On the site Ars Technica, I found a little article on a symposium called “The Design of Mechanical Puzzles” at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference.  There is an interesting discussion of Burr type puzzles in the article and even a puzzle that you can try to solve.

I first cam across Derrick Schneider’s blog, An Obsession with Food, when he wrote about a puzzle of his that was appearing in Wine Enthusiast.  Derrick recently emailed me to let me know that he’ll be writing about some of the food themed puzzles in his mechanical puzzles collection.  You can find them on his blog under the category “Culinary Conundrums.”

The first puzzle he has written about is the Dove-tail Bar.  The puzzle is constructed from wood so that it resembles a Dove Bar.  To solve the puzzle, you must remove a “bite” from the top.

Edwin Wyatt is a famous woodworker and puzzle maker, author of Puzzles in Wood and Wonders in Wood.  I bring him up because Su.Doku.Es recently had a post about a puzzle based on one of his inventions.  Wyatt specialized in wooden puzzles that appeared to be impossible objects.  The object was to take them apart and put them back together (without breaking them.)  The Puzzle mentioned on Su.Doku.Es was called The Grill and had six interlocking pieces.  The updated puzzle, available at Mr. Puzzle has eight interlocking pieces.

A blog called regeneration has posted some pics of custom Rubik’s Cubes available through a site called Rubix Corner. The site has 5×3x3 and 4×3x3 cubes, with additional layers that do not rotate, along with a number of double cubes that overlap and even a Rubik’s Cube cubed, three interconnected cubes.

Passion For Puzzles has an article about a commemorative edition of Sam Loyd’s Get Off  The Earth puzzle.  The puzzle features 13 Chinese warriors positioned around a globe.  Rotate the puzzle slightly and there are only 12.  The challenge is to figure out where the 13th Warrior disappears to.  There’s an excellent representation of this on this page along with an explanation of how the puzzle works.

Thomas Ball is a mechanical puzzle that looks like a little soccer ball. On a Thomas Ball, the hexagonal sections rotate around the pentagonal sections. The goal is to reach the proper alignment of the hexagonal sections. Currently, Thomas Ball comes in 5 levels of difficulty. For Level 1, the hexagons are one of three solid colors. For Level 2, there are three colored rings to complete. For Level 3 there are 4 colored rings. Level 4 has six interconnected circles (and apparently national flags.) Level five has the numbers 1-20 (with one number occupying a pentagon.)

I’ve written a couple articles recently about puzzles that must be solved prior to consuming beverages. This is apparently a tradition that goes back at least as far as the middle ages. Puzzle Jugs, which date back to at least 1300AD, are a type of mechanical puzzle. The challenge is to drink the contents of the jug without spilling. Often this challenge is inscribed on the jug in some poetic form. Sounds easy, but the conventional way of drinking from the jug is impossible since the neck has a number of sizable holes in it. If you’re curious about how a puzzle jug works and how one can drink from it, check out this wikipedia article where the picture and most of my information came from.

The Beer Cage Puzzle goes hand-in-hand with the Wine Bottle Puzzle that I posted about a couple weeks ago. Put a can of beer in the cage and lock it in place. To get the beer, you need to solve the puzzle. Another great sobriety test!

Through a blog called Random Citations, I came across a New York Times article about an upcoming exhibition of mechanical puzzles at Indiana University.  The exhibition will showcase over 30,000 puzzles from the personal collection of Jerry Slocum an expert on mechanical puzzles.

The article is worth a read and contains a number of fun tidbits.  For example, Chinese puzzle boxes were called “Sunday boxes” in Massachusetts in the early 19th century.  Puzzles provided a major source of sabbath recreation for Puritans who could find no Biblical restrictions against puzzle solving.