Eureka! I've found it!

I was riding the subway one day, playing around with Cast Vortex when the fellow sitting next to me struck up a conversation. He had recognized my puzzle as a Hanayama puzzle and said how he and his roommate were both hooked on the things. He said his favorite so far was Cast O'Gear (another puzzle by Oskar van Deventer), because it had a very unique mechanism.

I told him that I had orderd Vortex online at ThinkGeek, and he mentioned that there was a great puzzle shop, Eureka Puzzles and Games, out in Coolidge Corner that sold them. This was about 10 minutes away from where I lived, so I was really psyched to hear that there was a shop so close.

The next day, I headed down to Coolidge corner to see what the shop was like. When we got there, I saw that they had the full line of Hanayama puzzles as well as a ton of other great stuff. I gazed longingly at the fancy puzzles on display behind a locked glass case (see photo). There were some Japanese puzzle boxes, a few impossible objects, some nice looking burrs, and a few puzzle locks.

The store was bustling with activity, it had a great location and a very energetic and well informed sales staff. I started talking an employee named Devin who was quite familiar with the Hanayama series. He recommended that I try Cast Chain, one of his favorites. I also picked up Cast Spiral, because it looked like an interesting design. I had trouble imagining how it could be difficult, which I figured was a good sign.

When I got home, I started with Cast Spiral first, since it was a level 5 and Cast Chain was a level 6. It is an elegant design by Kennet Walker. The 'teeth' (for lack of a better word) are tapered so that if you try to slide the pieces apart in one direction, they will not separate. This cascades down and around the circle to the last piece piece forming a cool spiral staircase pattern.

Well, after playing around with it for about 5 minutes it fell apart, much to my consternation because I didn't know what I had done. I proceeded to spend the next hour or so trying to get the damn thing back together. You would think with only 5 pieces interlocking in sequence, it wouldn't be that challenging, but I had a hell of a time doing it. Not only do you need to get the order right, you also need to know how they twist back together, which I failed to observe when they came apart. Eventually I succeeded, which was quite satisfying when all the pieces snapped back together into that nice shape.

Overall an interesting but not particularly difficult puzzle, provided you are attentive when the puzzle comes apart. I think it should probably be a level 4 rather than a level 5. It has a great weight to it and is fun to just fiddle with even after you have solved it.

Next, I turned my attention to Cast Chain (designed by Oskar van Deventer), which looked much more sinister with its dark black finish and sharp angles. There are three similar looking pieces that are interlocked in a chain, each of which has a number of dots on it (one, two, or three). To solve this puzzle, you must get the pieces in the right order, and then position them correctly to release the first piece.

After about an hour I was able to get the pieces apart, but my solution required a slight amount of force, so I checked the solution online to see if I was doing it the right way. In fact, I was not: the true solution requires zero force, so don't force it! Overall, I would say that this is a very good puzzle: the mechanics are interesting and the solution is simple and logical but not trivial to discover.

Next up: Christmas 2008 and a puzzle I've been working on for almost a year.

Popsicle Stick Puzzles

I was really psyched after solving those two Hanayama puzzles and went on the web to learn about the rest of the Hanayama series and plan my next purchase. I ended up stumbling upon Richard Whiting's site, which has lots of information on Hanayama puzzles. In the My Creations section of his site, I discovered what looked like a nice little puzzle called Stacked Sticks that he had made out of popsicle sticks.

Fortunately, I had been saving popsicle sticks for no apparent reason: I figured they could come in handy at some point and I was right! So I decided to make myself a copy of Stacked Sticks using the picture of Richard's version shown on the right. Unfortunately, I live in an apartment and don't have any saws at my disposal, so I had to improvise.

I tried using a sharp razor to score and then snap the pieces, but that was taking far too long. Next, I tried a set of wire cutters that actually worked pretty well, aside from flinging the stick across the room every now and then.

So, using wire clippers, a nail file, and some Elmer's glue, I created my very first puzzle! It took me about an hour and didn't look too pretty, but I was quite proud of my accomplishment. It was quite a task using a nail file to file all the imprecisely cut sticks down to the right length.

Stacked Sticks is a great little puzzle, too bad the designer is unknown. It has four pieces that are all different, though they all have a similar profile. Also, I liked how you needed to disassemble it into two halves before the halves could be divided into their smallest parts. As I would later discover, it was similar to a number of other puzzles in that you need to have your fingers in just the right position for it to pull apart.

The next day, I thought it would be fun to try to design a 5x5x5 version using the remainder of my popsicle sticks. It took me a while to figure it out, since I wanted to maintain the property that it needed to be separated into two halves and then disassembled from there.

I played around a bit with the different ways that the two halves could slide apart. Initially, I wanted alternating sticks to slide in opposite directions, but unfortunately this makes the resulting pieces and disassembly less interesting. So instead I ended up going with a design where the two sticks on the outside edge went one way and the three inner sticks went the other way.

