The Cast Helix, designed by Akio Yamamoto and released in December 2009, is another devilishly difficult puzzle by Hanayama.

Regarding the Helix difficulty, it's among the harder ones. Hanayama gives it a 5 out of 6 and Puzzlemaster, a 9 out 10 (gruelling). This one took me weeks to figure out, after constantly doing the same thing. What makes it very difficult is the way to solve it, which is very different from the natural movement of the puzzle around the star. A good thing is that it's very easy to put it back together, so you won't have the puzzle in the solved state lying around for long.

This is one frustrating puzzle, and very deceptive... If you like enigmatic puzzles, go for it. The way it's designed, it doesn't show how difficult it is, even after you've been playing with it for a while. It always makes you feel that you're close to the solution, but the truth is, you may be very far from it...

The Cast Helix is available at PuzzleMaster for CAD $12.95.

This is the Cast O'Gear invented by Oskar van Deventer, who has contributed with many other designs to the Cast Series, and it was released by Hanayama in October 2002. It was first introduced in 2001 at the 21st IPP Design Competition, at the time simply called, Sunflower. It can be categorized as a Sequential or Route-Finding puzzle.

It is one of the largest puzzles in the Cast collection, measuring around 9cm in height and also, one of the most interesting designs. Other large puzzles available include the Cast L'œuf and the Cast Duet, which curiously were also invented by Oskar himself.

You're presented with a gear containing five teeth, locked in a cube with six holes. Your goal is to find the correct hole path to remove the gear. Now, sequential puzzles can be considered boring, for taking too much time or because you can often find yourself in the same place you started. However, the design of the Cast O'Gear is cleverly done to intrigue you and encourages you to keep going. 

Tips for the solution:

When you're trying to solve it, take a bit of time to carefully inspect it and pay special attention to the slight details and differences in the puzzle. Note that each tooth at the right and left of the main one (the tooth with the hole) has a difference in thickness. Now, take a look at the cube face that's opposite of where you started (the one with two extra holes at the edges), and you'll see that it's different from the ones at the four sides of the cube, which by the way, are all identical. That's the face you need to focus and the gear teeth that have the difference in thickness, as one of them is going to allow you to remove the gear. All that you need now, is find a way to pass the right tooth in the bottom cube's face. If you're still struggling after this, take a look at the solution here.

The Cast O'Gear is not that difficult, if you don't think about the boring part of finding the right sequence of movements... The goal is intuitive and you know what you're supposed to do, you just need time to get there eventually. Hanayama rates the puzzle at 3 out of 6 and PuzzleMaster 7 out of 10, so it's just around the middle of the scale. Returning the gear to its original position is way easier than removing it, contrary to most other Cast puzzles, mainly because you're more familiar with the puzzle's features and particularities.

Oskar's Cast O'Gear is available at PuzzleMaster for CAD $12.95.

Links:

Hanayama's Factory Visit (Many thanks to Roxanne Wong for sharing these pictures)

The Tetraxis puzzle is an invention by John and Jane Kostick. It's a magnetic puzzle designed to stimulate the brain's ability to recognize symmetry and color combinations.

There are twelve sticks shaped like a triangular prism, divided in four colors (yellow, green, blue, red). Each piece has four magnets, two in the parallelogram base and one in each of the prism's other two faces. Building shapes is easy and intuitive, as the sticks only connect in a way that feels just right.

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To build the puzzle in its original shape, you can start by joining two pieces together. Add a third stick to form a pinwheel. Now build three other ones and you're left with four identical pinwheels. It won't be much harder to join them one by one until you have the final shape built. After that, just make sure if the color combinations are right, as you might need to swap a couple of sticks to get the desired combination. Tip: try to build each pinwheel with three sticks of the same color. You'll end up with another cool color combination.

