After I had solved the Panic Attack loaned to me by puzzle designer Goh Pit Khiam, he passed me a another two more to try! I had decent success with the Panic Attack, so I decided to try my hand with these two new ones while I was on a roll.
I couldn't believe it when he handed me the C&U and Twin Tangle puzzles. To call them wire puzzles are a bit of an understatement...these two are humongous puzzles...real solid stuff fashioned out of thick steel rods! Solid and indestructible! They are probably the largest and heaviest wire puzzles I have come across so far; well, not that I have come across that many....
The C&U was designed by Jean-Claude Constantin. When stretched, it measures a whopping 17cm from top to bottom...huge!
The C&U looks impossible to separate, short of sawing the rods apart. But again, all illusory. It is not a difficult but rather tricky puzzle. There is a technique to it and once you figure it out, repeated solving becomes a cinch. Took me a several minutes to disentangle but a little longer to reconnect the two parts. No force whatsoever necessary
The Twin Tangle (invented as early as the 1900s and had the name "Devil's Claw") on the other hand is one tough cookie. Like the C&U, this one is also very hefty and big around 7.0cm square per M. It is much thicker and bigger than the version by Hanayama, the Cast Devil.
Consisting of two parts bent into the shape of an M (or W if you like), the difficulty quotient for this one far exceeds the C&U. Instead of minutes, the Twin Tangle took me several hours over a few sessions to get it untangled. And even then, I solved it purely by chance, pulling, twisting and tugging, through trial and error rather than any systematic approach. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to assemble the two "M"s to the original state and eventually resorted to the solution.
Both the C&U and Twin Tangle are great wire puzzles; the latter being a very much harder solve but featuring a rather elegant solution. The C&U and Cast Devil are available from PuzzleMaster. The bigger Twin Tangle is available from Mr Puzzle retailed under the name MM Wire Puzzle. And not forgetting to mention, the prices for these puzzles are also inexpensive, really great value for money!
Hmmm! I don't have the C-U yet - might need to remedy that!
ReplyDeleteKevin
Puzzlemad
That is very cool! Maybe I should mention it to CU, the local university here in Boulder. They might want to order a few thousand CU puzzles.
ReplyDeleteGeorge, sure please do that....they can order through me :-) :-)
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