Cast Rattle

This entry is part 3 of 8 in the series Hanayama Cast Puzzles

Cast Rattle is another excellent puzzle from the Hanayama Cast series of puzzles. This particular puzzle is designed by Bram Cohen. The highly chromed, clinking puzzle challenges you to separate the four joined pieces, then put them back together, before you drive your significant other insane from the rattling. Thanks to Puzzle Master for sending me this puzzle to review.

Cast Rattle by Hanayama

As other people have already commented in their reviews, this puzzle really lives up to its name. The four identical pieces rattle and clink with each and every touch of the puzzle, and most attempts to silence it will prove to be futile. The chromed finish is very slick, and there is very little friction between the pieces to keep them in any particular spot. Have a look at Kevin’s review and Brian’s review to see what they had to say about this puzzle.

If you’re familiar with the cast series, then it will come as no surprise to find that the name of the puzzle, and Hanayama’s name are laser etched onto one of the pieces. This puzzle is no exception and lives up to the high quality that we are familiar with from the Hanayama series. It’s a solid puzzle with a good weight and excellent fit and finish. Despite its small price tag, this is a high quality puzzle.

Cast Rattle closeup

At its smallest, the puzzle is around 1.5″ square x 1″ high. The pieces fit very loosely together which adds to its tendency to rattle, but there’s really no unnecessary movement here. Moving the pieces around in relation to one another, you can see everything, making this another ‘perfect’ puzzle.

You may not realise it, but this puzzle is actually a burr puzzle. Don’t let that put you off though. I know that many people are not a fan of burrs but this is a great puzzle and you’d be missing out if you passed it by. The loose connection of the pieces, and the ability to see all parts of the puzzle make this a rather unique burr. Nothing hidden from you and yet something keeps the pieces locked together.

With nothing hidden, it should be easy to see how it should open, right? And this is where the frustration sets in. Idly fiddling with the puzzle in your hands is unlikely to see you opening it any time soon. Tugging and pulling wildly at the pieces in the hope they will pop apart also won’t yield particularly impressive results. A more structured approach (and a level surface) help in solving this one. You can see from looking at the pieces and how they connect that all you need to do is line the pieces up, and they should fall apart. The beauty is that the pieces are so accurately made, that the alignment has to be spot on for that to happen.

Cast Rattle pieces

I’ve given this puzzle to a few different people to try to solve, and most have managed. The interesting thing is that each person approaches the puzzle differently, and as such I’ve witnessed a couple of solutions. The most Neanderthal solution involved holding two pieces and shaking until things fell apart, to the other end of the scale where carefully aligning pieces on a desk and gently repositioning with a pencil until the top two could lift off. Interestingly both were successful!

After I solved this for the first time, and could look closely at the pieces when I was re-assembling the puzzle, I noticed something very interesting. That led to what I consider to be a very elegant solution. Taking a couple of tooth picks and carefully placing them between the pieces, you can precisely align them, and separate the pieces with minimal effort. I wonder if this was intentional when the puzzle was designed or just luck!

The effect of such a precise construction, and low friction surface is that even when you’re putting the pieces back together, almost as soon as the pieces touch, they will move out of alignment locking themselves together again.

Hanayama rates the puzzle as a level 4/6 and Puzzle Master a level 8/10 – Demanding. I have to say that these are spot on. It’s a challenging puzzle and could keep you rattling away for hours if you don’t look carefully at the pieces and their interaction. Even after solving it, and knowing what you have to do, this still provides a challenge every time you come back to it. I highly recommend Cast Rattle for all ages and level of puzzle solving, although I’d suggest not handing it to the baby!

Forgotten Puzzle – The Holetite Puzzle (Buttonhole Puzzle)

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Taking a trip down memory lane, I recently re-discovered, or rather remembered that I had made a puzzle a very long time ago for a Magic show I was performing. Yes, way back in my dim and distant past, I was a magician, and I performed to varying sized audiences. Moving on …

The Holetite or Buttonhole Puzzle

Anyway, when I was working on new tricks for an upcoming show, I came across this puzzle in a book of magic tricks, and decided to create my own copy for use in the show. The book showed a wooden stick with a leather string. My version as you can see was slightly different.

