Pyramid

I’d really enjoyed Kawashima-san’s Pod puzzle box, so when they announced Pyramid as a variant of Pod, I piled in... my copy arrived just ahead of MPP XXV and I remarked that few folks had fun playing with it – Louis in particular made reasonably short work of it but said it was nice… which usually means thoroughly awesome in my little puzzling world.

Following MPP XXV and the general upheaval of the cave, I hadn’t had much chance to play with some of the recent arrivals and it was only relatively recently that I actually got to play with Pyramid properly – and found out just how nice it is…

In simple terms, Kawashima-san has built up each of the faces of the Pod cube until they formed six pentagons on an offset axis – except that the panels still overlap and slide as per the original cube… so far so simple… one little details though becomes quite important: Pod has some wonderfully clear visual clues to the orientation of the panels – Pyramid dispenses with that entirely: every side / panel looks like every other… and for those of you who know your Pods, that creates a bit of an issue – especially is someone has helpfully scrambled the puzzle for you, either intentionally or unintentionally…

So it was that I came to sit down and play with this little beastie in the solitude of the cave and really got to know it… there are some subtle clues to what’s going on and you can sort of work out where you’re heading but you need a cool head and fine attention to the details to spot when you’re making any progress whatsoever… this is not the sort of puzzle where you can randomly move panels and hope to progress – this one will only open when you spot several little clues and then find a way of suing all of them together, in the right order to finally open the box… 

Very satisfying Karakuri box that makes you work hard for the solution – I think I like this one even more than Pod, even though Pod is prettier! (and we all know what a magpie I am…) 

Addendum: Checker Secret

Billed as an introduction to Karakuri boxes, this box is meant to serve as an accessible puzzle for beginners and it certainly won’t keep seasoned puzzlists out for long, but I think it deserves some attention because of how it does that…

For starters, it is beautifully finished and really looks every bit the beautifully made Karakuri puzzle – the main locking mechanism is nicely disguised and yet definitely discoverable by a newbie, with enough of the mechanism visible inside once the box is opened to explain to enquiring minds just how that all worked. 

… but wait, there’s more!

There’s another secret waiting patiently for the observant neophyte – just a subtle hint of more to come… and that's what makes this a neat little introduction for me: there’s the obvious starter which might well be more than sufficient for most non-puzzlers, but there’s more for the curious to discover – and that makes it worthy of a mention here, IMHO, just in case puzzlists dismiss it as being “too simple”.