The Tetraxis comes boxed in its most recognizable shape already built. The color combination that you'll see right away is three sticks of the same color, pointing at the same direction in a triangular orientation. However, there are other several combinations that you can try yourself. For example: try to have only one of the three colors pointing at a particular direction for the entire original shape (image below). For other challenges, visit the Tetraxis'  image page (Scroll down).

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You can also use the sticks to assemble the puzzle in different ways other than a closed shape. Some can be magnetically linked (right image below), while others you can use a mixture of magnetically linked and just touching each other, like the four pinwheels below at the left. The pinwheels are linked together by the magnets, but they're only touching each other in a plain surface.

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You can also see in the Tetraxis' image page, other shapes you can build with more than one puzzle. There are countless possibilities, only limited by your own creativity and imagination.

Closing Comments:

If you're into the type of puzzles that can yield the best of your creativity, then the Tetraxis is a recommended toy for you. Whether you'll get one or more puzzles, you can be sure to have many hours of plain fun with the building possibilities that the Tetraxis can offer. It's also great to have one in the workplace to refresh your creativity.

The creators also do exquisite hand-crafted artwork, with similar structures and a few more complex shapes. If you'd like to know more about these products, you can go to the creators website and take a look at the great collection available. You can contact the designers if you want to buy anything from the site... Here's a video that shows one of these fine sculptures.

Also available from the MoMath website.

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The Lunatic Lock is designed by Gary Foshee and this particular edition is produced by PuzzleMaster.

There's a wide range of trick locks in the market today, some are cheaper and others can be quite expensive, like this one. The Lunatic Lock falls into the category of the cheaper ones, but don't be fooled, you'll get more than you paid for, as the puzzle can be extremely frustrating to open. It's made of aluminum, which is cheaper to produce, but doesn't look very good as a finish, because it has these brushed strokes and it looks like it's unpolished. I know that if it were made of another material, it would be more expensive, though...

Now, for the challenge itself, which is what matters, you won't be disappointed. When you think of a lock and the way that they are opened, you may think immediately of a key. However, these trick locks are very different. They require a completely different approach for opening them. The only "key" provided in this specific lock is a small pin that looks like a screw. If you shake the puzzle close to your ear, you'll be able to hear something inside. Try to move the pin up and down while rotating the lock and eventually you'll lock the pin in the middle position. Just continue to do this until you finally get the puzzle unlocked. The Lunatic Lock is rated by PuzzleMaster as an 8 out of 10, which is "Demanding", so you'll have plenty of entertaining time, unless you get frustrated before... If you find yourself "locked" without a clue, you can download the solution here.

Curios Cross is a Put-Together or Interlocking puzzle made by manufacturer Magnif. 

Made of clear plastic, to better see the intersecting planes, your goal is to build a cross from only three pieces, two of them identical. The puzzle comes in its box unsolved so there's no way to cheat. Also, I think if it were already assembled, it could very easily be broken in the disassembling process, due to the nature of the plastic used. This way you have to think how to correctly place each piece to achieve the desired shape.

I'm not going to explain a step by step solution, but I can give you a few hints to better tackle the challenge. Given that you have three pieces to work with, and two of them are exactly the same, that leaves a single piece that's obviously the main one and the first of the sequence to build the cross. Next, you just have to find a correct  order to put the other two pieces, keeping in mind that only when the three pieces are partially connected, you can slide them into place.

Once you've successfully built your cross, it's awfully hard to disassemble it, but if you do it right after, it's easily accomplished, because you may still remember the order that the pieces were placed. You don't need to worry about that though, because once the cross is built, it's a beautiful decorating item for any desk, unless you want to challenge any of your friends.

Overall, the Curious Cross is a nice challenging puzzle. The fact that it's made of clear plastic with a bit of tint, makes it visually much more appealing, although it's very easy to break if you're not careful. 

There's an I.Q. rating level on the back of the package based on the time it took you to solve the puzzle:

10 Minutes - Genius

30 Minutes - Brilliant

60 Minutes - Above Average

Can you do it under 10 minutes? My time was approximately 45 minutes, so no Genius, unfortunately... 

