle as a golf ball: too big and too beautiful of course ;-)
I like to have stand for the puzzle, but I also appreciate to have the name of the puzzle, of the designer and of the puzzle company written on the stand, and all three are gathered here.

This puzzles was designed by Ray Stanton and belongs to a series of 3 coordination-motion puzzles (I dont know what is the thris one, by the way) with all the same kind of mechanism but each time in a different shape, which makes the puzzles challenging even if you managed to solve the same with the cube shape for example.
This puzzle is tricky, tricky enough to trick you each time you try to solve it!
You need to push on specific pieces and usually there is one or 2 fingers wrongly places that prevent the pieces from moving. But once you find where to press, all the 3 pieces slide together! Very fun to play with. You can also solve the puzzle is you hold one piece, but you need to find the correct piece, not easy to see where a piece "starts" and where it "ends"...
And if you're really puzzles, well you can also spin the puzzle and the pieces will slide apart by themselves.

To conlude, very nicely crafted puzzles, super good quality. No wonder why Pelikan is one of the favourite wooden suppliers!!!


In case you're not familiar with Pelikan puzzles -your turn to be ashamed! - then look HERE.
They have still some puzzles on sale, but don't hesitate too long...

Dipole dilemma

Designed by Chris Morgan and made by Walter Hoppe, this puzzle consists of some magnetic balls and a tray where you have to place all these balls. This is a 11 year-old puzzle, but it's still in perfect condition and works as expected!

First impressions: I like a lot the design. The fact that the balls are put in a circle let me know "what a nice puzzle" and also you're provided with a plastic case. So you can bring this puzzle safely with you, it also allows you to keep the puzzle in the solved state if you want to.

The "dipole" word is easy to understand: some balls will be attracted by others, some will not. Then why a "dilemma"? Because you have to fit all these balls inside the square, completely flat!

Perhaps you have an idea how it should fit, and if so that's a very good first step! But then you will have to implement your idea, which is far from being easy...

I cannot put the puzzle in the solved state, because it would show you already how the puzzle should look like once solved. I can tell you that it's a challenging puzzle. And it's not buy putting all the magnets together and then "crush" them to make the shape flat, that you will be able to put them completely flat in the tray. It's not about brute fore ;-)
I heard about 2 solutions, but there is only one official, so if anybody is willing to share the second solution that would be great :-)

This puzzle will provide you with a lot of fun, who doesn't like to play with magnets?? But again take care, these are powerful magnets, they can pinch!...

Not a lof of magnet puzzles are released and I feel it's a pitty because they are always fun to play with. I have already reviewed another Chris Morgan's and my latest review was about the enigma orbs, which are both magnet puzzles. I hope Chris will come up with new ideas, but I also hope that some designers would release these kind of puzzles!

Enigma orbs

I published some time ago a "review" (actually it was more advertising than reviewing) about a puzzle made of concrete and magnets designed by Aaron Olivas and funded via kickstarter.

Aaron has started since some time the production of them and has shipped many. So now it's time to speak about the puzzle! ;-)

To remind you, the goal is to assemble the different pieces (that have magnets) in order to make a ball shape. The balls are available in different size, but I would recommand the biggest ball, because the medium ball (mine) is not so difficult. And the smallest ball may be even easier.

The puzzles are made of concrete, which is very unusual for making puzzles!! When you order yours, you can make different versions because you can choose the colors of the stains and of the glass pieces. So many many possibilities!! Actually you have 42 combo possible.

The finish is very handsome and very soft in the hands and the construction is pretty solid (does not fall apart) once it's completely assembled (the magnets are powerful enough).

The pieces have strange shapes and, in my opinion, are pretty original. Due to that and to the poles of the magnets you can make a "wrong" start. Indeed some pieces seem to fit together (because of the magnets and of the shapes of them), but then after you notice that you cannot do anything else with some remaining pieces. Thus, back to the starting point!

After you have started to assemble some pieces, then it's a bit "trial-and-error", and pretty straight forward: you try all the remaining pieces, if they fit or not. That's why I rank the difficulty as pretty easy. But, even given that, I feel it's a very nice and fun puzzle to play with!

You can also buy several orbs with different sizes and assemble them like the Russian dolls, but with always one piece not assembled, so that to be able to see the different layers. I think this can be very nice!

Now I need a base for the orb :-)

HERE you can see the kickstarter project in case you missed it, and contact Aaron if you're interested in purchasing any orbs!

Alcyl

Alcyl, also known as Aluminium cylinder or Blue cylinder is a metal puzzle designed by Iwahiro.

The goal is obviously to open the cylinder!

Nice anodized blue

I heard many people who had issues with this puzzle or who has jammed it. Actually it can happen with this puzzle (it did not happen to me, luckily) if you use force and/or if you do not understand what you're doing! Remember what Strijbos usually says "there is no hurry, take your time" :-)

That's definitely not a puzzle that will keep you puzzling for hours, unless you blocked it...then your next challenge is to unblock it.
I solved it very quickly and was a bit disapointed by the "mechanism" which can easily be damaged, which leads to a jammed puzzle...

