Hello, my name is Tyler, and I'm your Puzzle Master Insider
Today, I will be giving you an inside look at the puzzle: Handcuffs.
Handcuffs is one of the Original 10 Puzzles that Puzzle Master founder, Allan Stein, first produced in
his basement in 1991 during the inception of the company.
This is Video 4 in a series I will be calling The Original 10, where I will be
introducing you to the very first puzzles from Puzzle Master.
This includes the puzzles
Heart Breaker,
Iron Maiden,
A Puzzle,
Lion's Lair,
The Rack,
Wedding Vows
Cowboy's Hobble,
Fantastic Five,
Scorpion,
and today's feature, Handcuffs.
Handcuffs is a wire puzzle made from three millimeter or 1/8-inch thick,
nickel-plated steel wire with two nickel-plated rings and a large brass-plated ring.
The objective of Handcuffs is to remove the large brass-plated ring from the frame.
It is a Level 6 on Puzzle Master Difficulty Rating Scale, which runs from 5 to 10.
The design of Handcuffs is an ancient idea going back as far as 800 years
to the Sung dynasty in China, A.D. 960-1280
It was more recently popularized by farmers who use two horseshoes and a harness ring to make the puzzle.
There are a number of variations of Handcuffs
available on the Puzzle Master site
that include Cast Horse and Cast W-U, made by Hanayama,
Tridiculous and Captive Heart, made by Tucker Jones.
The Horseshoe Puzzle,
made by Puzzle Master,
as well as Hufeisen, and Hufeisen Draht by Jean Claude Constantin.
There are many more examples that use this basic solve principle.
For more detailed history of the Handcuffs, you can read pages 104 and 105 in
Jerry Slocum and Jack Boterman's "Book of Ingenious and Diabolical Puzzles"
or
page 99 in their book "Puzzles: Old and New".
As I've said in past videos, Puzzle Master used to manufacture their line
of wire puzzles in Canada.
But now, that is done in China.
There are however, some pretty significant design differences between the two.
First, the Chinese version has a brass-plated ring,
and the Canadian version has a nickel-plated ring.
Second, the Chinese version has larger rings
joining the two horseshoe shapes together than the Canadian one does.
This is important because it creates a lot more play in the puzzle
and makes it easier to solve, in the Chinese version.
The solution itself is pretty simple-looking and quick.
Giving someone the impression that it would be simple for them to do, after seeing the solution demonstrated.
This feature makes Handcuffs a great puzzle to use to get a free beer.
We have heard of people taking the Handcuffs puzzle to the bar, showing someone the solution,
and then offering that person a free drink if they can solve it.
Or if they can not solve it, buying a drink for the puzzle's owner.
Next, I will show you the solution.
If you aren't interested in seeing this, then please stop the video here.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Zero.
Like I said before, the first time you see the Handcuffs puzzle solved, it can look very easy to do.
First I'll do the fast version,
Second, I'll slow it down and we'll go through step-by-step.
Now, to slow it down.
What you want to do first is cross the ends of the two horseshoe shapes.
When I take that ring and put it up between
those two shapes, and down, getting you there and allowing you to take the ring off.
Now, that's the simple part.
This is where people get mixed up.
What they often try to do when putting it back on, even if they cross those two
is they put the ring on and you'll hear this a lot.
You know that people are solving-- trying to put it back on for the first time when you hear that ring fall.
Now again, what you want to do is you want to cross those two horseshoe shapes,
put the ring up between those two,
And here's where the challenge comes-- you want to take and
pull to the side and push the ring up between these two on opposite ends,
bringing you on to the puzzle.
And that's the solution, start to finish.
Handcuffs is available at PuzzleMaster.CA.
That wraps up Video 4 of 10 in The Original 10 Video Series.
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Thank you for watching and I hope you have a very puzzling week.