MagicPuzzles.org

Puzzle boxes and locks are not the only secret-opening puzzles.  Here are a few more.

This is the lighthouse puzzle from Bits and Pieces.  It’s small and brass, and I believe it’s based on a design described in “Puzzles Old and New” originally published in 1893 by Professor Hoffmann.  According to the online Puzzle Museum,

“HOFFMANN’S original book was effectively a catalogue of most of the mechanical puzzles available in Victorian London in the 1890s together with their solutions, plus many excellent new and classical puzzle posers.”

Some of the mechanical puzzles described in the book are thus referred to as Hoffmann puzzles.

The point of the lighthouse puzzle is to remove the ring.  No external tools can be used, though it’s very tempting.  It’s not hard, but it is clever.

This is the YOT.  The object is to remove the silver dollar.  This was one of the first mechanical puzzles I got since I started collecting recently.  I probably got it soon after the Moroccan puzzle box.  My wife and I spent about a week trying to open this up.  I had to resort to looking at the solution.  It turns out I had thought of the correct solution early on, but not followed through appropriately, and instead I got sidetracked on all kinds of weird ideas.

This is “All Hail the King”.  I got it from Mr. Puzzle in Australia when the American dollar was trading well against the Australian dollar.  It’s designed by Marcel Gillen.  It’s an aluminum chess king, though it’s much larger than the ordinary “regulation” size chess king.  I got lucky and was able to solve it when most of my coworkers were not (though Mike Butler, our “champion”, solved it quickly).

This is a small puzzle bolt that I purchased from Will Strijbos.  The object is to remove the ring.  It’s not difficult.  I actually had just seen a version of this puzzle that belonged to Jon Thorn, one of my coworkers.  Jon made it himself out of a monster-sized bolt.  Jon’s version was hard to reassemble, since one of his relatives had used a large wrench on it in an attempt to open it.

All of these puzzles are metal.  I like that because it makes them unlikely to be accidentally damaged – unless you decide to use a tool like a big wrench to try and open it up.