Cyclone

Here is a puzzle which was sent to me by Puzzle This, a great company to deal with right here in the UK.

This awesome looking puzzle is called 'Cyclone', and believe it or not the design actually first came into the world in 1972 from designer Holger Strom as a lamp! And it won the Danish Design Award in 2001.You can find a whole load more info links for this puzzle on Rob's Puzzle Page.

The Cyclone is made up of 30 thin plastic pieces, and these can all come together to form the beautiful triacontrahedron you can see in the photo above. The Cyclone is available in several different colour designs including black/blue, black/red and multi-colour, all of which can be found on Puzzle This.

I spent a long time staring at this puzzle before I could bring myself to take it apart. After a careful examination I dismantled the whole thing and started reassembly. I remembered from close inspection that the Cyclone has 12 vertices where five tiles come together, and dividing those there are the other 20 vertices where three tiles come together, so I did have an idea of what I was trying to do, but achieving it was still pretty difficult. I kept losing track of where I was, and pieces kept falling out from places that I wasn't paying attention to, so quite a bit of dexterity was needed to put it together again.
I think it actually took me around half an hour or so of solid puzzling to put the whole thing back together again, and I really enjoyed doing it as well!

Considering how inexpensive this puzzle you really can't go wrong with adding one to your collection. The design is very clever as well as beautiful, and the puzzle experience is great too!

This puzzle was very kindly sent to me by Puzzle This here in the UK, and they are great to deal with.