You can check PuzzleMaster's website for more Magnif and other related puzzles.

This is the Hanayama's Cast Amour, released almost 20 years ago, back in 1992 and designed by Akio Yamamoto. Back then, there wasn't so many Cast Puzzles being released like today, and between 1983, the year of the first ones and 1992, only about 9 puzzles were built, which is an average of one puzzle per year. Now you can see on average, four Cast Puzzles per year.

The difficulty is rated at 5 (out of 6) by Hanayama and 9 (out of 10) by PuzzleMaster, so it's supposed to be a very tough puzzle. I only agree in part with the ratings, because it's a two challenge puzzle, meaning that after you remove the loops, you have to place them in the same starting positions. Solving the first part isn't that hard, as your only concern is to just separate the loops from the plate, without acknowledging the steps that you're making to achieve this task. When you're trying to return the loops to their positions it's way more difficult to remember the exact way used in the process, so in this situation, I agree with a difficulty of 5 out 6. I would say that the difficulty for the first challenge could be 4, maybe a 3 depending on your puzzle solving skills. To get a solution, go here.

The originality behind the concept of the Cast Amour is amazing, only possible by the genius mind of Akio Yamamoto, also designer of other Cast Puzzles like the Cast Vortex, Cast Seahorse and Cast Claw to name a few. It's proof that when you have a concept for a puzzle, it doesn't only matter its functionality, but also how you present it to the general public in order to captivate their interest in an otherwise ordinary idea.

The Cast Amour can be purchased from the PuzzleMaster store at CAD $12.95.

The Cast Starfish, released in 2008, belongs to the Hanayama's Marine Series, a small collection of six Cast Puzzles that have the sea and ocean as the main theme.

This is my favorite from the Marine Series, and one of the most beautiful in the Cast collection. It may not be the most difficult one, but it's design makes up for the lack of challenge. The goal is similar to some of the others in the series, which is to separate a couple of mackerels joined in a loop from the starfish. The design choice of having the two fish in a different color, in this case golden, adds a lovely touch of contrast to the silver starfish: simple, but effective.

As usual, there's two level ratings, one from Hanayama (2 out of 6) and the other from PuzzleMaster (6 out 10). Since the level rating from PuzzleMaster goes from 5 to 10, they're spot on with the difficulty. The puzzle is relatively easy to solve in approximately 10 minutes or less, but not that easy, as it makes you think what route to take to separate the fish from the star. On the back of the star, there's small grooves that help to move the mackerels around. By rotating them and move through those grooves, you'll eventually free the fish. I did it by "accident", kind of... I was maneuvering the loop like stated above, and just like that, they were free... Sort of like an "a-ha moment". For a graphical solution, click here.

In my collection, I only have three of the six in the Marine Series, the other two being the Cast Claw and the Cast Seahorse, but I also recommend the other three if you're one of those that likes to collect this type of puzzles. The other three are the Cast Seabream, the Cast Shark and the Cast Reef.

All of these puzzles above are available at the PuzzleMaster website. Have fun collecting them and most of all, solving them.

The Mushroom Mountain by Hanayama is a Slide Puzzle with an added difficulty.

The area of the puzzle is a 3x5 rectangle with mushrooms on each sliding piece. Each piece has a different number and orientation, except for the middle four pieces, which have two for both left and right directions. When you first unpack the puzzle, you see that every piece is pointing outwards from the center, and the goal is to get all of them pointing into the opposite direction, which is to point to the middle of the board.

Now, the puzzle could be much simpler if it were possible to just slide every piece to wherever you wish, but that's not the case. Some of the mushrooms will block each other's movements, because, as you can see from the pictures, they go outside the boarders of their own sliding piece and can sometimes overlap with another mushroom that's on its way. This will make many of the otherwise simple moves an impossibility, so you'll have to find an alternative route to get a specific piece to the desired place. Such movements can be sometimes, quite a pain to overcome, because as you work your way around those pieces already in the right place, you'll often find yourself forced to move them of their correct place, just to move another piece that can only pass through that path.

