Dice (Akio Kamei)

It's been quite a while since I last posted about a puzzle box, and considering they really are my favourite puzzle genre I think it's about time I got around to it again. And as luck would have it a fellow puzzler has kindly just loaned me this particularly clever box!

This is the 'Dice' puzzle box from Akio Kamei, member of the very well known Japanese puzzle box company the Karakuri Creation Group. The original design was originally thought up by Kamei in 1997, but was then slightly modified and improved into the 2008 version seen here in the picture. This version
It is very simple in appearance (which is something that I tend to quite like when it comes to puzzle boxes), however it is not quite so simple as a puzzle. The outer panels are made from walnut, which gives the box a great feel and a nice weight, and it is medium sized at 8cm cubed. The outer panels of the box have the indented numbers 1 to 6 that you would expect to see on any dice, and these show through the lighter wood internals of the puzzle box giving a nice contrast again the walnut.

When first picking up this box you will most likely find that none of the usual stuff seems to happen. None of the outer panels will move, no matter how you seem to push, pull or slide them. After solving it for myself I reckon that it is very unlikely that anyone would be able to solve this puzzle simply by chance. You will need to use your observation skills and apply a bit of logic before this box will open up to you.

It's quite hard for myself to pin a difficulty rating on the Dice box as although I managed to solve if fairly quickly I know of several puzzlers that spent a significant amount of time on it. I guess it really depends on how the mind of each individual puzzler works coupled with their past experience of other puzzles.
The solution itself is extremely clever and quite complex, and I could understand how some people could take a while to work it out. If however you stop and think logically about what you are looking at then there is a good chance you will be able to solve it in a very reasonable time.

This is one of the more popular (and cheaper) puzzle boxes in the Karakuri series, and as such it tends to be often available from the usual suspects: Puzzle Master, Karakuri & PuzzleBoxWorld to name a few.

Also check out Brian's thoughts on the 1997 version of this puzzle box with the same mechanism.

Bi-CycLe (Vinco)

I came across this curious put-together puzzle for the first time last month at the 100th Camden Puzzle Gathering. It was both designed and manufactured by Vinco (Václav Obšivač) in the Czech Republic.

It is called Bi-CycLe, and it was Laurie Brokenshire's exchange puzzle at this years International Puzzle Party in Berlin (IPP31). I met Laurie for the first time at the Camden Gathering, and it was he who handed me a copy to try out. While I was at the gathering I had this puzzle in my hands for a decent portion of the evening, and I had completely failed to solve it! So that was definitely a good indication that this was likely to be a great puzzle. A friend of mine bought a copy of this puzzle from Laurie on the evening, and very kindly loaned it to me, so although I completely failed to solve it there and then I was given a chance to redeem myself later on.

Here's a bit of what Laurie has to say about the puzzle:

"By a strange coincidence it is possible to make at least one solid structure with these Bi-pieces; the target shape has 5 planes of symmetry and holds together extremely well. Since we're talking about Bi-CycLe here, though, the finished solution also has 4 axes of rotational symmetry of order 2, to represent Laurie & Ethel's 4 wheel axles (and 1 axes of order 4 as well, to represent the pedals!?)."

The puzzle itself is made from cherry, and is comprised of twelve balls and ten rods, but these are glued together to form two very interesting identical pieces. The main thing that makes these pieces interesting is that the pieces have a sort of 'free-wheeling' element to them. It's hard to describe, but check out the pictures. Three balls are connected in a circle to each other with the rods acting as spacers, and these completely encircle another set of three balls and two rods which are connected in an 'L' shape. I've not come across anything quite like this before in an assembly puzzle.

Because of the nature of the pieces I really didn't know where to begin other than sort of squashing the two pieces together to see what would happen. Unsurprisingly every time I tried this I ended up with the same two pieces, so there was clearly more to it than that. I managed to come very close to solving it quite a few times, but one of the balls would always end up being at the wrong end of the puzzle.

Eventually I did manage to solve Bi-CycLe, but it took me far longer than I had expected. I must've spent a good hour on it before working it out. There is a really nice twist to the solution, and as Laurie mentioned above the final assembly is incredibly sturdy. It's very unlikely that it would fall apart by itself.

For some more of Vinco's puzzles check out Vinco's own website and Puzzle Master's Vinco page.

One Piece Packing Puzzle / Clive Box / Pack It In (Simon Nightingale)

Here is a really unassuming little packing problem standing at only 1.75" tall, designed by English puzzle designer and manufacturer Simon Nightingale. And this particular copy was manufactured in a limited run of 42 copies by Eric Fuller.

It was released by Eric Fuller under the name of the 'One Piece Packing Puzzle', but it has also been called by the names 'Pack It In' and the 'Clive Box'. It was called the 'Clive Box' when it was used by Simon Nightingale as his exchange puzzle for the International Puzzle Party held in London in 1999 (IPP19).

What a brilliant looking puzzle! It looks to be made entirely from exotic wood, but looks (as always) can be extremely deceiving. The object here is glaringly obvious; pack the cube (and yes, it is a perfect cube) into the box that is just the right size to hold it.
When I picked it up for the first time I knew there would be more to it than that, so I wasn't too surprised to find that no matter how I put the cube into it's box it insisted on jumping back out again. From the feel of the resistance I could tell that there were definitely some form of magnetic repulsion going on there, but even after flipping the cube the other way it still refused to be packed into the box!

After about ten minutes or so I managed to get the tricky little blighter to sit still in it's box, but I had to do this a few more times to truly understand why this puzzle was acting in such an unusual way. Now that I have it properly figured out I am really impressed with it! This puzzle implements a very interesting property of magnets that many people are not aware of, as I wasn't until very recently.

