It's been a scorcher of a spring so far and there is nothing better than an Ice Lolly on a hot day...well, ok, yes a cold beer is better but I'll save that for another day...
So today following on with my food theme (I'm on a roll here-must be hungry) I thought I'd show a couple of puzzles I picked up in Japan. These are all made by Hanayama. I wish I could tell you where to purchase them, but I only see them at Torito and Amazon.jp. Not good for the rest of the world.
As you can see, there are 4 lollies here. 3 are for sale, and the fourth is a developers version. They have a variety of difficulty levels, Yellow being easy, blue is medium and red is hard. The extra blue is a developers version that was a gift. Another IPPer and I both received these when we questioned the availability of the puzzles.
The yellow has 8 pieces that can be taken apart like a jigsaw. They fit together and can be removed using any sliding up or down. There is no real order to the assembly/disassembly of these. The yellow cover you see here just slides over the puzzle.
Next up is the developers version. It is very much like the yellow one seen above. The only difference is the color....
The third of these puzzles is also blue and has 4 pieces with a twist. They can only be extracted in one direction. The cover is broken into 8 pieces as well, but is a real walk in the park to solve. Hanayama calls this one "normal".
The final puzzle up today has been labeled "hard". With 10 pieces to the lolly and 8 pieces to the cover, this one is at best a tad bit difficult, but not truly hard.
As usual, I worked on these at a weekend testing session. The first 2 took all of a minute to solve once they were mucked up. So I exaggerate, but they didn't take more than a break each so 5 minutes max. The normal one took me 2 sessions and an 'under the table' like up for the cover. Around 25 minutes I would guess. The final version here took ages. Two hours worth of candidate breaks from start to finish on this one. All in all, they are very nice puzzles to play with. Good luck finding them though. It's a real shame that these aren't more widely sold.
Lucky you having such great weather! We have had the wettest April on record - in fact last Wednesday we had a whole month of rainfall in one day!!! Just the same day as we had the windows in our house replaced - aaargh! Oh and it's quite cold too.
ReplyDeleteThe only good thing is I get to stay indoors and puzzle!
Kevin x
Puzzlemad
Hot hot spring. By the time I finish my morning jog at 9 it's already up in the high 20's. 28-30 has been the norm and the humidity is right up there! 89-99%. Until the rain today that is. Woke up to big booms and a flooded balcony....
ReplyDeleteBut who's complaining? Time to finally type.