I wished the puzzle was a bit more challenging, but still if you collect Iwahiro's puzzles and/or metal puzzles, then this is a nice addition to your collection (for a not too expensive price).
For the guys who are looking for challenging puzzles, then it's not the puzzle you need!

It seems flat, but it's really a cylinder :-)

What's your favourite cylinder puzzle?

Bon bons #2 & #3

For those who collect wooden puzzles and/or puzzle boxes, then you know about which designer these puzzles come from: Perry McDaniel! Who else?

I have already reviewed the previous Bon bons puzzles, but without any review of the last 2, the review of the Bon bons puzzles would not be complete ;-)

Bon bons #2 and #3 on the top row

I really like these nice and small puzzles, because all the moves are very well hidden thanks to the great and precise job Perry did.

These 2 puzzles take more moves than the first two.

About Bon bons #2, the first move is very well hidden, I like it a lot, then you need to discover the next steps. I find the moves a little bit tight compared to the very smooth moves of Bon bons #2.
The colors of this puzzles fit well together.

About Bon bons #3, this is the most difficult puzzles of the Bon bons: there are a lot of moves, and each move is a very small move (like 1mm) and thus the moves are pretty tight. But the quality is nonetheless very good!

If I would rank the Bon bons puzzles, my favourite would be #1 and my less favourite would be #3.

Perry crafted the cake puzzles and the Bon bons puzzles. Maybe next puzzles will be the pie puzzles, or another puzzle cake from the "Puzzled guy bakery" ;-)

Kamei's X-Mas present for 2015: Box with a ribbon 3

For 2015 Kamei decided to make another version of his 2 previous versions of the "box with a ribbon" puzzle.
Can somebody tell me why they (some karakuri's designers) always try to make a first version, and then many others??....Is that because first version was not good enough? Or just a lazily lack of imagination to create something totally new? Actually that's a good question. I like when some different version of the puzzles are released like confetto box 1 and 2 (but they are absolutely good puzzle), but only if the mechanism is not turned to something way too easy after previous versions.

I have not played with the previous versions of this puzzle so I cannot comment and will just describe my feeling about this puzzle.

This puzzle is nicely crafted, everything works as intended and I do not think this can jam over time.
It's composed of a lid and a box with a nice wodden ribbon on the top. Two kind of woods are used and we can recognize Kamei's signature on the bottom of the box.

The goal is to open the box and, as the name implicitely suggests, you will have to do something with the ribbon to open it. This is a wooden ribbon, so please do not act in the same way as with the ribbons put on your X-mas presents :-)

It took me less than 1 minute to open it: it's very easy and not difficult by any means, even for non puzzlers! Of course, at the beginning you will try "useless things" (whi is part of the puzzling fun), especially because as the fit is very good, everything is well hidden!

The mechanism does its job and is simple....too simple. Even if I like this puzzle I am a bit disappoointed by it. Kamei used to making more complex mechanism with more cleverness into them. Just look at his past designs and you will notice that it's not the same level, unfortunately...

I may give a second chance for Kamei for 2016 because I feel he may craft a "better" puzzle for this year. Hopping that I am right!

But don't make my wrong: I like the puzzle but it could have been much much better!!!

7 woods, 6 pieces, 1 puzzle !!!

You guess what was the puzzle? Well done! A small wooden puzzle designed by Stewart Coffin, crafted by the talented Lee Krasnow and called "Seven woods".

This puzzle is composed of six pieces that need to be assembled in certain way to get this beautiful geometrical solid. The fit of the pieces is absolutely perfect, which make the assembly pretty tricky. Lee did a great job with the glueing of the pieces and with the cutting. Take care: the pieces are sharp!

The puzzle was presented solved in a nice box:

Humm perhaps we can consider that the puzzle is solved when the pieces are assembled, can't we?
What do you think?

Even the way the pieces are put in the box is very nice and original. This crafter has thought about everything!
This is all the more appreciable that most designers do not sell their puzzles in customized box or display stand. We can only agree on the efforts made by Lee!

The shape of the puzzle and the shape of the pieces reminded me a lot of an origami solid I folded some time ago:

The shapes look the same but for my origami I used 12 squared sheets of paper, and for this puzzle there are only half of the pieces (6). Moreover, if you look carefully at the puzzle you have only one diagonal on the top, whereas you have two for my origami. Thus, maybe the assembly is different...

I assume it would have been pretty the same at the beginning, so I tried to assemble in the same way. First two pieces, ok. Third, fine. Fourth, that's ok. Fifth can be ok but difficult. Last one: impossible!
Usually with origami, it's always the last piece that is difficult to assemble and thus you need to fold it slightly, but that impossible to fold wood pieces :-)
So I failed trying to use the same method which consisted of putting pieces one by one. And if you cannot add one piece after another in a "basic way", then you need to consider other assembly methods, what I did...and it worked! I had an idea and was surprised that it worked very well and smoothly, but again you need to be very precise!

A small hesitation: should I put the puzzle in its box?....For the moment it's in it...What do you prefer?

To conclude: a nice puzzle, which relatively small size does not provide you from having a lot of fun to solve it again and again!