I was at Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend. One of my favorite things was a collection of simple handmade puzzles sitting on a table under an umbrella, away from the action. A Russian woman named Tatiana Ginzburg told me that the puzzles were part of some kind of mind enlightenment group she started. When I got back home I looked her up and found her website, Global Enlightenment.
I picked up the puzzle shown in the photo here. It's two nails, bent in such a way that the nails are linked. I spent about 15 minutes trying to disentangle them. I bought it for $10 and as I was walking away from the table, accidentally separated them. It took 15 minutes of trial and error to get them linked again. I spent the rest of Maker Faire fiddling with them. Every hour or so I was able to get them apart, but I didn't know how I did it. Last night when I got back home, I stayed up late and finally figured it out. I can get them unlinked in a few seconds. I still haven't figured out how to easily get them back together. I'll work on it tonight. I love this thing.
I don't know where you can buy this exact kind of nail puzzle. This one looks similar, though.
I found this puzzle in a book I’ve had since I was a kid: Simply put, your task is to draw the figure at the right without crossing a line, without taking your pencil from the paper and without retracing a line. The book is called Merlin’s Puzzler. It’s out of print, but used copies […]
Tenyo is a Japanese magic trick company that’s been around since 1960. They are well known for making clever props. (My friend Richard Kaufman, who often writes for Boing Boing, wrote a 1,400-page two-volume set about the company, called Tenyoism) Here’s a Tenyo puzzle trick called The Perpetual Puzzle (It’s available on Amazon). You start […]
Mathematician, artist, and engineer George W. Hart of “Möbius strip bagel” fame has recently been playing with a laser cutter to create head-spinning warped-grid jigsaw puzzles. He came up with an algorithm to generate the initial patterns but “the real fun is step 2,” he says, “using a geometric transformation to warp things.”
If you’re looking to become a software engineer or it’s an idea you’ve tossed around half-seriously, there may be no better time than now to take the leap. It’s one of the fastest-growing, most in-demand roles already. And in the midst of the pandemic, between the extra hours you likely have in your day, and […]
Whether you’re looking to create perfect portraits or amazing artwork, if your medium is digital, you know you absolutely must have Photoshop to do your best making. So if you’ve been putting off really mastering the various techniques, tools, and styles it offers for your craft, now is a great time to make it happen. […]
There are few things more satisfying than the clickety-clack of an old keyboard. So old, in fact, that it’s really more of a typewriter sound and feel than that of a keyboard. But if you want to enjoy the benefits of both, check out this Rymek Retro Bluetooth 3.0 Mechanical Keyboard. Bringing you an impressive […]