The puzzle was created by American puzzle inventor Sam Loyd, and there is an interesting story behind it. I’ll not repeat it here, as it can be found easily enough on the web, or in Jerry Slocum’s book “New Book of Puzzles”.

I used it in a very similar way to that described in Slocum’s book, by attaching it to an unsuspecting audience member, and challenging them to remove it without breaking the chain. Throughout the show I would comment to the poor audience member that he or she still hadn’t removed the item. Toward the end of my show I returned, and kindly removed the item as quickly as I’d placed it on them, normally to a laugh and applause from the audience. (Yes I was young when doing this, so a child getting one up on an adult is normally amusing.)

This is a simple enough puzzle to create, and almost anything can be used to create it, from an ice cream stick to a pencil or any rod, then a piece of string just slightly shorter than the stick it is attached to. Go ahead and make one yourself, and have fun. It’s a great first puzzle to create, and will leave you laughing as you pin it on unsuspecting victims!

As a word of warning, creating if from something breakable like a pencil may see the puzzle returned to you in pieces (or with the pencil sharpened, and as a result shorter). Just as well they’re cheap and easy to make.

Stickman #2 – Revisited

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Some time ago I wrote about the Stickman puzzle box I’d won on a Puzzle Paradise auction. Since then the puzzle has been on a bit of a journey, and as a result I felt it was time to revisit this puzzle.

When I won the puzzle, I spent some time talking with its creator Robert Yarger, and he mentioned that it was a really solid puzzle, and he’d have no issues handing it round for people to try. Well with that in mind, I took it with me to the California Puzzle party. Unfortunately, when it was there, something went a bit wrong, and the puzzle jammed. I was able to shut the puzzle, but there was something very strange going on. Sadly, I had to put the puzzle back in my bag, and that meant no-one else was able to play with it that day.

I wrote to Robert and described what was happening. He instantly offered to take the puzzle back and see if he could figure out what had happened, even mentioning that if he couldn’t fix it, he’d find a way to make things right by me. (As a fellow puzzler has mentioned, nice bloke that Stick guy!) Interestingly, this was only the third Stickman puzzle that Robert has ever had to repair, and one of those was due to an accidental high dive from a shelf. Given the number of puzzles he’s made, and some of the incredibly intricate work he does, that’s a pretty good recommendation of his work.

So I packed the box up, and sent it off. A few days later Robert got in touch to tell me that he had found the problem and would be able to fix it. Before I knew what was happening, Robert had the box all back together and it was back in the mail to me.

The top before repair

Top after repair

While Robert had the box, he did a little restoration on the top. As you may remember, there was a scratch on the top of the box from the original creation. Robert mentioned that it was common on his early work. Seems like he wasn’t too happy about that scratch being there as he sanded the box down to remove it, then refinished the box, so now it’s even better than new.

It turns out that what had happened is that on one side of the puzzle, the internal stops had broken and was now free floating inside the puzzle. For a 10 year old puzzle, it wasn’t anything anyone using the puzzle had done, but just a case of old age. To fix things, the part which came free has now been replaced and a much deeper groove cut into the side to embed things firmly. No chance of that coming free again.

Here’s just a few pictures from Robert’s surgery. These don’t give anything away. I’ve kept the pictures of the internals for myself. Thanks have to go out to Robert though for sending me the pictures. He certainly didn’t need to show what goes on inside his puzzle!

This looks drastic, taking a mortiser to the bottom

The inside of the box

Back as good as new

Building a Matrioshka (Part 3)

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This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Building a MaTRIOshka

At the end of the last post, I’d finished making all the individual parts that would make up the puzzle, and was ready to start putting things together. The number of individual parts has reduced from the original 54 to just 18, but things are no less daunting at this stage.

All 18 pieces ready for final glueup

The biggest problem remaining was how on earth I was going to glue the ends to the bridge. There are no square ends on this thing that you can put a clamp on, so it makes holding the pieces together a real challenge. Building a gluing jig was probably the right way to go, but even that made for some interesting clamping!

Gluing Jig

I decided not to try to make a jig that would glue both ends at the same time. I wanted something simple that would support the pieces as I glued them, and in the end, the jig was much simpler than I thought it needed to be. Some of the original scrap pieces I had left served fairly well, and also meant that I could glue both sides at the same time. I’m not an expert woodworker, I don’t have a lot of ‘spare’ or scrap wood lying about (remember I’m only starting out doing this, so no reserve of wood to pick from) so this did the job.

