The Spider wire puzzle, also known as The Black Widow, is a perfect example of how a puzzle can look really intimidating, when in reality it's not that difficult.

The puzzle came from Sloyd in Finland and is manufactured from 3mm nickel plated wire. These puzzles have a smoother surface than the Tavern puzzles, for example, and are easier to manipulate. The goal is very simple to understand, and yet can be rather challenging if you're not an experienced puzzler. You just need to remove the string and bead from the wire frame, and afterwards return it to its starting position. You need to fully understand the solving process to be able to get the string back in the frame.

I'm not a big fan of wire puzzles, and the ones that have strings are even scarier. If you're not careful with these, they tend to form knots very quickly and disentangling them can be quite a nightmare. Fortunately, this puzzle was rated as a level 1/5, so I wasn't very intimidated by it. Oddly enough, I saw another version of this puzzle at PuzzleMaster, but with a difficulty level of 9/10. I was very confused by the extreme ratings, so I proceeded with caution as I was attempting to solve it.

To my surprise, I was able to solve it within 10 minutes, so the 1/5 rating is more accurate, although a 2/5 would be more fitting. This got me thinking why it would even be considered a 9/10 puzzle, but I actually understand why. To a beginner, it can be really challenging, because the solution involves a set of sequential steps that may not be as straightforward as you'd might think. There are four rings and to solve it you need to use all of them. This is highly dependent on how you look at this type of puzzles, but I don't consider it as easy as Sloyd's rating and definitely not as difficult as PuzzleMaster's. If you have this puzzle, let me know what'd you think of its difficulty.

Closing Comments:

The Spider was a pleasant surprise, because I usually fear string puzzles like the plague. It felt nice to solve it quickly for a change. Usually it takes me days to figure them out, when not weeks... I would definitely recommend this one for beginners, as it will provide a steeper challenge than the easier ones and prepare you for the tougher levels.

Availability: You can find The Spider wire puzzle at Sloyd.fi for just about €6.