Craftsman: Eureka
Designer: Marcel Gillen

Long overdue post but here it is 1 month late =)

The same size as the King but with a slightly different solution. The Queen also harbors a secret, and in this case… a girls best friend.

King And Queen

Craftsman: Eureka
Designer: Marcel Gillen

Long overdue post but here it is 1 month late =)

Designed by Marcel Gillen in 2002 and reproduced by Eureka.

A fairly large piece about 15cm (~6 inches) tall. Not a very difficult puzzle but different.

All Kings has a Queen by their side, and she is a wee bit more difficult to find, but available here.

Can you find the hidden coin?

Long overdue post but here it is 1 month late =)

This is a HARD puzzle!
I have been working on it on and off and there are some devious tricks in this puppy. Still unsolved, but will hopefully have cracked it before the gold comes out.

Read my blue RevoMaze review for more info on this great puzzle.

Face-(Gesicht)-by-Roger

Craftsman: Roger
Designer: Roger

Update Aug 19 2010
Thanks to Wil Strijbos I now know the goal of this puzzle!
The goal is frankly quite simple, however getting there is not =)

Goal: Getting the ball from one eye to the other…and back again.

When I first started to fiddle around with this puzzle, the ball was in it’s left socket, and getting it to the right was no problem. The tricky part is getting it back to the left one. There are basically two obstacles to overcome to get the ball to the left eye, and I’m still stuck at the last one. I don’t know if I’m to tired or what, but I might need some assistance on the last hurdle.

This Roger puzzle has me really puzzled! I have no idea what the goal is here… You have this aluminum block which makes out a face (gesicht), and several square holes on it’s sides. There is one metal ball inside, and you have a “stick” ? with rounded edges (one bigger then the other). It seems like the goal of this would be to get the ball out of one of the eyes. All other holes are too small to get the ball out.

There are paths within which directly connects to the holes, and the only obstruction is a couple of “compressed” pieces if foam. (It’s really hard to explain but I will put up more pictures soon) You can poke the ball past each piece of foam with some force. (There is no damage to the puzzle, foam nor ball by doing this). So if the goal is to get the ball out through the eye it’s easy as pie!?

And why does the sticks ends has different sizes? There got to be more to this puzzle then meets the eye!

If you can confirm or dismiss my theory on the goal on this puzzle please contact me and let me know.

Here are 3 pictures of the foam, excuses the poor color balance.

There were a lot of discussion about this new puzzle from sonicwarp in different forums.

The guys at the forum hadn’t solved it right away (or at least didn’t announce it before I ordered one), so it couldn’t be too easy anyway, so I figured why not give this one a try.

It’s priced a lot less then their regular range (Isis & Ramisis) so I got one from Puzzle Box Direct .

It arrived today so I was keen on getting my hands on it. Apparently getting it out of the box was accordingly to sonicwarp supposed to be a small puzzle itself. Its Not =)

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

One of the first thing that is going to hit you is the size. It’s about 4cm / 1.6 inches in diameter. In the comparison picture below you can see some references:
1 Euro, a Canadian “twoonie” (2CAD) and a Casino chip sitting on a dollar bill.

I had no problem solving this one, it took only a few minutes actually. Not because I’m all that smart, rather some dumb luck was involved. Even though, I solved it and could take a good look at the internals, it ain’t breeze to repeat the feat.

Kuku size reference

Apparently there seems to exists two versions of the Kuku. Medium and Hard, and unless you ask for the hard one they will ship the medium. (I didn’t know this before I had ordered mine) As far as I know there is no way of telling the two apart on the outside.
This is not something I have verified so if you got more details regarding this please let me know.

However once you have opened your kuku there are tells, that indicate that it can be made harder.

The Kuku itself is made of brushed aluminum and displays very nicely in it’s acrylic case.

As far as value for money I’m a bit torn, since the initial playtime was kind of short… though there is replay value and (maybe) the possibility to modify the difficulty once you open it. However if you are good at decrypting you could easily get your moneys worth IF you manage to solve the vault game that the token inside the kuku gives you access to. Demo of the vault game can be found here.

