This is the Explosion Cube, lovingly hand-crafted in the Czech Republic by Vinco:
You may remember that a fellow puzzler by the name of Chris previously wrote an article for my blog about Vinco's Dual Tetrahedron 9 puzzle in which he states that the craftsmanship is excellent, and I can say that the Explosion Cube is no different! This puzzle is handmade, and you really can tell. Every edge is perfectly sanded and there isn't any space to spare in-between each of the pieces. Only four pieces actually make up the Explosion Cube, but each piece is made up of several different types of contrasting wood that have been glued and sanded together to form the beautiful artwork of colour that you can see in the above images. I especially like the light wood corners.
Like I said, the Explosion Cube is only made up of four pieces, but the puzzle is actually a little hard to figure out at first. It actually took me a good few minutes to work out how to disassemble it properly. You can see in the image on the right how the cube looks when it starts to come apart, and this is where I imagine the 'Explosion' part of the name comes from. All four pieces have to be moved at the same time to take the cube apart, so there is a really nice moment when the puzzle sort of opens up from all sides at once and the motion of it is really satisfying to repeat.
Once you have the four pieces fully disassembled it isn't too difficult to see how they go back together, but the puzzle is actually managing to find a way to actually implement your assembly technique. As all of the pieces came apart at the same time that also means that they all have to go back together at the same time, which can make you feel like you need some more hands to achieve it, but with a bit of determination you will get there without too much difficulty. I think it took me no more than 6 or 7 minutes to take apart and then reassemble the Explosion Cube.
I absolutely love this puzzle, so much so that I'm aiming to get hold of many more of Vinco's puzzles in the future, I already have one other simpler puzzle which is great fun, and I will also review that one soon.
You can buy Vinco's puzzles directly from him on his site here: LINK.
And you can also buy a great variety of Vinco's puzzles from Puzzle Master in Canada.
A lot of the recent Vinco puzzles look totally different but the internal mechanism is the same. Can you tell me if the Explosion Cube has the same internal mechanism as the Dual Tetrahedron?
ReplyDeleteHi George!
ReplyDeleteThe Explosion Cube does indeed have the exact same internal mechanism as Vinco's Dual Tetrahedron puzzle. Although I have to say that I prefer the implementation in cube form, but I guess that is down to personal preference really.
Thanks for the info! Besides aesthetics, I've found that some external forms are much harder to solve than others. I have one of his "Truncoctas", and while exactly the same inside it is really hard to get apart. My "Tetrahedron" is a lot easier, but has a nice movement. The "Bicone" is really hard to get apart in my experience, even though all these puzzles are "the same" inside!!
ReplyDeleteI think you're right there. Even though the puzzle is essentially the same some pieces are easier to maneuver into place, the cube would be easier than the Bicone because of it's flat sides. So in a way I guess that this is how one puzzle design could be given different difficulty ratings.
ReplyDelete