Neo - Puzzle Ring (Jeff Bell)

For a long time now I have been trying to find myself a puzzle ring that I could wear as an everyday piece of jewellery. There are several reasons why I haven't been able to find one up till now. The ones you do find are all originating from the same ancient Turkish design (which I don't think particularly suits me), they all tend to be very bulky, they fall apart very easily while wearing, and they also tend to be expensive for what they are. So imagine my surprise when I found something perfect while idly browsing the internet one day!

Neo (Assembled)

This is a lovely 3-band puzzle ring by the name of Neo. It is custom designed and made from Sterling Silver by the very nice Jeff Bell in Thailand. Jeff's online shop can be found here: PuzzleRingMaker.

I have only ever known of a few original puzzle ring designers, so to find Jeff's shop was a pleasant surprise!

Neo (On Arrival)

After a good bit of browsing and narrowing down I decided upon the Neo design. It's nice and sleek, and not too assuming. I placed an order immediately, making sure to add my ring size because I actually do want to wear this one (unlike other rings I have ordered in the past).

I bought my ring on the 18th, it was made and shipped in ten days, and then arrived four days later! Four days from Thailand! I've waiting longer than that for parcels coming from the same town as where I live.

The ring is really nicely made, no visible joins in the silver and a great finish inside and out. The pieces fit together snugly and the ring size is dead-on as well.

Easily one of the best attributes of this design is its inherent ability to hold itself together very well. There's no worry of it disassembling while you're wearing it.

Is it difficult as a puzzle? Not hugely. But I wanted to go for a simpler 3-band design because I intend to use it to demonstrate to puzzle 'muggles' what kind of puzzles I'm interested in. So every time I hear the phrase "so you like jigsaws then?" I can give them the ring to try as a good example of a mechanical puzzle.

I would say that anyone could quite happily solve this design with minimal patience. If you give it logical thought you'll have it together in a minute or two tops, but if you favour the 'random motion' approach it could take you a decent bit longer.

As you can see in the picture there are handy engraved markers on the inside of each band, and these show you which order to assemble the bands around each other. So if you ever have a bad case of 'cantrememberhowtosolveitquickly' there's a handy safety net there for you as well.

Neo currently costs an incredibly reasonable $40, and there are many more original designs available for similar prices. And if silver isn't really your colour you can also order the rings in the gold purity you'd like. Based on my first experience I honestly can't recommend this shop enough.

Buy from: PuzzleRingMaker
Also available on Etsy: PuzzleRingMaker