I was introduced to the Revomaze puzzles about 6 months ago, since then I’ve been hooked. I was on the lookout for a new puzzle to keep me busy, and wanted something that I wasn’t going to solve in an hour and then have it gather dust on a shelf after that. I’d been looking around a few forums and keeping a quiet eye on some of the discussions, and the name Revomaze kept popping up, so I did some digging, and liked what I found.
The puzzle seemed to be some sort of maze, that you navigated blind, with the objective being to remove the core of the puzzle. With estimated solve times ranging from 4 hours to 300+ hours depending on which puzzle you were looking at, I thought I have to give this a try. Anything that has the audacity to market itself as “Probably one of the hardest puzzles in the world” is either pretty good, or rather full of itself. And I wanted to find out which it was.
The Bronze pictured above is the third most difficult in the series after Blue and Green. The fourth puzzle, the Silver Revomaze is the most difficult to date, and estimated at 160 hours to open on average. Gold isn’t yet released, and is expected later this year. Chris is working hard to complete production and testing of the puzzle to complete the Series I puzzles.
There are two types of puzzle available, both of which are basically the same. The Obsession series is a plastic version, and was released later, and the origina Extreme series, which are 600g metal puzzles, machined to the highest quality, and guaranteed to test the strength of your fingers and wrists. I personally like teh weight and feel of the metal puzzles, while others like the plastics. Certainly the plastics are much cheaper, but the feel and weight of the metal puzzle really gives it that solid high end feel that so many puzzles lack.
The designer of the Revomaze puzzle, Chris Pitt, is offering a competition with real prize money if you can open one of his puzzles in the top number of people per puzzle, where you’ll be invited to a live event to compete for a chance to win the cash. The other prize on offer at the live event is the chance to own a limited Purple puzzle. In all honesty I think this is the bigger prize than the money!
Now I came to the game quite late on, and all the spots for Blue, Green and Bronze were gone. Having said that I worked my way through each of them in turn, before moving on to Silver. From start to finish I opened all 4 in under two months. I’ve been told that’s pretty good going, and with some people having spent more than 6 months on a single puzzle, I’ll believe it!
I did manage to open the Silver as one of the first 30 people in the world, and as such have a place in the final. If you’re also going to be there then I look forward to meeting you!
One of the things that really stands out about the Revomaze, and the company is the people there. The customer service is excellent, and although it’s rare, should anything go wrong with your puzzle, you can bet that Chris himself will deal with it, and make sure you get back to solving in no time.
There are also a number of special edition or limited edition puzzles out there, including Black, Red and a soon to be released Orange. While these are not part of the main series, they have become very sought after!
Look out for my reviews of each of the individual puzzles coming soon. Until then, if you want a hint on how to open it, Map, and Think (c) Allard!