Panama Canal puzzle
The world of take-apart puzzles, put-together puzzles, sliding block puzzles, sequential movement puzzles, disentanglement puzzles, folding puzzles, string puzzles, puzzle vessels, dexterity puzzles and others, and including keychain puzzles, advertising puzzles, tangram puzzles, burr puzzles, “15″ puzzles, peg puzzles, logic puzzles, puzzle books and puzzle games
Click on the image below to be taken to my picasa web photo album of mechanical puzzles.
The Photo Gallery will open on a new page and this BGH page will remain open.
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| Mechanical Puzzles from The Big Game Hunter permanent collection |
Click on the titles below to be taken to the articles in this section include:
A Classification of Mechanical Puzzles, by Jerry Slocum
Mechanical puzzle designers
A book review of 1000 Playthinks, a puzzle book by Ivan Moscovich
Geduldspiel puzzle gallery
Puzzle vs. Game
In general, a game is a pastime with a specific set of rules and a specified end, in which two or more players compete against each other; a mechanical puzzle is a solitary pastime in which the puzzle solver is, in a sense, competing against the puzzle maker. Instead of a set of rules for doing the puzzle, there is a stated goal, with maybe one or two rules on how to proceed; then the solution (which you don’t have in a game) reveals the simple trick or outlines a specific – sometimes long – set of steps to follow.
Of course, there are many exceptions and much overlapping. Puzzles are often called “solitaire games.” Some puzzles are set up so that there is a competition among the puzzle solvers.
Sometimes, the same materials are used for both a puzzle and a game. At first glance, the pastime below is a common peg puzzle; the object is to jump pieces and remove them from the board, and be left with one peg in the exact middle. However, if you color two of the pegs, as shown in this example, you also have a Fox and Geese game, a two-player “asymmetrical” game. An asymmetrical game is one in which the two players have a different number of pieces that also differ in how they can be used.
Fox & Geese game (also a peg puzzle), early to mid 1900s
Advertising Puzzles
Mechanical puzzles were often mailed to consumers of certain products as advertising and promotional premiums. Below is an example. (Watch this space — more will follow eventually.)
Game Book Review: 1000 PlayThinks
–by Bruce Whitehill, adapted from his 2002 review
How does one review a book that has so much great stuff in it, it would take months to get through it all? Subtitled “Puzzles, Paradoxes, Illusions & Games,” this 420-page oversized spiral-bound book, by Ivan Moscovich, would consume just under three years of your time if you did a puzzle a day (and who has time for more?). All the puzzles are rated in terms of difficulty, but I’m not sure which strategy to use: Do I save the difficult puzzles for my second year, when I’ve developed a better solving sense? Or do I tackle the hard ones right away, before I lose any more of my precious gray cells.
1000 PlayThinks is not just a book of puzzles. It’s art, mathematics, humor, even literature, as author Moscovich sprinkles his text with clever quotes from the very wise. “In these days, a man who says a thing cannot be done is quite apt to be interrupted by some idiot doing it.” (Elbert Green Hubbard)
The book has games and classic puzzles, photographs and drawings, colors and shapes, enigmas and explanations, and even some very practical information. Suppose when you are on a game show, you could win a new car by selecting the correct door out of three. You choose one, and the emcee opens a different door with a monkey behind it. You can stay with your original door, or you can select the third, unopened door. What do you do? I don’t quite understand the reasoning (it has to do with conditional probabilities), but at least I’ll know what to do when I get on that game show (choose the other door!).
1000 PlayThinks is a health book. It cures boredom, helps prevent Alzheimer’s, and increases one’s appetite for all things cerebral. And it’s fun, too. You don’t have to be a genius to enjoy the book. Sigmund Freud said (page 35): “I have an infamously low capacity for visualizing relationships, which made the study of geometry and all subjects derived from it impossible for me.” Of course, I don’t think Sigmund ever read the book.
1000 PlayThinks is ablaze with color and brilliant visuals, a cornucopia of images that dance in your brain until some solution sorts itself out and stumbles onto the page. Of course, you could always look up the answers in the back.
–Bruce Whitehill
Geduldspiel Puzzle Gallery
by Geduldpiel
Welcome to my puzzle gallery!!
I was five years old, when I got my first puzzle.
It was an ordinary jigsaw puzzle with only a few parts.
Later I got also a sliding puzzle, a tile-based game and a rubik´s cube.
My puzzle passion began in 1996.
While in the 70s it was only possible to acquire a dozen of different puzzles, now dozens of new puzzles are launched every month on the market.
The quality and prices of the puzzles have also changed.
In the old days puzzles with a high quality were very expensive, whereas now you can also find such puzzles at very low prices.
My puzzle gallery gives you an overview of different puzzles.
The gallery includes about 1,400 puzzles, a sample of which is shown below.
The gallery shows very common, but also some rare puzzles.
Many of the puzzles shown in the gallery are designed by German Puzzle designers–for example, lots of puzzles are from Silvia Heinz Matthes, Markus Goetz and Jean Claude Constantin.
The gallery includes many sliding puzzles, 2D twisty puzzles and trick boxes.
The gallery is classified according to the puzzle types:
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This classification does of course neither contain cultural nor historical information.
Many cultures have created puzzles.
Thereby the playful purpose was not always in the foreground.
Puzzles were used in the everyday life.
You can still see today puzzles in the ordinary life:
For example puzzle rings are popular as jewellery and
trick locks are still used in India.
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