Cast W-U

Cast W-U is a variation on Cast Horse (blog entry) by Nob Yoshigahara. Puzzle Master was kind enough to send me a copy of this puzzle to review. Thanks!

Cast W-U has a very similar appearance to Cast Horse, except for two additional horseshoes that have been added perpendicular to the original horseshoes. As you may imagine, these get in the way a bit if you just try to do the original Cast Horse solution. Also, there are little knights on either end that get in your way a bit.

I was curious to see how much more difficult it would be. I fiddled with it for a bit, and was able to solve it pretty quickly, since I already knew how to solve Cast Horse. The added difficulty is pretty minor, since you can sort of see what needs to be done to overcome the obstacles. As such, I don't think it quite deserves the 3/6 rating, and should probably be a 2/6 like Cast Horse.

I think due to the extra volume that the pieces take up, they needed to make them quite a bit smaller than the horseshoes in Cast Horse. As a result, the puzzle has a flimsy feel, not at all like most of the Cast Puzzles series. That, in addition to the fact that the solution isn't that much more interesting, makes me not inclined to recommend this one unless you're really curious about horseshoe puzzle variations.