Edit: I have confirmed that it’s possible to make a medium puzzle into a hard one. The reason why they shipped “mediums” was because they didn’t want to make the initial kuku deliveries impossible to solve. I haven’t tried the “upgrade” yet, but it’s supposed to be much harder then the regular/medium. I know that some pretty good puzzlers out there has been stuck on their hard version for over an week now.
So I’m toning down my conclusion a bit. =) Will update you on how the hard works out for me once I get started.

Conclusion: Get the hard version and nothing else if you are an experienced puzzler.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Garden-Hose-(Gartenschlauch)-by-Roger

Craftsman: Roger
Designer: Roger

Here is another one of “Roger’s” contraptions, about the same size as the plug (stecker). It also shares a few other elements with stecker other then it’s size. It has a real piece of gardenhose attached and no visible clue how to solve it.

The nozzle is made from two solid pieces of aluminum, of which the front can be rotated. The second piece of the nozzle has a small ball bearing on top of it. One would expect it to be spring loaded, but it want move.

CloseUp Nozzle

The front of the nozzle has a hole where one can see a part of something that looks like the business end of a bolt.

CloseUp Nozzle2

My guess on the goal here is that the front nozzle should be detached.

Blindlabyrint 1C by Lauri Kaira

Craftsman: -
Designer: Lauri Kaira
Found here: Oy Sloyd Ab

The grandfather of RevoMaze!? =)

This labyrinth puzzle intrigued me quite a bit when I saw it. Because it was so similar to the RevoMaze that I’m quite fond of.

All in all only 2000 copies were made, of which most was sold in 1984
This is 1C, is the hardest one of “Blindlabyrint”

Box front

Transcript of the block of text in Swedish of the front follows:
(It’s exactly the same as the English version on the back)

Blindlabyrint är ett nytt problemspel för gamla och unga. Spelaren söker med den lilla vandraren (tapp) den rätta vägen genom labyrinten till den innersta cirkelformiga gången och tillbaka. Detta problem löses endast med känselsinne. Det här spelet hör till svårighetsgraden A, B eller C, av vilka graden C är den svåraste.

Box back

Transcript of the part in English of the back of the box follows:

Blindlabyrinth is a new problemgame for old and young. Player searches with the little wanderer (pin) a path through the labyrinth to the inner ringshaped passage and back. This problem can be solved only with the sense of touch. The game is classified in grades A, B and C of which the grade C is most difficult.

Blindlabyrint 1C by Lauri Kaira Standing

You probably can’t tell by the pictures, but the entire puzzle (maze & sleeve) is made from lightweight metal, probably aluminum. The pin (which is not spring loaded) seems to be made from steel though.

The fit is perfect, but since the pin is not spring loaded and the maze corners are very sharp, makes it a bit tricky to navigate.

Plug-(Stecker)-by-Roger

Craftsman: Roger
Designer: Roger

This one of my recently acquired “Roger” puzzle. This thing is big 26cm / 10 inches long, (about the same size of the Garden Hose (Gartenschlauch) more on that in a later post)  It would actually fit in a regular industrial socket of some sort. The wires at the back is the real thing to. One possible solution (last resort) to this puzzle would be to plug it in. (Joke! please do not kill yourself hahaha).

CloseUp Plug

The goal of this puzzle is at the moment unknown (for me), as with all of Roger’s puzzles they come with no instructions, and hence a part of the puzzle is to figure out the goal.

I do believe that goal is tho remove one of the copper connectors, since one can be turned fairly freely, while the other do not (probably held by one of two screws).
The plug itself is a solid metal block with only two screws in it.

CloseUp Plug2

The wires at the end can be removed, while the red protective sleeve can not. I have found that there seems to be some mechanism, one can “tinger” with, at the base inside the sleeve (did that make any sense?) using one (or more) of the of the cords.

CloseUp Cord

It’s my understanding that this and the “garden hose” are one of the most difficult ones.

A quite extensive catalog of Roger puzzles can be found at Rob’s Puzzle Page.

Lighthouse-by-Eureka

Found at: Eureka
Hoffman

A clever little puzzle, quite easy but mainly due to some quality issues.

Tap-by-Roger

Craftsman: Roger
Designer: Roger

Here is another puzzle I have not opened yet. The Tap, or also known as “Wasserhahn”. One can hear a ball bearing inside, and the “hot” and “cold” water screws can be turned so they move up and down (block or unblock the little ball inside).