Boxes and Booze 9/28/19 Boxes and Booze 9/28/19

Where’s My Hammer

The box alone is a work of art, but the puzzling aspect makes it particularly appealing. This is a 7-step sequential discovery puzzle box, with well-hidden secrets and a clever combination of items to find and use to open it.

Boxes and Booze 9/21/19 Boxes and Booze 9/21/19

Golden Ratio Box

Let’s contemplate ratios for a moment – specifically, when two quantities have a ratio that is equal to the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities.

Boxes and Booze 9/14/19 Boxes and Booze 9/14/19

Magic Hat

Shiro Tajima, former Karakuri Creation Group artist gone solo rogue puzzle maker, created a clever animal series of puzzle boxes based on the signs of the Japanese Zodiac.

Boxes and Booze 9/7/19 Boxes and Booze 9/7/19

Secretum Cista

The provenance of the name, “Secretum Cista”, is rather auspicious and steeped in mystery. From the Latin, “Secretum” has many translations, notably “secret seal”, or more simply just “secret”.

Boxes and Booze 8/31/19 Boxes and Booze 8/31/19

Trike

I’m on a transportation kick it seems, following up the Slammed Car puzzle box with an offering from Karakuri Creation Group artist Osamu Kasho. This little baby goes from zero to twenty in two minutes!

Boxes and Booze 8/24/19 Boxes and Booze 8/24/19

Slammed Car

Slammed Car, designed by Junichi Yananose (Juno) and produced by his puzzle company Pluredro (Juno and his wife Yukari) in Queensland Australia, is their latest and greatest sequential discovery puzzle, and one of the best new puzzles in the world.

Boxes and Booze 8/17/19 Boxes and Booze 8/17/19

Puddleduck Pastures

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild with a faery hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand - William Butler Yeats

Boxes and Booze 8/10/19 Boxes and Booze 8/10/19

Jack in the Box

Some ideas have existed forever, since time and consciousness alike, have always been, and some ideas are Born.

Boxes and Booze 8/3/19 Boxes and Booze 8/3/19

Ned Kelley

Behold the infamous tale of Ned Kelley, the notorious Australian bushranger and outlaw wanted for a series of police murders in the late 1800s. Kelley and his gang’s evasion of police capture for over two years ended in a famous gun battle in which the outlaws wore makeshift iron suits and helmets which have become iconic.

Boxes and Booze 7/27/19 Boxes and Booze 7/27/19

Memo Pad

Every so often I come across a puzzle box which happens to embody something inherently apropos for the central theme of this odd blog of mine, which attempts to pair puzzle boxes (and the occasional non-box puzzle) with craft cocktails. I call them “perfect” Boxes and Booze boxes, which is not to imply they are my absolute favorite boxes, but how can I not like them?

Boxes and Booze 7/20/19 Boxes and Booze 7/20/19

Tracy's Box of Tricks

It’s been a while since I featured something from Tracy Wood Clemons, an American woodworker who, when asked how she became so talented at designing intricate and complex wooden puzzle boxes, can honestly say, “well, that’s my middle name, after all”.

Boxes and Booze 7/13/19 Boxes and Booze 7/13/19

Bloom-Box

“Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.” – Oscar Wilde

Boxes and Booze 7/6/19 Boxes and Booze 7/6/19

Plugged Well

“My formula for success? Rise early, work late, strike oil.” - John Paul Getty

Boxes and Booze 6/29/19 Boxes and Booze 6/29/19

Corkscrew

Perry, as many know, is a master woodworker who creates some of the most surprising and beautiful puzzle boxes featuring incredibly complex and elegant mechanisms.

Boxes and Booze 6/22/19 Boxes and Booze 6/22/19

Color-colo

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life” – Oscar Wilde, 1891

Boxes and Booze 6/15/19 Boxes and Booze 6/15/19

Ze Bomb

Stephen likes to take complex interlocking polyhedral objects, such as the humble cube, and “turn” them into practically impossible objects by spinning them on his lathe to create spheres, footballs, apples, and in this particular case, bombs.

Boxes and Booze 6/8/19 Boxes and Booze 6/8/19

Multiball

Eric Fuller has got some balls. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a new puzzle box design from the curator of finely crafted puzzles and master of mischief.

Boxes and Booze 6/1/19 Boxes and Booze 6/1/19

Bovalis Lock

This unique creation comes from the mind of Greek American Constantine Bovalis, a mechanical design engineer from Illinois. Constantine notes that the inspiration for his puzzle creations comes in a roundabout way from traditional Japanese puzzle boxes

Boxes and Booze 5/25/19 Boxes and Booze 5/25/19

Present for You

Let’s start with a present, shall we? For me? Really? There can’t be many better puzzle boxes for this occasion than the “Present for you” box by Karakuri Creation Group artist Shou Sugimoto.

Boxes and Booze 5/18/19 Boxes and Booze 5/18/19

Toilet

I’m jumping on the pop culture bandwagon this week with a themed offering, although I’m doing it in my own special way. As everyone who has been paying even the tiniest fraction of attention in the world knows, Game of Thrones has become a global obsession.

A spirited journey through the world of collectible artisan puzzles