August 30, 2017

Aquarius Drawer

This is another one of Jeff's new puzzles I saw at RPP, Hiroshi Iwahara's latest design, Aquarius Drawer. The name references the fact that the box's appearance was inspired by the Aquarius zodiac symbol.

There are two drawers to be found: the first unlocks after only five moves, but the second takes sixty-one! That may sound like a lot, but the solution has a pattern to it that makes it fairly straightforward once you start to see how it works.

The movement of the drawers is very smooth, to the point where they will move on their own if you tilt the box. This can be a bit annoying if things are moving when you don't intend them to. You could potentially try to solve it just by tilting the box, I think I tried that for a few moves and it worked reasonably well, but one of the drawers didn't move as easily, so I went back to solving it the normal way.

Overall, a nice design but probably not one of my favorites of Iwahara's. It was good, but it didn't really strike me as being particularly remarkable. The easy first compartment was a nice touch, both because you get an early win and folks may overlook that there is a second compartment. It also has a nice, repetitive solution that you can just get in the groove and do, along with a very smooth movement.

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