Hello, welcome to Puzzle Master.
Today we're going to be sharing you the solution for the Hanayama Hourglass
puzzle,
which means we're going to be showing you how you can separate those four pieces
and all 20 million moves that you need to do it,
and then how you can reverse all those 20 million moves and put it all back
together.
Now the Hourglass puzzle is a level of six out of six on Hanayama's own
difficulty scale and it is a level 10 out of 10 on our own Puzzle Master
difficulty scale. If you haven't got the Hourglass puzzle already,
then you should check out our website puzzlemaster.ca and without further ado,
let's get straight into the solution. Okay,
so here is the impossible Hourglass puzzle.
Before we get started, there's four bits. Two bits have a gap in it,
just in there on each side. I'm going to call those pieces,
the gap pieces and the other two pieces are solid the whole way around.
There's no gaps in those, so we're going to call those the solid pieces.
Now obviously the first move is really to separate all four pieces into
two, lots of two like this.
And we want the two gap pieces to be on top.
And you'll know if it's the gap pieces because you can either see a gap in there
or the pattern on the top here is a straight line.
And then a slight kick out on this piece here.
Once you've got it in this orientation,
you're going to slide the P the top gap piece on the right down, the piece on the
left, up.
And then what that allows you to do is to separate and to turn them, so that they
are facing the opposite way in this position.
And then if you keep them in alignment all you're going to do is pull into this
position here.
And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna swap these two pieces around.
So each end has,( of each of the four pieces) has a bit that looks like half a
hitch and a bit in here that is just solid.
There's no sort of horns, if you like on the top of it.
So to swap the pieces top to bottom,
we are going to take the top piece here and slide it to the right because we
want the bit without the horns on each side, going to the opposite side.
So we'll pull in: top pieces going right bottom pieces going left,
and we'll hit this point here where these two bits get in the way of each other.
We just need to rearrange the one on the left to go on the top one on the right
to go on the bottom,
And then we pull those middle pieces into this position here. And next is the
hardest move by a long, long way.
This one is hard, that you have you'll have to fiddle around.
You'll have to sort of move it into various positions. You'll probably fail five,
10 times before you actually do this move,
but you will be able to do it with a bit of perseverance.
So what are we going to do is we're going to turn it sideways into this position
and then what we trying to do is create a square.
Now all we're going to do is just wriggle
these pieces around until...Now
hopefully I'll do this on the first attempt,
but it's unlikely. We'll just wriggle these pieces around and you'll see that it's
slowly starting to separate into this square position here.
And when you've done that, our next aim is to turn this square into a chain. And now
to do that, we're going to take this top right hand corner.
We're going to flatten these two pieces here.
I'm going to go through each other and then this top piece is going to come
through and into this position just in here.
So you've got a gap piece with the horns facing up at the top. And you've got a
ready made triangle down here.
Now this next move is a move that's going to be repeated a good few times as we
go through, but we're going to take this piece on the left.
We're going to slide it up so it's in line with the gap on the gap piece.
And what we then can do is we have space to turn out into this position here
and then slide that piece out of the gap.
Now if we go into to a bird's eye view, we're gonna then
turn this piece around this corner and what that allows us to do then is to
take this piece on the right and twist it 180 degrees into here and we can then
slide that bit out of there and create that chain position that I talked
about here. Okay.
Now essentially what we need to do is repeat the movement that we've just done
three or four times to then separate these pieces here.
Now we're going to take the solid piece at one end.
At the other end there'll be a gap piece.
So we want the solid piece in here and we are going to move this piece to down
here essentially.
And to do that we're just going to drop that piece down through the middle here.
Okay. Making sure this piece down here is out of the way.
We're going to drop it down here and then it's going to fall out to the side
into this position. And from here we can then split
these four pieces or this one piece of four into two
lots of two, by doing that same movement.
We're going to take the piece on the left here.
We're going to slide it out to half way. We have the room to tilt it out to this
position and slide out of that gap.
We can then turn this piece around 180 degrees and slide it out from the bottom
there. And we've separated it into two lots of two.
And we then repeat that same movement two more times to separate these two
lots of two into four lots of one. Now first of all,
we need to swap this piece around cause we want the bit without the horns to be
the piece coming out of here. Because if we tried it this way around,
we don't have room to come out of that gap.
So what we do is we come up there and tilt out into this position and we've just
swapped it end on end. From here we can now do that move again.
We come up to half way, we turn it, we come out of the gap,
turn it 180 degrees and then we slide out from there and then we repeat that
movement again with this piece here. Now again,
the horns are on the wrong side, so we slide up,
we come through towards us. And now we've got the non-horn end bit, which allows
us the room to turn it out, to come out the gap, to turn around 180 degrees
and separate from there. And that is the very,
very challenging,
very long winded explanation of how you disassemble the Hourglass puzzle.
And to reassemble all four pieces into its original hourglass shape is almost
tougher or tougher in a different way to disassemble.
You already know all the moves that we're now going to have to reverse. However,
the order at which you do these first few moves and reassemble these four
pieces into its chain position, is very, very important.
There is only a one orientation that is correct and there is a lot of
orientations which are not correct.
So pay attention to these first few moves or you will run into trouble.
It will be impossible for you to solve, come the end or in the middle of
reassembling these four pieces.
So you'll notice on each piece that it has a front side,
which is got loads of ridges on it, and a backside
which is completely smooth.
