Jerry's Ball in Cylinder puzzle

Fellow Blogger Jerry Loo blogger gone inventor! posted about a project he was working on. I sent off a message right away congratulating him and at the same time saying I'd love a copy. A short while later I received an email asking for my mailing address.  I was pleasantly surprised when I got a box from Singapore come in last week.

all balls inside

Because I was entertaining guests, the puzzle was put on hold until this past Sunday.  I brought it along for my usual puzzling/testing time.  Having read Kevin's blog post about it I was very careful as I didn't want to loose my balls.  I gingerly removed the tape and pop! Out came a ball bearing.  Luckily I had read that this would happen and had already prepared a towel to catch the ball in.  I popped it back in and started to twist the balls around.  Yep. It was good and stuck!  Now to solve it!

This puzzle sings!  It makes such beautiful sounds, but unluckily for me I couldn't work on it during the session.  It just made to much noise.   I had to put this away until the next day.

solved!

I'm glad I did too.  I sat down to play with it and spent a good deal of time with the puzzle and a flashlight rotating it around trying to see what was going on.  No spoilers here, but suffice it to say it was good fun to solve.  I popped the ball out and had to drop it back in again to see if I was clever enough to solve it without the aid of a flashlight.  Again the singing of the puzzle.  I just love the tinkling sound that it makes.  No luck for me.  The ball was good and stuck and I needed to spend some time to get the ball out again.  But the good news is, I managed.  And being the puzzler I am, I dropped that ball in yet again and went one more time!  This time it took me less than 20 minutes to work it out.  Three times the charm right?  I stopped and grabbed a few of the Strijbos cylinders for a comparison.  Jerry's Ball in Cylinder ranks right up there with these puzzles.

a comparison with the Strijbos cylinders

Jerry's puzzle is slightly taller than the others in the photo.  It's almost the same diameter of the AlCyl.  If you are interested in getting Jerry's new puzzle, go contact him over on his blog!  The fun involved in this one won't let you down.  And the quality!  It's a beautifully tooled aluminum puzzle.  Very professionally done.