This puzzle came to me courtesy of Wil Strijbos. A rather unusual looking puzzle, it is designed by Hirokazu Iwasawa.
The Tritalon is a triangular-shaped puzzle made up of a further 3 smaller odd-ish shaped triangular units joined together by 3 rods. Together the 3 smaller triangles hold in place a Chinese one Yuan coin. The triangles are made of aluminium while the rods are steel. Dimensionally the Tritalon is 8cm long on each side. Construction, fit and finish is very good and all edges and corners are bevelled slightly and smooth to the touch.
The object of the puzzle is to remove the coin in the centre. This puzzle was delivered to my office and later the same evening while on the way home from work, I was stuck in a traffic jam and decided to pass the time puzzling with the Tritalon in my car. This is of course something I would not advise anyone to do while driving. (WARNING: Do not solve puzzles and drive and the same time, it is VERY DANGEROUS!....You may drop and lose parts in the car!!!). It took me a bit of fiddling to figure out how the mechanism works and I got the coin out after about 15 minutes...thankfully without dropping it into some nook or cranny.
While not a difficult puzzle, the Tritalon is no walk in the park either. I let a non-puzzling friend play with it but he gave up after one evening. All in, an unusual design and given it's rather nice all metal construction, it is a nice collectable as well.
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