Raketti

This is a nice little wooden puzzle I picked up from German online retailer Puzzle-Shop.de at a very reasonable price. It consist of a red solid cylinder block with a pointed end that resides in a larger hollowed out black cylinder. Measuring 4.3cm tall and 4.2cm in diameter, the dual colours of red and black make for a nice contrast as well. Quality and construction is good and there are no complains here.

The object of the puzzle to remove the red pointed block from the black cylinder....sounds easy, doesn't it, since there are only two parts to the puzzle...but the clincher here is that you are not allowed to touch the black cylinder at all while trying to remove the red block. I tried the obvious first; using my fingers...but no luck of course. Since hands and fingers can't be used effectively, well, I had to resort to using other parts of my body. Took me some time, but I figured it out in the end. Without going into details, lets just say there are some scientific principles applicable here! I consider this puzzle's solution the second most unusual after that of Fuji 1707 reviewed several weeks ago in this blog. In fact the solution to the Raketti is the direct opposite of Fuji 1707. So if you know the solution to the Fuji 1707, you will know what I mean and can pretty well guess how to solve the Raketti. The solution and how the red cylinder is "extracted" is really quite amazing and unbelievable. I didn't think it could happen the way it did!

The puzzle looks really simple, just two pieces but simplicity is at times deceptive as in this case. Really a pretty fun puzzle to solve once you get it! For a variant of the Raketti, do check out Oli's write-up in his puzzle blog.