The difficulty is rated by PuzzleMaster as a level 7 out of 10, although I found it to be more frustrating than difficult. If you're a slide puzzle wiz, you'll solve it eventually, but the bottom line is that it's not so straightforward as you'd expect a slide puzzle to be. There's many methods and techniques to solve a puzzle like this: mine was to start first with the bottom line, then get the four pieces from the right middle line and upper line in their correct order, and finally use the remaining five pieces to work as a 3x2 puzzle.

The package of the puzzle comes entirely written in Japanese along with its instructions, but you can figure out what you're supposed to do by the pictures, and there's also a diagram at the bottom of the puzzle with the numbers in their correct order for both objectives.

I liked the Mushroom Mountain puzzle. It's a little challenging and frustrating at times, but not so much that'll keep you from solving it. It's nice to see other original ideas used in this classic and simple concept, for a change. Highly Recommended.

The Mushroom Mountain can be ordered from the PuzzleMaster website for CAD $11.99.

Note: There's another version of this puzzle, also available at PuzzleMaster, called "Bamboo Shoot Village", which has bullets instead of mushrooms.

The Cast Flag, an old design back from the 19th century and brought to Hanayama by NOB (Nobuyuki Yoshigahara) with this new updated version, which was released in 1994.

All in all, the Cast Flag is easy to pick up and solved in no time, but it feels good to play with. It's stress and frustration-free, although still provides a good amount of thinking, courtesy of the Hanayama minds. The good thing about the easier levels of the Cast Series is that they are easily understood by a wider audience, making them a great choice for parties, to entertain friends.

You can find the Cast Flag, along with the rest of the Cast Puzzle Collection at PuzzleMaster for CAD $12.95.

The Cast Key is one of the first three puzzles released by Hanayama, back in 1983. The other two were the Cast Star and Cast ABC. The Key puzzle originated in Britain in the late 19th century and has ever since been intriguing puzzle fans around the World. 

The design is stunning, as it resembles two old keys from a couple of centuries back, and they appear as if it were impossible to separate them, although a careful inspection of the keys reveals a few interesting characteristics that are "key" to solve the puzzle. Some of those characteristics are thiner passages on one of the keys, three to be exact, and they serve as a way to pass through the opening of the other key.

The puzzle is one of Hanayama's easiest, rated as 1 out of 6 and 5 out of 10 by PuzzleMaster. Its looks are certainly deceiving, but its goal is pretty straightforward, even for a non-puzzler. This makes fiddling with the puzzle very intuitive and you won't need no more than five minutes to unlock it. There's no need to explain step by step the solution, but if you feel "locked", you can always download a solution at PuzzleMaster.

Video: Click here to see a video solution of the Cast Key.

Closing Comments:

Always regarded as a symbol of curiosity and mystery, the keys have the power to lock the deepest of secrets. It's this knowledge that kept people all these years fascinated by keys and by what they represent. For this, the Cast Key is one of my favorites from the Cast Series, and though they're one of the easiest from Hanayama, it doesn't mean that you won't enjoy solving it... I know I did. If you liked this one, then you will also love the Cast Key II, a new version released in 2006 and designed by Otake & Wong.

The Cast Key is available at PuzzleMaster for CAD $12.95, as well as the others from the Cast Series.

Hanayama's Factory Visit (Many thanks to Roxanne Wong for sharing these pictures)

The Secrets of the Heart is a puzzle from Bits and Pieces, designed by Doug Engel and sold by PuzzleMaster.

