How?Box (Peter Hajek / Pelikan)

Oops! It's been a while (a long while actually) since my last blog post, but I'm just going to write this as if no time has passed and hope for the best.

I recently went through the process of moving my entire puzzle collection. This (as you can probably imagine) was a massive amount of hassle, it did however also give me the chance to pick up all of my puzzles, and re-solve quite a few of them. This was one of them.

The How?Box is a puzzle box designed by Peter Hajek, and expertly made by Pelikan.

Now I'm already a fan of Peter's design work, so when I heard that he had a design being made by Pelikan there was no chance I was going to miss out on it!

The How?Box came in either light wood or dark wood, and naturally I went for dark. There were only 15 made in each colour, so of course they sold out remarkably quickly.


Here's what Peter had to say:

“How?Box is a sequential discovery puzzle. Tools are found along the way to solve challenges, but things are not necessarily what they seem. The boxes come with numbered certificates of ownership. The solution is enclosed in sealed envelope.”

There was a bit of confusion when my parcel arrived from Pelikan, because although the website showed that it came with a key, I couldn't seem to find one. Turns out, that's perfectly fine, and just me being a bit slow.

This box is heavy; that was one of my first impressions. The other was that this is seriously well made! From the detailing on the feet to the splines on the corners and the exposed brass hinges at the back, this thing screams quality. Thankfully it is also incredibly sturdy, with a very solid build. Honestly I wish I could show you the inside, because it is even more impressive than the outside, sadly it would also give away some of the solution.

Now I managed to solve this in a pretty speedy amount of time. I'm putting this down to the fact I've solved several of Peter's designs, so I'm starting to understand how his devious mind works. Even though I solved it relatively quickly, I could easily have gotten stuck for quite a while at a couple of steps. The last step in particular is very tricky if you haven't come across it before.

To this day I still class this as one of my favourite puzzle boxes of all time. I know it's not the most difficult box out there, but in terms of how much I enjoyed solving it (and re-solving it) this one goes very high up on my list.

If you get the chance to solve one of these you absolutely have to give it a go! I promise you won't be disappointed.

Light version with key (image coutesy of Pelikan Puzzles)