Brian's Damn Puzzle Blog

Reilly's Cube

2012-02-07T15:55:00.001-05:00

Reilly's Cube is a puzzle designed by Mike Reilly and manufactured by Creative Crafthouse. The folks at Creative Crafthouse were kind enough to send me a copy to review. Thanks! (Photo by Mike Reilly) The puzzle consists of eight blocks, each with three faces with a peg and a hole. The peg and hole can be in one of four different configurations. The goal is to assemble the cube such that all the

Saturn Wire Puzzle

2012-02-06T16:23:00.002-05:00

During my last trip to Eureka Puzzles & Games to purchase Cast Donuts, I also ended up purchasing a wire puzzle by Jean-Claude Constantin named Saturn on the recommendation of David Leschinsky, the owner of Eureka. He said that it was one of those puzzles you could even demonstrate the solution to somebody, and they'd still have trouble solving it. That's always fun, and it looked like an

Cast Donuts

2012-01-26T16:43:00.001-05:00

Well, I finally got my hands on the latest Hanayama Cast Puzzle, Cast Donuts! My favorite puzzle store in the Boston area, Eureka Puzzles & Games, had them in stock briefly a month ago, but I moved too slowly and they sold out before I could get down there. Fortunately, they restocked recently so I called up to have them hold one for me, and I headed down there as soon as I could. David

M-Box

2012-01-05T17:30:00.005-05:00

Recently, Jeff Chiou of MagicPuzzles.org was kind enough to loan me a few of his puzzles, one of which was M-Box by Hideaki Kawashima of the Karakuri Creation Group. Check out Jeff's review here. This particular box was made available by lottery a few months ago (November, I think), which means that if you're interested in purchasing the box, you can enter your name in a drawing, and if you

2011 Karakuri Club Christmas Presents (Part 3)

2012-01-04T17:30:00.000-05:00

This next Karakuri Club Christmas present was created by Tatsuo Miyamoto. His works tend to be mechanically quite unique, which is why I kept him on my list from last year. This puzzle box appears to be some kind of an water pump, oil pump, or something. The horizontal bar teeters back and forth, and is attached to the two arms that go into the box. There is also a handle on the front that

2011 Karakuri Club Christmas Presents (Part 2)

2012-01-03T17:30:00.001-05:00

Up next in my series of posts about the 2011 Karakuri Club Christmas Presents, Akio Kamei. Kamei has been making puzzle boxes for quite a while and founded the Karakuri Creation Group, so it is always interesting to see what he comes up with! This year's puzzle was a real treat, I really enjoyed it. It has a fairly simple exterior appearance, with grooves around all of the edges to make it a

2011 Karakuri Club Christmas Presents (Part 1)

2012-01-02T15:58:00.001-05:00

Christmas is my favorite time of year, most of all because it is the time of year when the Karakuri Creation Group releases this year's "Christmas Presents". From January through June, Karakuri Club members can pre-order puzzles from their favorite Karakuri craftsmen, without knowing what the puzzle will be. This makes a nice little surprise each year! Last year I ordered six (part 1, part 2,

Havana's Box #1

2011-12-20T15:37:00.000-05:00

In the most recent update on Cubic Dissection, I purchased a new box by Eric Fuller named Havana's Box #1: The Chris. It is the first in a series of boxes, each designed to hold a cigar. It is named after Eric's local cigar bar, Havana Deluxe, and Chris is the name of the doorman there. I'm always intrigued by the idea of a series of similar-looking boxes, since it is interesting how many

Cowboy's Hobble

2011-12-15T10:38:00.001-05:00

Cowboy's Hobble is a simple-looking disentanglement puzzle recommended to me by George Bell. The folks at Puzzle Master were kind enough to send me a copy to review. Thanks! Despite its simple appearance, this one is actually fairly difficult! The goal is to remove the ring. I tried a few of the obvious things and ended up going around and circles quite a bit. Each time, I ended up getting

Burr in Cage

2011-12-07T12:18:00.000-05:00

Recently Jean-Baptiste Jacquin and Maurice Vigouroux created an online puzzle shop, Arteludes, where they are selling a number of puzzles that they have made. The site is in French, but they're currently working on an English version. For now, you can view it with Google translate, and that seems to work pretty well. They were kind enough to offer to send me a sample of their work, Burr in Cage.

Four Color Map Puzzle

2011-11-15T17:14:00.000-05:00

Maya Gupta of Artifact Puzzles was kind enough to send me this interesting variation on the classic jigsaw puzzle to review. Thanks! Normally I'm not particularly interested in jigsaw puzzles, but Four Color Map Puzzle by Tara Flannery is very unique! Rather than assembling a picture, this puzzle illustrate's the Four Color Theorem: The four color map theorem states that, given any separation

Log Jam

2011-10-27T17:33:00.001-04:00

Log Jam is made by Creative Crafthouse and was designed by Vesa Timonen. It was entered in the 2002 Puzzle Design Competition under the name Lox in Box (Logs in Box). The folks at Creative Crafthouse were kind enough to send me a copy to review. Thanks! It is quite nicely crafted out of hardwood and has a good fit and finish. Creative Crafthouse added a compartment to store one of the pieces,

