It's been a while since I reviewed one of my all time favorite puzzle series, the Hanayama Cast Puzzles. Taking the spotlight this time is the Cast Snow, designed by Kyoo Wong, who also designed the Cast U&U and Cast Rotor.

If you ever saw the shape of a snowflake, you know how unique and beautiful they can be. For that, the design of the Cast Snow alone is reason enough to get it. The Snow comes as a two-piece maze-type puzzle, where you need to navigate through multiple routes in order to separate the pieces.

This puzzle is simple enough to understand and despite being a level 2/6, considered pretty easy in terms of difficulty, I actually find it quite challenging. At first inspection, the holes at the extremities seem identical, but they can't be, because you need to separate the pieces through these holes. You'll find that each piece has a hole slightly larger in diameter than the others, but the trick is combining the only two larger holes with each other at the same time to solve it. Not so easy...

Surprisingly, I truly enjoyed solving this, as I was expecting a very easy challenge. It's not as frustrating as the higher difficulty Cast Puzzles, but you'll find it just as satisfying. It's one of those puzzles that even after you solve it, you can still do it multiple times, because it's not that easy to memorize the correct path. Just fidgeting with it is quite enjoyable.

Closing Comments:

The Cast Snow is a really delightful puzzle. One of my favorites in recent years. Great design, nice challenge, smooth movement, very well built, just as we've come to expect from Hanayama. Highly recommended.

Availability: The Cast Snow is available at PuzzleMaster for $15.99 CAD. Also, check out many other interesting puzzle in the Cast family.