Welcome back to Puzzle Master's Puzzle Insider. I'm Greg from Puzzle Wanderer.
And today we have another episode full of the freshest news on the ever
expanding world of puzzles.
One of the most famous designers, Wil Strijbos, the designer of the Aluminum
Cross, Aluminum Cylinder, and the First Box has released a superb,
rare puzzle called Pachinko Box.
Pachinko Box is a huge sequential discovery puzzle made of aluminum and steel
that weighs more than 1400 grams.
It has a very surprising plunger on it.
I recall comments from previous Puzzle Insider videos asking for spoiler
for your views. So here are
my two cents about the Pachinko Box. Having solved this puzzle only recently,
the puzzle became an instant favorite of mine.
It holds a superb series of discoveries and never ceases to impress with
creative and unique mechanisms.
Some of the steps of this puzzle got me thinking for a very long time.
The thing with Wil, is that he only releases his puzzles every, around, one and a
half years or so. So to get one,
you either have to send him an email and ask to be subscribed to his email list
or wait for an occasional copy that might be available on Puzzle Master's website. On
auctions, this puzzle was being sold for $2000 and even more.
I hope that this rerelease stabilizes prices a bit, so more people can try out
this puzzle. Some of you may know about the Haubrich Puzzle Auction.
It's an auction website and was a good place to acquire rare and old puzzles,
especially for serious puzzle collectors.
After 46 auctions held,
the Haubrich puzzle auction website has closed. Various puzzles from renowned designers
exchange hands via the Haubrich auction website.
It was considered a place for very serious collectors to acquire puzzles that
are not available anywhere else.
There are still good websites for buying and selling puzzles in auctions, like
Puzzle Paradise, Cubicdissection Marketplace, Baxterweb auction website,
and sometimes even EBay. Speaking of which, every Christmas,
the Karakuri Creation Group organizes a special Christmas series of puzzles for their
club members, where each buyer can choose to receive a mystery puzzle from a
variety of designers.
Karakuri puzzles are very well crafted and retain their value very well.
So you will see lots of them sold in auctions. To celebrate the occasion,
I went through the list of 733 works on
their website and made a list of the five coolest looking ones.
I rated them only based on how they look and let's begin with number
one. Okay. First one is the Can by Akio Kamei.
This just looked so cool. Let's look at this. The woods look amazing.
The can looks real, but it's wooden. Really nice one. Second,
the Walk of the Lady Bug. It has a leaf,
a wooden leaf with a small red lady bug on it. And it's so cute.
So realistic and still it's made of wood, which is very cool.
That one was by Tatsuo Miyamoto. And let's move to the third box.
This is the Bar of Chocolate, which actually looks like a bar of chocolate,
but it's a puzzle box made of wood. So cool.
So interesting and made by Akio Kamei, the leader of the Karakuri Creation Group.
Next one is the Cannon Chest.
Now this is a big puzzle. Look at this.
It has so many drawers.
I think that you would rarely see this at someone's house.
Only the most serious puzzlers can own this thing.
It's huge: two meters wide and almost one meter deep
and one and a half meters high. This is insane.
It was made by Hiroshi Iwahara. And
let's move to the fifth box. This is
the Tempel.
This is a turtle with a very funny looking back, made by Yoh
Kakuda. And Yoh Kakuda is famous for making animal puzzle boxes.
It's just so amazing. I really would wanna see this in person someday.
That was my Five Coolest Karakuri puzzles that I saw on the website.
Let me know in the comments which
one is your favorite. Let's move to the new designer of the month.
I recently saw a very slick design on Chris Ramsey's YouTube channel,
the Hourglass. A brass puzzle, machined using the CNC technology.
The puzzle looked very professional, was very well received and reminded me
of the quality of Wil Strijbos and Felix Ure's metal puzzles,
which made the fact that this puzzle designer is a completely new one,
even more surprising. All this peaked my interest.
So I reached out to Garrett Mathias,
the creator of this puzzle, also known as the founder of Mojo Manufacturing,
his manufacturing company. Garrett's love of CNC machining began when he was in
school for mechanical engineering. When he got out of school,
he started saving up for his first CNC machine, which after that became several.
According to Garrett: 'I enjoyed the idea of creating my own product,
but I never knew what to make'. I started off making car parts,
but that didn't work out for him.
Then he started building random things for people online. But for Garrett,
this wasn't optimal as this required coming up with new processes rather than
optimizing current ones, which he'd rather do. Somewhere in 2020,
Garrett went to his first escape room. "Honestly, I thought it'd be stupid",
he said. As it turns out, I loved it.
Garrett then went online to look up more escape room videos and found Chris Ramsey's
channel, which he binge watched. These puzzles he was solving, just blew my mind.
I saw the community behind it and was hooked.
That's when he took the first step and bought some
Hanayama cast puzzles to try and solve himself. Later on,
he's tried his luck with his own designs. Before making the Hourglass,
he designed two different other puzzles, which didn't hold up to his standards.
These two puzzles are the Jimmie puzzle and the Ojom, both having sleek and smooth
CNC looks. It turns out that the Hourglass was an experience for Garrett to see if
he can set his foot to the world of puzzles. As it looks now,
he intends to design and produce more of them in the future.
Puzzle Master is having a Kickstarter of three brand new puzzles.
The Total Eclipse and Quintus Extreme by Oskar van Deventer and The Skull by Jerry
Loo. The link to the Kickstarter is in the description of this video.
There will be a Puzzle Insider episode coming up,
dedicated to Oskar van Deventer and Jerry Loo. So if what means that,
make sure you are subscribed to this channel and hit the notification button below this video.
On the hunt for this month's creator of the month,
I was looking for someone different and exciting and found Puzz Lego,
a young guy from Australia who builds and designs Lego puzzles. In a recent
video, he made a fully functional Rubik's Cube entirely out of Lego,
where he improves an existing Lego Rubik's Cube design,
while explaining his own design decisions.
If you like Lego and you like puzzles,
this is a cool channel for you to check out.
He also makes various puzzle boxes from Lego,
but my favorites has been videos where he actually designs Lego puzzles on the
go. I find it very cool, new and fun.
It's also a good way to learn to make them yourself,
if designing Lego puzzles is something that interests you. Puzz Lego has been
around for two years.
He started off as a music only channel without any speaking without any face.
Then he revealed his voice and just recently, he also revealed his face. Well,
the progress of a YouTuber. And that's it for today's Puzzle Insider
video. If you wanna delve deeper into the articles,
links will be in the video description.
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Like if you enjoy today's video and we'll see you guys next time.