The puzzle is made by five nickel plates in the shape of a heart and a gold ring. It's quite heavy for its size, but expectable due to the number of metal plates used in the puzzle. At first glance it may look like the goal is to remove the ring, but you actually need to unlock a sliding arm from one side of a puzzle. When you do this, you'll discover that inside is a small compartment to enclose something special.

As far as difficulty goes, the Secrets of the Heart is a fairly easy puzzle to solve. It's rated by PuzzleMaster as 5 out of 10, so the easiest you can get at PuzzleMaster. To open it, you'll just need a couple of minutes to inspect the puzzle: the ring functions as a locking system and you just need to rotate it from one side to the other, in order to allow the arm to slide off the puzzle. Returning the arm to its position is even easier to do, because you already know the secret to open it, so you just need to maneuver the ring appropriately to close the heart again.

As an experienced puzzler, you won't find the Secrets of the Heart remotely challenging, but it's definitely a must for a collector, especially if you're into metal puzzles. It's very different from what you're used to see in puzzles and on top of that, a simple and beautiful design.

The Secrets of the Heart is available at PuzzleMaster for CAD $14.99.

The Star of David is yet another puzzle produced entirely and sold exclusively at PuzzleMaster. For many more PuzzleMaster's wooden puzzles, check the following list.

The name of the puzzle comes from the resemblance, in shape, to the Jewish symbol, known in Hebrew as the "Shield of David", which is a hexagram composed by two equilateral triangles.

The design is cleverly done with the use of two different wood colors, enhancing the beautiful contrast seen in the middle of both sides. This easy technique of using two or more colors of wood can maximize the elegance of an otherwise simplistic design.

The object of the puzzle is to separate all of the six interlocking pieces, but it's not actually as easy as it looks. PuzzleMaster has its level of difficulty rated as an 8 out of 10, so it does need some thinking in order to successfully solve it. 

If you're familiar with the technique known as "coordinated motions", then you're half way there... This solving method requires a simultaneous manipulation of the puzzle's pieces instead of a simple sequence of movements. You do need a careful maneuvering of the puzzle, because its pieces are fragile and easily breakable, especially the internal parts, which are cut in a way that may come apart with excessive force. Spoiler alert: The secret in this puzzle is to separate the puzzle in two parts of three pieces each, and then separate the remaining ones, one by one.

One thing I've noticed after solving the puzzle was that, the parts where the pieces fit into one another had spots of the opposite color marked on them. I suppose this was due to the fact that the colored pieces weren't completely dry when the puzzle was assembled. A proof of that is that I was unable to separate the final two pieces, because they were actually glued together, and with the fear of breaking them, I just photographed the pieces like this and assembled them back together.

Despite the fact of the undried paint, it doesn't throw you off on the solving experience and the challenge it provides. If you don't have a clue about the solution, you may require several tries before being able to solve it. It does look great on a desk or shelf, for its attractive design though...

The Star of David is available only at PuzzleMaster for CAD $11.99.

The puzzle looks very simple, contrary to many other wire puzzles, that look scary and complex right from the start. Nevertheless, its looks are deceiving, as it can prove to be frustratingly difficult to solve. The goal is also very simple: you try to remove the orange string from the heart-shaped frame, without breaking or use too much force on the string or the frame itself. 

The description from the designer is very interesting and clever. According to him, you have something in your heart, may be a bad feeling, a sin or even a vice and your objective is to remove it from your heart. The name he had originally for the puzzle was Love Secret, but decided later to change it to Clear Heart, as in a heart free from bad things.