We are going to take the back side of the solid piece with the big end without
the horns,
and we're then going to take the side that has the horns on and also the back
side of the gap piece.
And we're going to come up into this position here.
We're going to feed it through and we're going to turn around 180
degrees. We're going to come through there, down into this position.
And then the final move is we're going to come up into this position here,
flip it around, and we're going to leave those two on the side there,
while we do exactly that same move,
that same group of moves, with these other two pieces here. So again,
backside of the solid piece,
the end without the horns, backside of the gap piece, the end with the horns,
going up through the solid piece,
turning around 180 degrees,
coming back through and down.
And then we flip that piece around into this position here.
So we've got two groups of two which look exactly the same in here.
Now make sure that your four pieces look like this, before you move onto the
next move. Once you have got them in that position,
we're going to take a solid piece on here.
This time we're going to be using the front side with all the ridges on,
but we're going to be using this same back side and the horn side of the gap
piece in here.
That's going to come up and through just as it has done previously.
It's going to turn around 180 degrees.
We're going to come back through and down into this position.
And then to finish off that chain,
we need to come around with this solid piece and then up through.
Now again, the orientation is important, so use this position here.
Make sure that your chain looks exactly the same as this.
There's the front side of each piece in this orientation here.
Once you've got that, we're going to take the solid piece at one end.
We're going to take the gap piece of the other end, and
we're going to now join these two positions here to recreate that square.
But before we do, we're going to turn 180 degrees.
The gap piece first.
It can help if you go around that corner first while you do that twist and we
can then come up through and just reverse that 180 degree twist in
this position here. And you'll find while you're doing this that all these bits
sort of get in the way or get tangled up.
Just play around with them until you get it
in the right position. So we've come around, we've turned 180 degrees,
we've come back through that gap and we're going to drop down into this
position here. And then to recreate that square,
we're going to come down into this position here.
Here you'll find that this solid,
this gap piece gets in the way of this gap piece.
We're just gonna move that up and out of the way, so that that piece can come
down and then and then slide through and recreate that square position here. And
again, orientation wise,
make sure your Hourglass puzzle looks exactly like this one does at the minute,
before we go into the toughest move, which is turning that square back into,
it's like straight line. So what are we gonna do...
This probably won't happen first time. This will probably take me a few takes.
We're going to come down into this position.
We are going to attempt to recreate that straight line. And a lot of different
things have to line up for this to happen.
There's no point in me describing it all because I don't know everything that
has to go through everything.
And it would be about a 10 minute video just describing this one move.
It can help if you use a bird's eye view,
but I'm not confident I'm going to get it from that position.
So we're going to come back to that square position. I'm going to try again.
These two pieces, the two gap pieces will get in the way. I like it...
I prefer it with the top bit going behind the bottom bit,
but it shouldn't matter, really,
I don't think. So in terms of number five, we'll try again. Again,
those two bits get in each other's way quite a lot,
but there will be a position at which, from my experience, I can practice it all I
want, but there doesn't seem to be
a set position. So here we're quite close. So now we just need to get those
last few bits lined up.
Fingers crossed and
almost turn that square
Oh so close
Here we go. So we've got each bit through and we finally,
after about six attempts, come back down into this position here.
Now that move took me about five or six attempts.
If it takes you more, just keep going. I promise,
it's the hardest move of any Hanayama I've ever done.
It just takes time, that's all. I was going to say practice,
but the more I practiced, I think the worst I've seen to get, but keep trying.
Once you get into this position,
all you have to do is pull the two end pieces into this position here and then
we're nearly done. All we need to do is swap these two pieces over.
So we want the horns of those two solid pieces coming to that side direction
for instance. So the bottom piece here,
the bottom solid piece has the horns facing right.
That means that piece is going to come to the right and then vice versa with the
other piece. Now again, similar to when we were separating these pieces.
This position is going to happen, where these two pieces run into each other.
We just need to swap them. I'll get one on top of the other.
It doesn't matter which way round and then pull those middle pieces into this
position here. Now, all we have to do is marry these pieces up,
which again is fiddly just like every other move that we've done so far.
The easiest way that I've found that this does connect is by twisting these two,
the middle two pieces, around first. Nope, sorry,
the end two pieces around,
first into this position. And then bringing those two middle solid pieces around
with it. Just gives each piece a little bit more room to get back to this
position. So we're about 90 degrees off here.
If we turn back to a bird's eye view, we're going to redo that first move.
So the bit on the right,
we're going to slide down, the bit on the left we're going to slide up.
What that allows us to do is reconnect all four pieces,
click them back into place and we have finally
reassembled the Hourglass puzzle. So there you go.
That is in my opinion,
the solution to the hardest Hanayama puzzle of all the other Hanayama's that there
is. And if you are struggling with any of the moves,
particularly going from that straight line into the square,
or from the square back into the straight line, when you reassemble it,
don't panic, don't panic. It is a very, very hard move to do.
It does sort of take practice,
but it's more a trial and error and fiddle with it and flick it and till
everything goes where it should go. But with a bit of perseverance,
you will eventually solve it. Promise. And if you want to pick up more puzzles,
just like the Hourglass puzzle, then you should check out our website
puzzlemaster.ca where we have the largest variety of puzzles on the internet in the
world. And until next time I will see you later.