More Karakuri Experiments

A couple more boxes from the designs for the Karakuri Experiments exhibition, this time from Kamei and Kawashima-san. These two are probably a bit more mainstream and traditional than the ones in the previous Karakuri post, but most definitely worth playing with.

Twin 5 is Kawashima-san’s fifth Twin box and takes inspiration from Kamei’s 1983 Top Box. The family resemblance to the other Twins is clear to see and the reference to one of Kamei’s classics might help the intrepid solver… I guess.

Start fiddling around with this one and it shouldn’t take you long to find one or two interesting things to do… but then, if you’re anything like me, you hit an absolute brick wall and can’t find any way to proceed.

I spent quite a while here, going back over the few moves I’d discovered and trying to find anything at all interesting to do along the way… and failing miserably.

I began exploring some seriously whacky theories, all to no avail. I tried some of the older tricks from this terrific craftsman’s previous puzzles – nada!

This one literally had me thinking for days until a chance discovery opened up the final move and had me gently cursing and smiling broadly at the same time…

Kawashima-san says this box “requires very few steps, so even beginners can enjoy it” – and he ain’t kidding… and part of me wonders if beginners might even solve this one quicker that well-seasoned puzzlers.

Kamei’s contribution to the exhibition was Maze Box – almost certainly a clue to the mechanism, right? (Sort of - it turns out it's a refence to another of his 1983 creations...)

The top of the box has a distinctive inlaid daisy, or Margaret / Marguerite flower that really sets this box apart – someone’s gone to a lot of trouble on this one.

Strangely the box come with three little dowels, which seem to match up with the six holes in the bottom of the box… although exactly how useful either of those two discoveries is, remains to be seen.

Once again, I spent a while exploring several fruitless avenues before thinking something along the lines of “It couldn’t really be that elegant, could it?”

This one will definitely leave you scratching your head over the mechanism that locks this puzzle up. I’m sure that there’s a relatively straight-forward approach that I just haven’t thought of yet, but I’m probably going to carry on believing that there are little fairies inside the box that release the locks when they sense that you’ve done all of the things you’re supposed to do – it really seems magical.

Asymmetric cube -5-

For me, this was the pick of the bunch from my latest Karakuri club order: it looks gorgeous, it’s a handy size and as a puzzle, it rocks!

Kawashima-san designed and crafted this for an exhibition entitled “GO”. Now, in Japanese, the word “go” can also mean “5” – and if you look at most of the faces of the cube, there’s a coloured five against a white background… and he’s used 5 different woods to make this box – but you’ll only get a glimpse of the fifth one (gorgeous!) when you finally solve the puzzle… and this is his fifth incarnation in his Bars Box series – so go, go, go!

At first blush this looks like a simple puzzle box – you have three panels that will each individually slide in one direction… upon sliding any of those panels, nothing else will move… and the other three panels won’t budge at all… take the trouble to read the craftsman’s notes in the website and he warns you that “there are mechanisms that betray your expectations”. 

And he’s not kidding!

I spent a long time performing exactly the same moves over and over again fully expecting a different outcome. (Yes, I know that quotation…) I tried turning gravity on and off, and moving it around – nothing. I tried to move things in different ways – don’t be stupid – those pieces are blocked and two pieces of matter cannot occupy the same space no matter how much you wish they would. 

There is a wonderful “A-Ha!” moment, but even then, there’s still a bit of puzzling to work through to finally open the lid and peek inside to spy Kawashima-san’s hanko hiding inside. 

I love the details in this box – there are some wonderful little details on the inside – just there to make it look drop-dead gorgeous and totally invisible until you’ve solved the puzzle – a stunning reward for solving this little beauty.

A couple of new cameras

Ages ago I spotted a picture of a Kumiki-style camera on Bernhard Schweitzer’s site which I subsequently discovered had been designed by William Waite and made by Pelikan. The Camera Conundrum had received an Honourable Mention in the IPP23 Puzzle Design Competition – so I set about trying to find one…

Recently the good folks at the New Pelikan Workshop recreated this old classic and it was briefly available for sale once more – sadly I missed that opportunity and my search continued. But my dogged determination recently paid off when I found a copy of the original Camera Conundrum available for sale… I did not miss out this time! 