I brought the completed puzzles in to school for my friends to play around with and learned some important lessons about glue: Elmer's just doesn't cut it when somebody is prying away at your creation. I got some real wood glue and it held up a lot better, but I still had to make sure to tell people that the pieces don't pry up: it slides apart.

So that was my first puzzle design experience. I was pretty bummed that I didn't have a table saw handy to start making some more interesting things, but thought that I could give that a try over Christmas break. For now, I wanted more puzzles to solve!

Coming up next: a chance encounter with another budding puzzle aficionado on the Boston subway.

A Curiousity Awakened

I had always kept an eye on ThinkGeek.com, because I felt like it was a website where I would find something interesting to buy, but nothing had ever really caught my eye. This all changed one day in December when I saw that they came out with a Crest of Hyrule t-shirt from my favorite game, Zelda. Of course, I had to buy it, but I hate having to spend such a large proportion of the purchase price on shipping and handling, so I poked around for something else to buy.

I came across a set of products called Fiendish Japanese Pocket Puzzles, which were described as "almost too deviously evil to inflict on you and your friends." Enough said! I like a good challenge and picked out two to start with. I picked out Cast Vortex because it looked cool and Cast Duet because it seemed like the type of puzzle that I could probably figure out.

When they arrived, I started out on Cast Duet first. I figured I would start with the easier of the two and work my way up. As expected, it was a maze-type puzzle where you had to navigate the donut shape around the grid. What I didn't expect was that the donut shape was actually two magnetically attached pieces that followed separate routes to the exit (hence 'Duet').

To actually remove the rings from the grid is not particularly interesting, since they can be solved separately. There was one move that was not intuitively obvious at first, so that was interesting. Eventually by manipulating the puzzle I solved it in about 30 minutes.

What I found more interesting was the secondary challenge to position both rings, connected magnetically, in each of the four marked positions. This was interesting because it actually relied on manipulating both rings strategically so they don't get in each others way. When simply removing the rings, you can ignore one while you solve the other. Overall, I'd say that this puzzle by Oskar van Deventer is a solid buy for the money.

Cast Vortex by Akio Yamamoto was a completely different beast. It was twisting and confusing, with what seemed like no logical solution. When solving this type of puzzle, I frequently have to abandon a methodical approach and just fiddle with it until it comes apart. After an hour or so of fiddling, it finally did come apart, but I was completely stumped as to how to get it back together. I worked on it for about a week before I eventually peeked at the last step of the solution to get me started. Even once I knew how to get started, it still took me a few hours to finally get it back together.

Now that I have tried other Hanayama puzzles, I would say that this one is significantly more difficult than the other difficulty level 5 Hanayama puzzles and should probably be a level 6. That said, it is a beautiful puzzle that is a lot of fun to manipulate and satisfying to solve. It is particularly satisfying to put it back together because everything sort of snaps into place all at once and you are left with this beautiful swirling trefoil shape. Highly recommended!

So that is how my interest in mechanical puzzles was awakened. Coming up next: I tried my hand at building a puzzle.

How it Started

When I was young, I was exposed to a few puzzles: I think the first of which was a box built by my grandfather. It was a classic gravity pin design, with the same mechanism as this box made by Heartwood Creations on Cleverwood's site. His version wasn't as ornate or finished, but I still had a great time stumping my friends with it.

I also remember playing with an old blue plastic Soma cube that my father had from when Soma cubes were all the rage. It came in a cardboard box with a little booklet of shapes to make out of it. At the time, I was more interested in just playing with it as a set of building blocks to make my own shapes rather than making the shapes in the book.

What really intrigued me was a version of the classic Patience Puzzle, shown on the right from Tucker Jones House's Tavern Puzzles site. I spent what seemed like an eternity working on this one, but eventually figured it out.

I think what I enjoyed about this puzzle was the fact that it operated under a series of clearly defined rules, and once you understood the rules, you could apply them to reach your goal. The first phase of solving the puzzle involved fiddling with it and eventually understanding what the rules were, and the second phase was applying those rules to transform it from the starting position to the solved position and back again.

At Middlebury College, I found out that a friend of mine, Paul Armstrong, knew an algorithm for solving the Rubik's cube, so I asked him to teach me how to do it. Thinking back, I regret not trying to solve it on my own, though at the time I just wanted to be able to do it. I practiced quite a bit and eventually could solve it in under 2 minutes...I think my best time was 1:30 or so.

But these experiences were mere dabbling compared to my most recent plunge into the world of mechanical puzzles.

[Update 9/17/2009: Here are some pictures of the box my grandfather made!]

Contact Me

Please fill out the form below to send me an email.

Your Name
Your Email Address
Subject
Message
Image Verification Please enter the text from the image: [ Refresh Image ]

Thank you!

Thank you for your email!

Your message has successfully been sent.

Click here to return to my blog.