Folks seem to like my Model #357 and I couldn’t be happier with the compliments on its solution and appearance. So here’s a big THANK YOU to all you puzzlers! It’s hard to exaggerate how good it feels to spend years on making something you think is cool, hoping that others will too, and then finding out that they do. Again, thanks! Several puzzle shops have asked if they could sell the #357s and of […]
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Model #357 is Ready (Updated 11/27/23)
I can’t deny that producing Model #357 has had more than its fair share of twists and turns but the main thing now is … It’s done! I assembled, tested, retested, and boxed every single one of them: Based on hearing what my customers have asked for and seeing what other puzzle makers do, I’ve decided to announce the release date well in advance so that people don’t miss out on getting one. Personally, I […]
MoreFun with Wire EDM
I love metal mechanical puzzles (Wil Strijbos’ and RD’s for example) and I’ve designed a few of my own as well (and I promise my Model #357 will ship this year come hell or high water!) So over time I’ve become familiar with machining processes and the tolerances they can hold since they’re the key to making a metal puzzle with a good feel. A few years ago I came across a super expensive but […]
MoreSquirclusion
One of the presentations at this year’s Gathering 4 Gardner event was about optical illusions, a favorite topic of mine. The presenter, Chris Robeson, showed some pictures of an art exhibit called “Squaring the Circle” by Eva Rucki’s collaborative art group, Troika. The exhibit takes up the better part of a room and is intended mainly for museums I suppose. By using parallax distortion the exhibit looks like a square from one viewpoint and like […]
MoreGathering 4 Gardner 2022
Martin Gardner is probably best known for the Mathematical Games column he wrote for Scientific American from 1956 to 1981 and for his books on recreational math. His influence on several generations of mathematicians and computer science researchers is hard to overstate and in 1993 his fans started a bi-annual Gathering 4 Gardner conference in his honor. The 14th gathering, G4G14, is currently under way here in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a multi-day event filled with […]
More“The Pennyhedron Revisited” Revisited
At the end of my last post I talked about George Bell’s fascinating paper, “The Pennyhedron Revisited”, and a puzzle he mentions in it called “De Doe Dak Ka”. Stuart Gee designed it and George reports that it is the first known four-piece pennyhedron, having been introduced in 2007 at IPP27. It’s a very cool coordinate motion puzzle of four identical pieces. I started playing around with the shape, initially making a sphere and adding […]
MoreMo’ CoMo
I continue to be intrigued (obsessed?) with coordinate motion (como) puzzles and came across a really clever design of James Dalgety’s. He is one of the living legends in the puzzle design community and is well known for having started Pentangle Puzzles & Games in 1971 and more recently for curating the Puzzle Museum, an immense collection of puzzles dating back to 320 BC. Here is a paper he submitted to the 11th “Gathering for […]
MoreTom Jolly’s “Flange 77A” Puzzle (Updated 6/3/20)
I’ve been plugging away at three designs to succeed my earlier Model #808 and Model #360 puzzles – it’s been slow going. Every time I think I’ve resolved the last of the usability, aesthetic, manufacturability, and packaging issues, something comes up. I’m on the eleventh revision on one design, the nineteenth on the second, and the twenty-second on the third. Believe it or not, I’m not complaining – I love working through design problems – […]
MoreStewart Coffin’s “Burr Muda” Puzzle
I’ve been having a lot of fun with coordinate motion puzzles, some of which I’ve even blogged about. Well, one of the coolest is a Stewart Coffin design (STC-112) called “Burr Muda” and it looks like this: One of the things I really like about this design is that all six pieces are identical; that appeals to my sense of symmetry I suppose. Second, since it’s a coordinate motion puzzle, those six pieces must define […]
MoreThe Calibron Twelve Block Puzzle (Updated 4/19/20)
This is a pretty well known story to the puzzler community but if you’ve never heard it before, here’s the condensed version: in 1932 Theodore Edison, youngest son of famous inventor Thomas Edison, created a puzzle of twelve rectangular blocks and named it, you guessed it, “The Calibron Twelve Block Puzzle”. Here’s what his instructions said: “The problem is to arrange the twelve blocks to form a single large rectangle. Any rectangle, (including the square), […]
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