Cast News

Well, as this is my first post it only seems appropriate to begin with the puzzle that started me off on the road to collecting; the Cast News by Hanayama.

The first thing that I noticed when I received this puzzle is how heavy it is! And this is one thing that tends to stand out about Hanayama's Cast range of puzzles, they are built to last. This tends to be the reason why they are the puzzles that I am most likely to hand around at parties and the like, because I don't have to worry about anyone breaking them.

The objective of the puzzle is to separate the two halves. The News has a very clever but difficult mechanism if you haven't come across it before. It is rated as the highest difficulty on Hanayama's scale of 1-6 at level 6. I stumbled onto the solution by accident after around 10/15 minutes, and after seeing the inner workings it was simple to repeat the solution. I reckon that if I hadn't found the solution by accident it would've taken me hours to work it out for myself.

All in all, a very good puzzle, and as with most Hanaya puzzles it is also good value. I just wish that I discovered the actual solution myself.

Where I got the Cast News from: Puzzle This in the UK. But it is also available from Puzzle Master in Canada.

Also see Brian Pletcher's review of the News here: LINK