Sniper Scope Puzzle

From the grande old school of “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, Engineer Bruns brings us his Sniper Scope Puzzle. I can’t imagine what the appropriate response is to having your country invaded and your home city bombed by a daft tyrant, but Bruns’ decision to bring us first the Bomb Destroyer and then this puzzle, makes for a very fine two-finger salute to said tyrant… and it turns out, it brings massive amounts of joy to puzzlers around the world.

Andriy Bruns, you are the man sticking it to the man. More power to your arm, sir!

Right – back to the puzzle – as you’d expect from the name, this one does a pretty respectable imitation of an actual sniper scope, from the hooded eyepiece to the multiple adjustment knobs – and somehow they all conspire to create an excellent little puzzle.

At the start of this solve you’ll probably find that optically, this scope is pretty useless – one end appears to have a plastic lens cap, and the other is black as night. Find your way past those obstacles and you can begin to solve its secrets. I got lucky when I spotted something interesting on one end, but the other end took me a while to “unlock”.

Being able to see a little of the insides definitely helps, but from there you’re in for quite a series of experiments and discoveries to work out what’s possible and what interacts with what… I spent an absolute age getting quite frustrated that things weren’t working consistently until I finally realised that I’d misunderstood something vital and there was still more to be discovered – trust the designer / craftsman!

Find a way to successfully navigate all of the challenges and you’re presented with a tiny shell as a final reward.

Resetting the puzzle is definitely not a trivial affair and it will absolutely test whether you’ve really understood what you did to solve it in the first place… (Not really a) Spoiler Alert: I hadn’t and got well-humbled a second time! … and now I love it – it has been wonderfully precisely made and it does behave perfectly reliably once you’ve worked out all of its secrets.

Even if you aren’t captured by the story behind this puzzle’s creation, it will still enchant you! It is great!