(smooth synthwave music)
(chilled bass music)
- Yo what's up guys and welcome back.
Hope you guys had a good week,
today's Saturday so we are giving you a bonus video.
I'm trying to post everyday, obviously I've been
missing a few days, but you know what I'm having fun.
Working alone, and you know without my team
and everything else has been kind of refreshing,
kind of brings me back to when I used to upload by myself
and film everything by myself, so it has been fun.
I have not been overworking myself, for the sake of content,
I make videos when I feel like making videos
and that's, it's a lot of fun.
By the way, according to my statistics it seems like
half of you who watching this right now are not subscribed.
You wanna support a creator, easy way to do that,
you don't have to send me money, all you have to do is
like this video and subscribe.
That being said, today we are looking at
three Japanese puzzles from the Karakuri Creation Group.
These are beautifully hand crafted puzzles,
some of my favorite solutions are in these puzzles
and we're gonna have a look at them.
The first one we're looking at is Gombo, Gombo the cat.
This is by Yoh Kakuda of the Karakuri Creation Group,
it is a beautifully crafted little toy cat,
that also has a secret compartment within the inside.
Secondly we are looking at the Karakuri Egg,
this is one of the staples of the Karakuri puzzles.
And lastly we are gonna look at the Fake Trick Box,
a very simple, yet deviously clever, solution.
Anyways guys, let's get into solving these right now.
(air whooshing) (humming)
(slurps drink)
(whistling) (box exploding)
Look at that.
Gombo, little Gombo here.
(soft music)
Gotta love the Karakuri puzzles, I mean, always so amazing,
never not amazing, and Gombo is made by Yoh Kakuda.
Here we have the solution as comes with every,
Karakuri puzzle.
(plastic rustles)
Let's open her up, I almost made a mess there, almost.
Oh my god look at this thing, aw.
(laughs softly)
It stands up, wait does it?
It sits, or it goes into this position.
(laughs)
Look at this face, this looks like something
out of Rick and Morty.
Oh Gombo.
You can even stand up,
like one of those weird cats on YouTube.
(laughs softly)
I feel like I'm Tiger King here, you know.
Alright so, I mean I don't think we should get
the timer out for this just because it's not gonna take
long to solve, I bet, so we just won't take the timer out,
I'll let you know if it does take me a long time,
I'll let you know how long it took me,
but I just don't wanna be pressured with the timer here.
So the first thing I feel is that the back legs are,
they're kinda spring loaded here.
Front legs are loose, the head itself is on a little swivel,
and the body looks like it comes apart,
the tail doesn't look like it moves at all.
Aw he's even got little paw prints,
look at those little paw prints, aw.
And his eyes by the way, those are inlaid,
those aren't painted on, those are wooden inlay right there.
It's very beautiful.
Reminds me of, these guys here, which are all kinda
part of the same family.
Marvelous little solutions and they look like toys.
I'm a big kid.
(sips drink)
Okay.
(wood slides smoothly)
And there you go.
(laughs)
So, again, this isn't a hard puzzle, we knew that going in.
(laughs softly)
Now let's see if we can, and it just clicks together,
so that's really clever, that's actually really clever.
So here, the feet you pull back
and it,
releases a mechanism you can see in there,
you can see in the back here, I dunno if you can see.
So back there, there is a little mechanism,
that is released, and allows that to slide out,
and that mechanism gets caught here.
So there you go,
that's it, that is the cat puzzle.
Just a clever little, a clever little hiding place
for anything that would fit in there.
Next I am going to show you the Karakuri Egg,
now this is probably one of my
favorite solutions to a puzzle box.
So this is an egg, handcrafted again, looks very beautiful,
and there is something rattling on the inside.
Well here is the solution,
probably my favorite type of solution because,
it has to do with what the puzzle is, so this is an egg,
what do you normally do with an egg?
When you cook it you, you break it, you crack it,
so you gotta smack down on this part here.
(wooden egg cracks)
And then it opens up and inside, you got a little chickadee,
a little chickadee chick.
And so the way that works is that you have these,
these rods here,
that get attracted to the magnets that are in here.
It isn't a difficult a solution, you just have to smack it
so that the rods, detach themselves from the magnets here,
and then you can go ahead and open it.
A clever solution, I mean the solution itself,
if it were any other puzzle, would be a normal solution,
and you'd be okay with that, there are puzzles such as,
so these ones also require smacking for them to open,
much like the egg however, the solution here is so fitting,
because it is an egg, I just thought that was really clever.
So anytime anyone can put a solution into a puzzle
that makes sense, kinda like this, I think it just
makes it that much more beautiful and collectable,
maybe just me.
That is the egg puzzle.
A very beautiful little egg indeed.
And lastly a puzzle I wanted to show you,
is the Fake Box, or the Trick Box by Karakuri.
So here we have some inlaid wood,
this by the way is what they're known for,
so if you're ever shopping Karakuri things,
they have all sort of products, boxes,
especially yosegi boxes, yosegi boxes are usually the ones
that have those steps that shift around,
and they have this similar pattern in there,
and those steps are hidden
throughout the inlay of the veneer here.
This one has a nice little design on the top,
which is really cool, and it's just a simple little box.
As you can see there's like,
the screws there holding the lid.
Alright so this box has a special way of opening it,
in the comments below, let me know what you think
the solution is and how to open it, I'll give you 10 seconds
or you can pause the video, I'll count to 10,
you write it down in the comments and let me know
and I will tell you if you're right,
in just about 10 seconds.
One,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
10.
So obviously, it doesn't open from here it's kinda locked,
some of you may say spinning it might work,
some of you say banging it may work,
but the solution is actually really simple,
and kind of tricky.
(wood smacking)
It opens from there, that's it.
So clever little disguise here because of the lip,
because it opens slightly here, and they've even added
little nails here to make it look like the hinge
was on this side, flattened out this side,
I mean, this is your perception of a box,
even that little notch, it opens from here,
and then you'd be on it, and you'd be surprised
how many people I give this to and they're just stuck on it
for, forever, like they're like, I don't know, they give up,
and then you just show them this,
because here you don't wanna force to hard,
it's a very strong magnet so you don't wanna force to hard
you feel like you're breaking it,
but you have to force just a little, just a little bit more
than you normally would, to get it to open.
So a super clever solution, a nice little box,
the Fake Trick Box by Karakuri.
Very similar to this trick box, even similar in size,
this one however doesn't open from here,
and believe me I tried, it also has the same little
screw there, and there is something on the inside,
and this one you just have to pull and open,
and then the key is on the inside.
So you have four very strong magnets, holding this part,
so normally, you know you're looking at the lock,
you're looking at this, you're trying to, and no,
it's just a matter of, opening it right there.
So I like these simple solution boxes because they
represent exactly what a puzzle box should be,
it's just out of the ordinary,
it does not open like it normally should.
I hope you enjoyed these puzzles.
(Air whooshing)
Well hot dang.
So that is it, those are three very cool Japanese puzzles
that I wanted to share with you guys today,
they're all very small puzzles with simple solutions,
so I didn't wanna make an entire video on one,
I thought we'd put three in the one and there you go so.
Let me know in the comments which of these three
was your favorite and we'll see you,
Monday, for another video.
Peace.
(upbeat music)