Moonage M5

Continuing my tradition of being massively late to most parties, I picked up a copy of Stephan’s Top 10 Vote Getter from Houston at the Tokyo Puzzle Party… it looked great, he had a copy available, and it was my birthday – SOLD! [In fairness any one of those would probably have been sufficient!]

I didn’t get much time to play with this in the Design Competition in Houston so I was pretty much approaching it from scratch when I start puzzling. It is a beautiful object and is going to look absolutely fab among the rest of the hoard. Stephan’s wood crafting skills really are fantastic.

The puzzle challenges you to retrieve the moon lander, flag, and spaceman from the rocket… sounds sensible for a rocket-shaped puzzle. There are three fins that support the chubby little rocket and keep the nozzle handily above the desk while you admire it. There are a few bits that seem to rotate more or less independently and there’s a little button to push… although doing each of these things produces virtually no reaction whatsoever.

Start puzzling and soon enough you’re finding what appear to be fuel cells – again those should be handy for a rocket ship…

Somewhere in the middle of the solve there’s a whole array of bits and pieces, some of which may be tools and some of which may be treasure. Stephan’s been really imaginative in the way he uses the various bits and bobs and it really takes you through the solve in a delightful manner – when we talked about it he described it as more of a story-telling experience than a hard solve and I think that’s a great description: if you keep track of the things you find it really does tell the story of this little rocket ship taking a brave explorer to the moon…

…and when you’re finished you literally have a display to remind you of the story.

Cleverly designed, well-engineered and beautifully made, Moonage M5 gives you a lovely story and a really fun solve. It shouldn’t take seasoned puzzlers long to work through the solution, but it definitely will make you grin.