Gluing Jig, yes it's ugly!

Sticking with the very simple jig above, I could glue one end at a time and create the pieces. Granted if I were doing this in bulk, or attempting to create something I could sell, I’d be thinking about a more efficient scheme. For now, this works, and is all I needed.

One down, 5 to go!

The first finished piece

After several hours over the weekend (since I do all this in my spare time, which I don’t have a lot of just now!) I had 6 pieces glued up and ready for a test fit. Yes, the time had come to see how much of a mess I’d made of my first ever serious attempt at making a puzzle!

The six finished pieces

With some hesitancy, I took the plunge and tried to fit the pieces together into the final puzzle … It’s a tight fit, but things were taking shape! I spent a little time with the sandpaper and sanded the pieces down just a hair. Using my digital calipers, the bridge was 1.333″, and the edges were around 1.49″. So there really wasn’t a lot in it, but enough that some work was required. A little bit of sanding on each of the pieces, and I had them down to around 1.32″.

Test fit

And here the story ends unfortunately. When I tried to put all six pieces together, tiny inaccuracies in the fit of the pieces, and minute misalignment between the ends meant that the whole puzzle is just enough off that it’s not going to go together and slide the way it is supposed to. Despite the end result, I don’t consider this a failure. You may remember back in the first post, I said that this was a learning experience for me. And I’ve learned a lot through the process. I’m sure I’ll come back to this puzzle in the future, and expect version two to be better!

Wil’s Aluminium Cylinder

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The Aluminium Cylinder is another intriguing puzzle from Wil Strijbos in the Netherlands. Wil has been making metal puzzles for quite some time now, and the quality of his work is excellent. Have a look at my review of Wil’s first ever puzzle design The Aluminium Cross, to see where it all started.

Aluminium Cylinder by Wil Strijbos

The object of the puzzle is to remove the lid from the cylinder. The lid will spin 360 degrees in either direction, can be depressed a new millimetres, and the puzzle rattles when you shake it. Other than this, there is a small hole in the bottom of the puzzle which allows you to see into the middle of the puzzle. This hole isn’t much use, but does allow you to see a feature at the far end of the hole which must be useful. Finally, laser engraved into the side of the puzzle are two numbers. These relate to the particular run of the puzzle, and the puzzle number within that run. They may also be useful in solving the puzzle, but I couldn’t comment on that 😉

When I started playing with this, I didn’t seem to make a lot of progress. The puzzle will go silent as you move it around in your hands, then you hear things rattle when you press the lid down. None of this seems to do much other than confuse. After a while I managed to do something useful, and a ball bearing appeared in the hole in the middle of the puzzle. I confess that at this point, I had no idea what I’d done, or how to replicate it. Turning the puzzle upside down and looking in the hole, I watched the ball bearing disappear into the feature at the top of the hole, and it was gone again.

Much puzzling later, I managed to get the ball back out, and again had no idea how I’d done this. I looked at the puzzle when the ball appeared, and tried to figure out what I’d done differently. I still had no idea at this point, and repeating it seemed beyond me. So it was time to think! (c) Allard

Some time later, I finally figured out what was going on, and a few minutes later, the lid popped up with a satisfying sound. Once open the locking mechanism is fully visible, and you’ll be amazed as to just how simple it is. This is a wonderful mechanism, and my hat is off to Wil for creating this. Reversing the opening process closes the puzzle, and returns it to its starting state, ready to confound the next unsuspecting puzzler.

I can now open the puzzle in around 10 seconds, however shutting it still takes me a little longer. For some reason it’s not as simple to close as it is to open!

This is a great puzzle, and highly recommended for any puzzler. Be warned though, this may take a lot of time to solve!

Neil's Puzzle Building Blog

The journey from puzzler to puzzle creator.

Cast Rattle

Forgotten Puzzle – The Holetite Puzzle (Buttonhole Puzzle)

Stickman #2 – Revisited

Building a Matrioshka (Part 3)

Wil’s Aluminium Cylinder

Cube Vinco