Hello! My name is Tyler and I am your Puzzle Master insider.
Welcome to my second video where today I will be giving you an inside look at the puzzle,
Fantastic Five.
Fantastic Five 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 #2 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, Handcuffs, Iron Maiden, A puzzle, Lion's Lair,
The Rack, Scorpion, Wedding Vows, Cowboy's Hobble and today's feature,
Fantastic Five.
Fantastic Five is a wire puzzle made from
3 mm or 1/8-inch thick nickel-plated wire
with three nickel-plated rings
and two wooden purple painted beads.
Unlike the Cowboy's Hobble from video #1 which had a very simple looking design,
the Fantastic Five is a complex-looking pentagon shape
that visually lives up to its difficulty rating of 9 on Puzzle Master's difficulty rating scale
which runs from 5 to 10.
As I said in video #1,
this line of wire puzzles is now manufactured in China,
but used to made here in Canada.
There are a few distinct differences between the Fantastic Five manufactured in Canada on the left
and the newer ones manufactured in China on the right.
First, the Canadian made version does not have plating on these 2 wire pieces with wood beads on them
because in order to get the bead in place, they had to bend the loops
on the end of the piece after the bead was on.
If they were already plated, the process of bending these two loops
would crack the plating.
Thus, the bare wire on these two pieces when manufactured in Canada.
The real question is how do the Chinese manufacturers do it?
Second, the beads are a slightly different shade of purple on each puzzle.
Third, the Canadian version has a thicker ring that needs to be removed.
The Chinese version has a ring the same thickness as the other two.
If you want to find more information on the Fantastic Five or a number of different
puzzles with the same basic solving mechanism, take a look at page 102
of Jerry Slocum and Jack Botermans' The Book of Ingenious and Diabolical Puzzles.
Here, you will find a history of this and other puzzles.
The objective of Fantastic Five is to take the larger of the three nickel-plated rings off.
The solution itself is very similar to that of another puzzle I will be doing in the
original 10 series called the Scorpion.
I won't show you that solution today, but
keep an eye out for it in the next video
Next, I will show you the solution.
If you aren't interested in seeing this, then please stop the video here.
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Here is the starting position for the Fantastic Five.
You'll notice it makes a pentagon shape.
The bottom the Pentagon is made up by three pieces joined by these two joints.
The top of the Pentagon is made by these two pieces joined here at this joint.
You'll notice the ring is positioned over here on this straight piece.
Now, it can go on the outside of that to there.
That is an incorrect starting position. We want to start it inside the pentagon shape
and make sure that it's sitting on that single piece there, the straight piece there.
The first move you want to do is you want to take this loop
and you want to put these two straight pieces up through that loop
getting you to here.
Now what you can do is you can put this ring
and straight piece down through the narrow side of the loop
which is incorrect and later will lead you to
an unsolvable point of the puzzle.
Instead, you want to take these straight pieces
put them over to the narrow side of that loop and put the ring
through the wide side of the loop.
Follow it through with the straight piece getting you to that point.
Next, you want to grab the ring, bring it up and around over those two straight pieces
and again over the end of the loop.
Next, you want to take the ring, put it up through the loop piece there
and over those two straight pieces
taking the ring off.
If you want to get the frame back to the original configuration,
you want to take the straight piece in the ring
through that loop and again both straight pieces through that loop once more
getting it back to that Pentagon shape.
Now to put the ring back on,
you'll want to do everything in reverse which means you'll take that ring
or that loop piece again, put the straight pieces up through that loop,
bring them over to the narrow end, put that ring through the wide end of the loop,
follow it through with the straight piece, getting you there.
Next, you want to grab the ring, put it over the top of those two straight pieces
and down through the wide side of the loop
getting you to the ring just attached to those two straight pieces.
Next, you want to bring the ring up over those loop
and over those straight pieces onto the original starting position of that ring
and again, you'll want to bring that ring in a straight piece
up through that loop
and then again, both straight pieces down through that loop piece and back to the starting position.
Fantastic Five is available at puzzlemaster.ca.
That wraps up video 2 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.