Puzzle Master Trick Lock #5

Trick Lock #5 is the fifth in a series of five puzzle locks by Puzzle Master that they sent me to review (excluding #2 which is out of stock). Thanks, Puzzle Master! Check out the first three posts (#1, #3, #4) if you're just joining us: #1 has details on the series from a quality perspective, though I'll also be touching on that a bit here.

Trick Lock #5 has a gold bird of some sort on the face of the lock. In photos, the red mark looks like a jewel, but it appears to be a dollop of paint, which I didn't much care for. I did like the bird itself though!

It didn't take me long to solve this one, though it took a bit of fiddling afterwards to figure out precisely what I had done. There is a bit of a subtlety that I liked, that I think many may miss at first. Similar to #3, it is possible that people will miss this subtlety and not properly reset the lock to its starting position. In terms of difficulty, it is on par with #3. Most people should be able to figure this out within 3-5 minutes, maybe a bit more if this isn't their cup of tea.

Due to the aforementioned subtlety, I think this is probably my second favorite after #4. I still like #4 because it is a bit more challenging, there's just slightly more to it than there is to the others, which I enjoyed.

I brought the whole series to a party this weekend to verify my evaluation of the difficulty and to get people's thoughts on it, and generally they agreed with my ranking. #4 stumped the most people, but folks were generally able to solve the others if they spent a bit of time with them. I got a few "that's all?" reactions about #1, since the solution is fairly straightforward, though some folks with less patience had trouble with it still.

Overall, I had a good time with this series, though I don't think I personally would have bought the whole set. The price point ($30) feels a bit high given the quality and the amount of time they took me to solve. If you really like this type of puzzle, go for it, but I wouldn't put the whole set on my 'must buy' list. I did think Trick Lock #4 was quite good though, since it is a bit more challenging and has a bit more depth to it.

Thanks again to Puzzle Master for making this series of puzzle reviews possible!