Resembling an old instamatic camera with a magicube flash on it [remember those?!] it’s a handsome little puzzle whose aim is disassembly and reassembly, finding a hidden compartment along the way… the coolest thing though is how various actions that you’d associate with those old cameras have been incorporated into the solution. 

At some point during the solution you’ll press the shutter release, manipulate the flash, focus the camera and wind on the film [actual film, remember that?!]. 

Somewhere along the way you’ll discover a drawer with a secret little hidey hole – plenty big enough for a standard ball bearing noise-maker, it turns out. 

Even with a pile of pieces, it’s not horribly complicated to work out where things need to go, and there’s a reasonably logical progression to building up your little camera… you have to love the way William’s made so many of the moves resemble things you’d actually do with these cameras.

The second camera comes from Hideaki Kawashima – one of the indecently talented gentlemen of the Karakuri Group. Back in 2014 he produced a fiendishly difficult Twin Lens Reflex Camera whose second compartment had me baffled, and he’s done it again with his Spring Camera. 

This one resembles an old vintage Voigtlander from around the 1930’s. Once again the detailing on the camera is stunning – you get the impression that lots of the detailing is there purely to make it look the part, but you won’t shake the feeling that some of those little thingies are going to be helpful in opening up this box…

…and so it is – find the right things to do and the front panel opens and the lens unit pops out – all very theatrical… you’ll find yourself closing it up and popping it open over and over again – it’s quite addictive. 

Get that far and you have a wonderfully functional little object… but still no idea of how to open the box… that takes a few more moves and some imagination… applied liberally and you’ll find you way into the little treasure compartment.

An absolutely stunning piece from a young man who is clearly passionate about his photography as well as his woodwork – the photos he puts up on his Instagram feed are fantastic – occasionally there’s even a puzzle pic or two on there…

Here’s hoping there’ll be even more little wooden cameras in future…

Secret Box Box

No, that is not a typo… that is its name… and it is well-named. 

A couple of months ago I missed out on getting a copy of the similarly named Secret Book Box Box – a collaboration between Hideaki Kawashima and Ninomiya-san – that one looked for all the world like three intersecting books, with some lovely Ninomiya stiped Yosegi providing the illusion of the pages of the books… it was a beautiful object…

A little while later Kawashima-san offered a simpler version, the Secret Box Box (sans the book-motif) through the usual Karakuri shop pages… and while I was umming and ahhhing, I spotted a post on the interweb with a pic of an amused looking John Rausch playing with one of the originals – followed by several exhortations about just how brilliant this puzzle was – and suggestions that puzzlists will find it awesome – I ordered one immediately… after all if I didn’t like it, I could always give John a hard time if I happened to run into him in the next few weeks…

Short version: it arrived. John was spot on. Hard time not required. 

Slightly longer version: this box truly encapsulates all that is great about the Karakuri puzzles – it’s an interesting puzzle to start with: you can more or less guess what you’re going to do right from the get-go… and once you get started you’re instantly rewarded with a nice bit of progress… there’s a pause in the middle allowing a little bit of thought and then another flurry of activity, resulting in a radically different-looking beast with lots of open cavities… 

RESULT!? 

Maybe…

You see one thing that you should know about the Karakuri folks is that they sign their work, usually in the form of a stamped signature (or hanko) somewhere inside the box… and at this point you can’t help but notice that you haven’t seen Kawashima-san’s hanko yet… perhaps he just forgot to sign them? 

(Yeah, right! Produce a stunning puzzle with insane tolerances and massive complexity, then don't bother signing your name to it... sure, that could happen... N O T !!)

…that is a whole other puzzle, and what take this from being a fantastic puzzle to being a really brilliant stand-out – it is both clever and fun, and if you blinked you’d easily be tempted into stopping before the end, quite satisfied with what you had already discovered… but there is so much more…

Probably now my favourite Karakuri puzzle of the year… boy was John right! 

[Sorry, can't really show you any more pics without spoiling some elements...]