5 times 5 times 5

Another gem from my latest Karakuri haul – this time from Hiroshi Iwahara – master of higher move interacting and n-ary move puzzle boxes. 

This one was also made for the “GO” exhibition and uses the double-meaning to focus on the number five – in this case 5*5*5 – which, coincidentally gives the number of moves to open the box.

Crafted in stunning silky oak, this puzzle provides therapy and meditation as you run through the 125-move sequence to open and close it. At point there is always only a single route and you’re either going forwards or backwards – Belgian Maze anyone? As long as you remember which way you came from  - there’s never a chance of doubling back on yourself… which sounds perfectly sensisble but I’m afraid I often find my addled brain forgetting that very thing, especially when I’m really in-the-zone and motoring through the solution path, although in fairness it might also have something to do with my fingers getting slightly ahead of my brain and moving things without the brain necessarily registering the fact. 

Either way, it’s a lovely puzzle to fiddle with and wander up and down the path to openness. (See what I did there?!) 

As is customary, the puzzle comes with a handy solution sheet – and this one’s got some interesting little extra drawings and information on it, not just the sequence of moves required to open the box.

There are some neat little drawings that help you to visualise the internals – picture an inverted Rune Cube with all the mazes hidden inside – and some analysis of the number of times that each pin traverses parts of the mazes… nice touch! 

Great for intermediate levels of therapy – you know, when you aren’t quite up to tackling the 324-move chaps!

Iwahara’s Ninomiya Yosegi Secret Box

When one of the leading craftsmen in the Karakuri collective decides to spend several months learning another craftsman’s techniques in order to produce an homage to the latter, it’s worth paying attention… when the former is the bloke who’s brought us the Byway Secrets, Super-Cubi and the King Cubi, and the latter is Ninomiya-san – it’s always going to be something special… so when the lottery was announced for a few copies of this pedigreed love-child, I joined the queue like a good British puzzler. 

I was lucky enough to be able to purchase a copy, and I have to say that it way surpassed any of my expectations… so this write-up will probably be more than a little gushy. I apologise in advance. 

The web-site blurb explained that Hiroshi Iwahara had spent quite a long time learning from Ninomiya-san and described the box rather humbly as a simple 7-move puzzle box…

Now it may well be “just” a 7-move puzzle box, but it is easily the best looking Japanese puzzle box I have ever seen – that observation will be partly due to my somewhat limited exposure to Ninomiya’s own puzzle boxes, but I think only partly so, because this one is really a thing of beauty. 

On a standard Japanese puzzle box you can usually spot the sliders from across the room – there’s a subtle break in the yosegi where diagonal lines don’t quite meet, or there’s a disturbance in a pattern… or the edges without the yosegi show an obvious split. This one’s not like that. I have defied several puzzlers to spot the breaks in the yosegi after telling them that there are sliders on each end… you cannot see them. Bounce the light off the edges without the yosegi and you can see the faintest clue to where the sliders are… these secret panels literally hide in plain sight.

The yosegi itself is vintage-Ninomiya – a pattern of square blocks where every row has exactly the same height… even where there must have been a cut for the sliders, usually a tell-tale sign – it’s indistinguishable here.

Without the benefit of any visual clues, you’re left to rely on some of your other senses – and they won’t let you down. Find the right jump-off point and you’re rewarded with a set of silky smooth movements that are so wonderfully precise they belong in a dream. 

Iwahara’s tribute to Ninomiya is truly a wonderful homage to one of the great masters… and an instant favourite.

Dream of Zebra

As with quite a few lust-worthy puzzles, the first time I got to see and play with a copy of Iwahara’s Dream of Zebra was on a visit to James’ Puzzle Museum. It’s a gorgeous big ball of a puzzle and several of us had a great time playing with it that day…

The next time I ran into one was at my favourite puzzle shop in Hakone, after the crowds had left, when the proprietor emerged form the back room fiddling with a copy… and in answer to my pleading looks,  “Sorry, not for sale!” unfortunately.

Dream of Zebra won an Honourable Mention for Iwahara in the 2001 IPP21 Puzzle Design Competition… it’s been around for a while. Yet, if you look back through the historic records of the puzzles auction sites you’ll only see a few of them changing hands, most seem to have remained in the grateful hands of their current owners… and there’s a good reason for that… so when I was offered one recently, I handed over a small pile of cash, swiftly.

Back at home a couple of days later I finally got to enjoy it properly… it’s not that challenging as a puzzle – there is a fixed set of moves to be made, with no blind alleys or detours along the way… follow the path and the final panel can be removed, revealing the maker’s mark inside (the anglicised “Rockfield” in this case).

It’s a lovely item to play with and the fit and finish is stunning…something which must have provided a significant challenge to the craftsman is the fact that the twelve moving panels have been turned into the shape of a ball… and while I’m no expert on lathe-work, one of my (crazy Australian) mates is… and he’s afraid of the sort of wood-turning that would be required here – because there are gaps in the corners between the pieces that would be just begging to grab hold of a tool and throw it across the room rather violently…

Not just a beautiful object, one that required considerably more skill than usual to create in the first place – respect, Hiroshi Iwahara.