Tag Archives: Dexterity

Free The Key

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Following on from my recent theme of maze based puzzles, this is a review of Puzzle Master’s metal puzzle, “Free The Key”, designed by Oskar Van Deventer and produced by Puzzle Master themselves. I’d like to thank Puzzle Master for sending me this puzzle to review.

Free The Key

Free The Key by Puzzle Master

At first glance this is a nice looking puzzle, and has a solid feel to it. It’s much larger than I expected, at around 4.5″ long by 2″. The puzzle I received has some discolouration around the gold ring as can been seen in the photographs, which spoils the look slightly when close up, but sitting on the puzzle shelf you’d never know that.

The object is to remove the brass ring from the key, and then return the ring to its starting point. It seems like a simple enough objective, and really is. There are a few dead ends and more than one start point, as with any good puzzle of this type. The arms on either side of the puzzle interact with each other meaning you occasionally have to back track and re-orient the ring to get over the dual obstacles. It does mean that you have to look ahead to see which notches in the ring you’ll need to have lined up before you progress too far down the key.

Where the puzzle is let down slightly is that the fit of the ring on the main shaft of the key is slightly loose. This leads to what I’d consider cheating where you can angle the ring so it is not 90 degrees to the shaft of the key, permitting the spikes on the key through a gap in the ring it was not intended to go through, simplifying the puzzle at points. This aside, it’s a fun puzzle, and is well made for the price.

Free the Key partially open

Free the Key by Puzzle Master partially open

Puzzle Master lists this as a difficulty level 8 puzzle, however I feel that it should be lower, maybe around a 5 or 6. I solved this in under 10 minutes, both removing the ring and returning it to its starting point, and had little trouble in doing so. If you’ve not played with this type of puzzle before, it may provide more of a challenge, but a more experienced puzzler will have little difficulty with this one. If you’re looking for a gift for a younger puzzler, I’d recommend this, and it’s the sort of puzzle you’d have no worries about passing round.

Perplexus

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The Perplexus is the current generation of a puzzle created by Michael McGinnis, and originally released to the public as SuperPlexus. Perplexus is available from a number of locations such as Amazon, and Puzzle Master and many other toy shops for less than $20.

Top view of Perplexus

Top view of Perplexus

The purpose of the puzzle is to guide the ball bearing along the tracks moving from each ‘checkpoint’ from 1-100 in sequence by rotating the sphere. The original Superplexus had both sound and a timer mechanism to allow you to compete for the fastest time, however in the current version, the electronics which were rather loud an obnoxious, have been removed in favour of a simpler quieter version, where the only sound is the ball falling off the maze, and bouncing on the bottom of the perspex shell, which will happen frequently. There’s even a small stand supplied with the puzzle to stop it rolling away when you eventually put it down.

Bottom view of Perplexus

Bottom view of Perplexus

When you start playing with the puzzle, it all seems fairly simple. The path is easy enough to follow, and moving from one ‘checkpoint’ to the next is fairly straightforward. Then you hit a certain transition, where it seems all to easy for the ball to fall off and force you to go back to the start. Despite that, it never seems frustrating, and you keep going back to try to make it all the way from 1-100. As a nice design feature, there are three start points in the puzzle, allowing you to restart from 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through so you can practice each section. The real challenge though is the full run in one shot. There are some very clever sections in the puzzle, such as the cup you drop the ball into then need to swing from one side to the other before tipping the ball back out onto the next track to continue. Overall it’s well thought out, and I am sure went through many iterations before finally becoming the puzzle that it is today.

Michael McGinnis was a 3D design teacher and came up with the idea for perplexus as a toy in the late 1970’s however it took him over 20 years to bring the idea to the market as it is today. He has also created super sized versions of the puzzle from wood and I highly recommend checking out his website for the pictures, and some of the story behind the creation of these huge puzzles. ( http://www.santarosa.edu/~mmcginni/superplexus/) While too big and heavy to hold in your hands, they run on rails allowing you to freely spin the sphere. I have no doubt that this added restriction adds an extra challenge to the puzzle.

Perplexus Epic

Perplexus Epic

With the launch of two new Perplexus puzzles set for May 6th 2011, the Rookie, which should be a simpler version of the original, designed for younger children, and the harder ‘Epic’ Perplexus coming in a very slick icy blue and white colour scheme and 125 checkpoints to navigate, there is a lot to look forward to in the series. I’d certainly recommend the original, and once I pick up the Epic, I’ll be sure to pass on my thoughts.

The Perplexus puzzle in the box.

The Perplexus puzzle in the box.

The Perplexus is a fun dexterity puzzle, which seems to be marketed more toward a younger audience with its bright colours and the pictures of a children playing with the puzzle while the parents watch on from behind on the box, however I can assure you that this puzzle will keep the whole family amused as they try to navigate the ball through the maze. Leave this one sitting on the table, and you can be sure people will want to pick it and play, and before you know it they’ll be off to buy one for themselves.