It's not a very difficult puzzle, and it does work on a sort of 'trial and error' solving method rather than an entirely logical approach, but it is truly brilliant! I love the fact that you can hand it to someone without saying a word and they will know exactly what has to be achieved. Also the quality of Eric's workmanship on this particular run is once again outstanding. I also recently got to see a copy of Simon's exchange version, and they are very similar in both size and build style to Eric's, so I assume that Eric worked his designs directly off from an original.

Sadly this puzzle is currently not available as Eric made these back in 2008, and like most items that go up on Cubic Dissection they sold out very shortly after release. I was lucky enough to be loaned this particular copy from a generous fellow puzzler that I met during my recent visits to the Camden Puzzle Gatherings. But if a copy ever does come up in the future I definitely won't hesitate to add one to my collection.

Houdini's Torture Cell (Brian Young)

Here's another puzzle that arrived from the Netherlands along with the Cast Donuts courtesy of Wil Strijbos.

It is called 'Houdini's Torture Cell' and it was designed and manufactured by Brian Young of Mr. Puzzle in Australia. This puzzle was also used as Brian Young's exchange puzzle at this year's IPP in Berlin (IPP31) where it proved to be a big hit, so much so that Brian is now selling them on his site.

It's a nice looking puzzle made of wood, steel and acrylic, and as you can see from the picture on the right it is actually quite small, standing at only 9.5cm tall. For some reason I expected it to be somewhat larger than it really is.
What you see here is a metal ball bearing (Houdini) trapped within the confines of it's wood and acrylic torture cell. The ball rattles around inside the acrylic tube which is capped with wooden end pieces. The wooden end pieces are also screwed to the acrylic tube and all of this is then nicely mounted on top of the wooden block base.


You will immediately start finding interesting things going on with this puzzle as soon as you pick it up, and a key thing here is to remember that age old bit of puzzling advice; Not everything is necessarily quite what it may seem.

Your job here is to save the ball bearing from it's torturous fate by removing it from it's acrylic prison, and it is great fun to do! Brian also makes sure to mention that "no hitting or banging is necessary to solve it", which is always a plus in my book.

EDIT: I made a small mistake there. The wooden peg represents Houdini, hanging by his feet from the ceiling of the acrylic torture chamber. This being representative of Houdini's Chinese Water Torture Cell which originally came about in 1911.

The puzzle aspect was actually taken from a part of one of Brian's limited edition works called the Opening Bat, and it was a puzzle step that was widely enjoyed by many who tried it. But the Opening Bat is pretty expensive so it's great that this was introduced in such a way that more puzzlers would be able to experience it.

I did not find this puzzle to be hugely difficult, with the solving process taking around 5-6 minutes, but it really is a lot of fun! I keep picking it up to solve again and again just for kicks!
The first couple of steps come pretty naturally, but one step is particularly clever and very innovative! This step took me the longest amount of time to work out how to do reliably. It is possible to make the solving experience easier with a bit of shaking, but this would ruin the best part of the solution, and why would anyone want to deprive themselves of that?

This is such a good puzzle and I would urge anyone that happens to be after a great example of the 'sequential discovery' puzzle type for a very reasonable price to consider picking one of these up. It is currently available from Wil Strijbos personally or through the designer Mr. Puzzle in Australia.

Cast Donuts

This is the newest puzzle in the Cast Series from Japanese puzzle manufacturer Hanayama, and a very nice looking one too as far as I'm concerned. They have only been released in Japan so far, so I was happily surprised to get an email from Wil Strijbos offering them for sale!

It's called the 'Cast Donuts', and it's pretty obvious how that name came about. It was designed by Vesa Timonen, who also designed the great looking Cast Loop.
Like most of Hanayama's puzzles this one is also made from solid cast metal which has been given a very nice chrome-style finish. I do like the fact that this one has also used the contrasting 'bright' and 'dark' chrome style, it really shows the definition between the two 'halves' of the puzzle.

At first glance it looks like the puzzle is made up of two ring pieces, but obviously that cannot be the case. In fact this is a four piece puzzle with each of the rings assembled in pairs. There's nothing hidden here, what you see is pretty much what you get.

The Donuts actually hold their final assembled shape really well. There is a bit of rattling but not enough to make the puzzle feel sloppy.

The idea here (like the name choice) is also pretty obvious, you are looking to fully disassemble the puzzle into it's four pieces and then reassemble it. In some ways the Donuts resemble the Cast Marble, which still is my absolute favourite puzzle from the Cast Series thus far.

There is a real elegance to solving the puzzle, and just like the Marble it requires a little bit of precision as well. However after talking to a few other puzzlers it turns out that it also possible to 'force' a solution, and many amateur puzzlers are likely to find that solution first and think that it is correct. As a general rule; if you're trying to squeeze something through a gap then you're doing it wrong.

I didn't find this puzzle particularly difficult and ended up solving it within five minutes or so, but that could be because of my experience with the Cast Marble and the similarities between the two. Hanayama rate this as a level 4 out of 10, however I would say that it should be a level 3 at the most.

It may not be particularly difficult however this is a very nice looking puzzle with a very elegant solution (if you do it correctly). For the price I'd say that you can't go wrong with adding one of these to your collection.

Like I said my copy of this puzzle came from Wil Strijbos in the Netherlands, and as they haven't been officially released outside of Japan yet (at the time of writing) he is probably the only source of them for at the moment. Please let me know via my email at the bottom of this page if you are after a copy and I'll make sure to pass his details over to you.

EDIT: The Cast Donuts are now available from Puzzle Master and Sloyd!