I was contacted a few months ago by Leon Stein, one of the co-owners of
PuzzleMaster, to ask whether I would be interested in looking at their upcoming Kickstarter
campaign puzzles and would I show them off to the world? Well, I have some
experience of the
PuzzleMaster Kickstarter puzzles
and have heartily recommended them each time. Of course, I agreed. I would be
foolish to pass up the new creations and I thought that you, my readers, would
want to see my opinion. The
Kickstarter is now up and running
with a close date of 31st December so if any of these interest you then get over
there and place an order. They have reached the minimum to actually go ahead and
so this will definitely be happening, with the aim of shipping puzzles to
backers in June/July 2026.
This time there are 3 main puzzles in the campaign plus there are 3 add-on
puzzles (ones already on the PuzzleMaster store) which can be added to your
pledge to get a bit of a discount.
The first one I tried was the Crazy Lock. It's a burr in the shape of a lock
- I can't resist burrs, I have a passing fondness for locks and a burr lock
is irresistible to me - in fact I have quite a lot of them now. I wasn't
disappointed and neither will you be - it is great.
The box states that it is level 8 on the PM 5 to 10 scale and I actually
think it should be rated a bit higher at 9. I significantly struggled to
dismantle it. The design was made by the late Christoph Lohe and was
originally published as Burlock E.
I have actually
solved Burrlock E many many years ago
when I bought it from Eric Fuller (he also adored Christoph's designs and
always produced great challenges). Way back then I described it as a serious
challenge for mere mortal puzzlers like me and it is still that. With a
level of 26.2.3.2.2, this has a really significant difficulty to it. It took
me about a week to dismantle it and then I was unable to assemble again
without Burrtools. Creating the file was a bit of a challenge but at least I
was finally able to put it back together again. For those of you who are
burr assembly experts, there is an alternative assembly
(level 26.3.3.2.2 which has the key hosizontally in the lock at the
end. Double the challenge for one puzzle.
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Burrlock E from Cubic Dissection (2017)
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Fortress of Shadows by Christoph Lohe
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The next puzzle for me to play with was the Fortress of Shadows burr
(also by Christoph) it is quite diminutive (1.75 x 1.25 x 1.25") but
beautifully made with gold coloured burr pieces trapped inside a black
anodised castle with 4 turrets. These turrets very much limited the movements
of the pieces. I spent another 2 weeks working on this one. You can see
everything that is going on inside but it is still a hugely difficult
challenge with level 30.1.2 as the pieces move back and forth progressively
making space to allow the first piece out. It looked familiar to me but I
couldn't place it properly. I did go back and check my photo database and
realised that Pelikan had produced a different version of the puzzle 5 years
ago (called Castle) which I had
reviewed here - that one had not been terribly difficult but this version is a
significant advance in difficulty.
I would be very impressed by anyone who could assemble it from scratch but I
definitely needed a Burrtools file and this was a fun one to make and follow
in reverse to fully assembled.
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The original Castle by Christoph - similar but different to the Fortress
of Shadows
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This rather beautiful 4 piece anodised burr looked very familiar to me and, as
with all the other puzzles in my collection, I had a vague memory of owning it
and solving it once but the process was a mystery to me. Looking back I
realised that the original version was a puzzle I had actually solved twice.
Chiasma was a design by the amazing Yavuz Demirrhan that PuzzleMaster had made
before in a very limited run that
I had reviewed
back in 2020 and had compared the metal version with the original wooden one
from Pelikan. In fact the handmade metal version is still available on the
PuzzleMaster site
but is not cheap. The newer one will be mass produced for a fraction of that
cost.
I recalled that this one had been incredibly difficult. There are 4 identical
board burrs that gradually extend apart and then sequentially line up the exit
points to allow removal of pieces. I found it very confusing to work on and
this is not made easier by the need to prevent the pieces rotating. I don't
think there are any rotational shortcuts but it needs you to keep the pieces
aligned to move them around safely. It's quite fun to explore but I would
suggest that you use a back and forth approach to make sure that you know what
you have done as it's easy to get lost. At one point I had the pieces quite
extended apart from each other and in a dead end and struggled to return to
the beginning. The rather low solution level of 16.4.6 would sort of imply
that it shouldn't be too hard but don't be fooled - it is a huge challenge to
move around, control the pieces and keep track. The solution is really not
obvious.
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Chiasma - Pelikan version
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I will return next week with a review of the add-on puzzles from the
Kickstarter campaign - this is definitely well worth inverting in. They are great challenges, beautifully made and an amazing price.
The first one I tried was the Crazy Lock. It's a burr in the shape of a lock
- I can't resist burrs, I have a passing fondness for locks and a burr lock
is irresistible to me - in fact I have quite a lot of them now. I wasn't
disappointed and neither will you be - it is great.
