First you noticed the strange title, right? ("ze" instead of "the") and the name "chinnyhedron". Well, all the puzzles from Stephen Chin have a strange and pretty funny name. Maybe to remember them more easily?
A chinnyhedron is just a solid...or a strange geometrical solid made by Chinny (one of the several nicknames of the designer!) which goal is "just" to disassemble the puzzle. Easy? Not so!
The first difficulty is you have to put your fingers on the right pieces and there is no hints where you have to push/pull the pieces. So actually if you have 3 fingers pushing, maybe you're pushing 2 in the right direction but you're making the wrong move with the 3rd one, resulting in doing nothing :-)
So even if you have only 2 pieces to separate, well this is pretty challenging for only 2 pieces!!!
The puzzle is made even more difficult that the fit is pretty tight (too tight in my opinion, but maybe a bit less tight would make the puzzles disassemble by itself?), so you have to PUSH/PULL and not only push/pull, you get it?
Stephen Chin created other geometrical solids with the same goal but not the same number of pieces, hence several levels of difficulty for puzzles that looks the same!
I feel this is a pitty that the design does not release more of his puzzles and does not sell them. Sure it's not his job and more a hobby, but I am sure many people would like to enjoy his puzzles.
Stephen if you see that, make some more puzzles please!!! :-)
I think the problem is these puzzles are difficult to make accurately enough in wood and it takes a lot of time. Stephen has been sending me some, and I have converted a few to be 3D printed. Stay tuned, with his permission I may put some of these designs for sale in my Shapeways shop. Was this his exchange puzzle?
ReplyDeleteI agree though, they are very nice in wood.
Lucky you! When you want to part with them let me know ;-)
DeleteNot sure if this was his exchange puzzle...
Maybe it could be cool to make them in metal?