Connoisseur's Dilemma

2011-10-21T17:07:00.004-04:00

Connoisseur's Dilemma is a cute disentanglement puzzle by Creative Crafthouse that can hold a bottle of wine hostage until solved. It was given to me by the folks at Creative Crafthouse to review. Thanks! I have seen puzzles like this available from a number of places, but never had a chance to give one a try. I figured it probably wouldn't be too challenging since it was intended for

Cast ABC

2011-10-20T17:01:00.000-04:00

Cast ABC is a level 1/6 puzzle in Hanayama's Cast Puzzles series. This particular version is branded as Puzzle Master, but it appears to be the same as the Hanayama's version, only with a different finish. The Hanayama version has a brown finish, while the Puzzle Master version is silver. The goal of this puzzle is to separate the C piece from the AB piece. The starting position is with the C

Redstone Box

2011-10-19T17:14:00.002-04:00

Redstone Box (a.k.a. Melting Block) is Creative Crafthouse's version of this classic packing puzzle designed by Thomas O`Beirne. The folks at Creative Crafthouse were kind enough to send me a copy to review. Thanks! The puzzle consists of a box with a lid, with a red block on the top serving as the handle to help slide the lid off. Inside, you'll find that the box is packed completely full. So

Puzzle Chest Box

2011-10-18T17:14:00.000-04:00

Puzzle Chest Box is Creative Crafthouse's version of the classic Moroccan puzzle box. The folks at Creative Crafthouse were kind enough to send me a copy to review. Thanks! This is quite a popular design and is frequently available in trinket markets in various countries, though the quality varies and the design may differ somewhat. The main thing that they have in common is that there is a

Interlock Four

2011-10-17T17:05:00.000-04:00

Interlock Four is a nice little four-piece puzzle designed by Stewart Coffin. This version was crafted by the folks at Creative Crafthouse, and they were kind enough to send me a copy to review. Thanks! The four pieces assemble into a 3x3x3 cube and are serially interlocking, meaning that the pieces must be added in the correct order. This makes it somewhat more difficult, since you may need

Cast Flag

2011-10-06T17:00:00.001-04:00

Cast Flag is a puzzle in Hanayama's Cast Puzzle series, and was re-designed by Nob Yoshigahara based on a 19th century design. It was sent to me by the folks at Puzzle Master to review. Thanks! This is another one that is a bit hard to understand until you actually play around with it, so I was quite interested to finally see how it worked. It consists of two pieces: an odd-shaped piece with

Little Game Hunter Puzzle Box

2011-09-30T20:24:00.001-04:00

I recently acquired the latest box by Robert "Stickman" Yarger: Little Game Hunter Puzzle Box (Stickman #24). Robert is one of my favorite puzzle box designers, so I'm always quite eager to see his latest creation! Little Game Hunter has quite an unusual appearance with a kumiki elephant standing on top of a rectangular base. Through a combination of sliding moves, two compartments are

Lattice II

2011-09-21T18:30:00.004-04:00

Lattice II and was designed by Frank Worrell and made by Eric Fuller. It is another one of the puzzles I purchased from Cubic Dissection during the last update. Eric describes it as building on Tom Jolly's original Lattice puzzle, but Lattice II only has two pieces rather than three. It looked pretty simple, but for only $5 I figured it was worth trying out since I was ordering some other puzzles

Zauberflote

2011-09-20T17:35:00.002-04:00

Recently Eric Fuller updated his site, Cubic Dissection, with a bunch of new puzzles he had made. I had heard that he was going to update soon, so I set up my phone so it would make all sorts of a racket when the email notification came in, just in case I was sleeping when it happened. Fortunately, it was in the afternoon, so it wasn't really necessary. This might sound a bit absurd, but Eric's

Gear Cube

2011-09-17T08:54:00.000-04:00

Gear Cube is an interesting twisty puzzle that was designed by Oskar van Deventer based on an idea Bram Cohen. Puzzle Master was kind enough to send me this puzzle to review. Thanks! Gear Cube looks a lot like a Rubik's cube, with its 3x3x3 configuration of pieces, however the pieces have gear teeth on them which makes for quite an unusual motion. Due to the gearing, you can't rotate each

Alles Roger

2011-09-15T18:30:00.000-04:00

Alles Roger is one of the puzzles I acquired at the Berlin Puzzle Party about a month ago. As I mentioned in that blog post, as soon as the puzzle buying and selling began, I did a quick sweep of the room keeping an eye out for Roger puzzles (among other things) that would be snapped up quickly. I was lucky enough to find this puzzle for sale at Marcel Gillen's table and purchased it right away

Cast Seahorse

2011-09-14T18:30:00.000-04:00

Cast Seahorse is the sixth puzzle in Hanayama's Marine Series by Akio Yamamoto. Puzzle Master was kind enough to send me this puzzle to review. Thanks! This puzzle consists of two seahorses, one gold and one silver, that are linked together. The goal is to separate them and then put them back together. If you read Yamamoto's description, he also says that you can try to "make them stand up

Cast Reef

2011-09-12T20:37:00.000-04:00

Cast Reef is the fifth puzzle in the Hanayama Cast Puzzle Marine series by Akio Yamamoto. Puzzle Master was kind enough to send me this puzzle to review. Thanks! As with the other puzzles in this series, this one is made out of contrasting gold and silver anodized metal. The gold piece looks like two fish that form a closed loop, and they are caught on the silver piece that looks like a piece