The level of difficulty in PuzzleMaster's scale is an 8 out of 10, and I think it fits perfectly with its complexity, as far as solving goes. I had several tries with more than 10 minutes each and I couldn't come close to a solution. I found myself trying the same approach each time, even though I struggled to look at it from another angle to see what could be done differently to reach a resolution. I even thought at times that the solution was behing some kind of a knot trick, like those you see in Marine Knots. Finally, in my last attempt, which by the way was just over a minute, I freed the string from the heart with ease. I don't know what changed, but I guess it had something to do with the fact that I haven't touched it in more than a week, and when I returned to it for another session with a fresh mind, I had it solved in no time. Do you want to know the trick? - If no, don't look at the picture below and don't read the rest of this paragraph: the key is to move the string to the middle of the heart (around the two parallel vertical wires) and then stretch it to one of the ends of the horizontal oval shape in the middle. Now just pass it around the rest of the oval and you should see it pop right out of the heart. Make the same thing, but backwards to return the string to its original position.

The Panic Attack is a perfect puzzle, even for those who are not crazy about wire puzzles, like me. It has a simple design, easy to comprehend and has a great level of difficulty to keep you guessing about the solution for quite a while. If you find the solution for yourself, you'll see it has that rewarding feeling and the surprise factor.

You can find the Panic Attack at PuzzleMaster for CAD $9.95

This is the Cast Quartet, a design made by Mineyuki Uyematsu for Hanayama and released in September 2007. 

 

The Chain Gang, a Wire Puzzle produced by PuzzleMaster, which has three versions: the wire version was designed by Dick Hess, the rope version by Markus Goetz and the version here for review was adapted by Allan Stein.

The puzzle looks complicated just by looking at it. No wonder, it's a level 9 out of 10...

You need to free the golden oval ring from the wire and ring tangly, which proved to be an impossible task for me, at the time of writing.  The pieces can be divided into four categories. There's two small wires and two long ones, three silver rings (one smaller than the other two) and finally the bigger golden ring. 

Wire puzzles aren't usually my forte when it comes to solving. I've been trying it unsuccessfully for the past week and I think I didn't come even close to figure out its solution. You can move the oval ring freely along the silver wires, but the big golden ring keeps blocking your apparent exit, so the solution needs a bit (or a lot) of "thinking outside the box". As I was unable to find the solution in time for the review, I can't tell much more on how to solve it. If you need a solution though, that's going to be tough, because PuzzleMaster doesn't provide any in their website, although you can always try to contact them.

EDIT: If you still require a solution, you can now download one here.

If you're a Wire Puzzle fan, go for it, because it's among the harder ones you can find. And if you want this exact version, you can only find it in PuzzleMaster's website.

The puzzle is made of three spiral entangled pieces, all different from each other, and you have to disentangled them with a specific order.

Well, this is the most difficult puzzle from Hanayama that I've tried so far. As of now, I'm yet to completely disassemble the three pieces, having them with the ends still entangled. When you first look at the puzzle, the way that the pieces are entangled, resemble the Cast Coaster, which is also made with three parts. Disentangling the first part is not that hard: you just need to loosen the pieces one at a time until they all move freely (not that much), but still entangled. The problems start when you try to separate a piece from the trio, something I'm still struggling with. I see grooves on each piece, meaning that you need to combine or pass one of the ends of a piece to one of these grooves, although I can't seem to find an exact combination for the right groove with the right end-piece. 

Now, I could've just looked at the solution and write a completely different review, but stubborn as I am, I'm  going to keep trying until I solve it. I have been trying this puzzle for about two weeks now, a little bit each day, though the longest I've spent with a Cast Puzzle is over a month, with the Cast Elk.

The Vortex is rated by Hanayama as a 5 out of 6 level and a 9 out of 10 by PuzzleMaster, but unless I'm missing something, this has to be top difficulty in both scales, for the time it takes to separate the pieces and the level of complexity applied to the concept.

I really recommend this puzzle if you like a really tough mind boggling challenge. I think it's clear that it's not one of those puzzles you solve in minutes, so you'll have in hands something to entertain you for days, unless you lose your patience before that... If you do lose your patience, you can always try to solve it with the help of a solution sheet.

As of the time of writing this review, PuzzleMaster has the Cast Vortex sold out, but if you're really interested in buying one, check back their site often, because they restock frequently.