Extremely Puzzling - Goetz Schwandtner's Puzzles

On this page some extremely puzzling objects are displayed: My private puzzle collection consisting of a wide range of three-dimensional puzzles, from industrial produced Rubik's Cube like puzzles to my custom builds, from production range Pihilos wood puzzles to rare and special puzzles from various excellent craftsmen, and not to forget the Japanese Himitsu Bakos, including some equisite works of the Karakuri Creation Group. Please note that you won't find any (standard) jigsaw puzzles on these pages, may they be two or three dimensional.

News/Updates:

Added on 2025-02-11
While shopping for some birthday presents I could also pick up some puzzle for myself: Communication Box. This has 7 C shaped pieces in it, which stand for 7 principles of communication (hence the name of the box). The goal is as usual: pack those pieces into this box completely, and this letter packing challenge is nothing new for the designer. I already have some puzzles with Cs and Ts in my collection. However, I don't expect this to be easy or similar to the others, a whole new puzzle to solve and have fun with!
Added on 2025-02-07
After the truly tiny puzzle arriving earlier this week, today a huge escape room in a box style puzzle box arrived: Templarion. This was part of a Kickstarter campaign last year and it seems the plan for expected delivery was spot on: February 2025. Compared to the mass produced escape room boxes, this one is quite a bit larger (but not heavy for its size) and it has been painted, and this all reminds me of some other boxes also from France. This box has all kinds of decorations on it, and not only symbols, numbers and letters to use in clues and combinations, but also moving parts, like sliders, and then some elements that look like moving slides currently being blocked and to be unlocked in the solve. There are some pillars on the front side, and these rotate, and I wonder what this will bring during the solution. Looking forward to solve this to see how all this interacts, and then to find a suitable space large enough in my collection to store this box, which is a puzzle on its own.
Added on 2025-02-05
After having solved and enjoyed the excellent red-black 3D printed puzzles by Alex Owens recently, I have received two more parcels from the US, one with a 3D printed puzzle again. The other has a beautiful wooden puzzle in it and a monster, or both rather: Monster is a TIC for assembly requiring over 100 moves in total and level 81 (moves for last piece to be inserted), and that only with 3 pieces in a frame. Quite an achievement! In recent years some puzzlers, like Girish, the designer of Monster, Andrew Crowell, and in particular the late Christoph Lohe have tried finding very high level puzzles for this arrangement: 3 pieces inside a frame with overall 5x5x5 dimensions. While the first attempts were regular burrs, later ones had unintended rotations, and then the craze started to add rotations into the design intentionally. Having solved the previous ones (as disassembly puzzles back then), I am now looking forward to taming this monster, and it will take a while I am sure. In the other parcel was a 3D printed version of a small sequential discovery puzzle of a recent designer, first time available as a 3D print, but with a lot of metal components included: USB Puzzle. A high quality print, and a cute puzzle which has a tiny USB stick as a prize.
Added on 2025-01-20
After enjoying his Piano puzzle a lot, and also some others I already have, I ordered myself some more of Alex Owen's puzzles, and they arrived today: Gravity and Rainbow. I selected them in a beautiful black and red colour scheme, and it looks great in person. I have already found a moving part of the Gravity, and it is hard to miss, and on the Rainbow I have found a tool and some use of it to extract the first piece. This is going to be fun! Both boxes are nicely 3D printed in high quality and have a nice weight as well. This — and all the rattling inside of both boxes — must indicate that there are a lot of components interacting to add up to the puzzles with their internal mechanisms. If you are wondering about the name of the Rainbow, this is more visible in the original colour scheme with rainbow colours, but also here a nice rainbow is showing between two clouds.
Added on 2025-01-14
Don't click on today's link if you do not like spoilers of any kind, while the ones in my description are only mild ones. For the others, there is an unusual visit to the Zoo Burr today, with no detail pictures, a mystery dog, and finally giving in to machine help to keep the zoo organised.
Added on 2025-01-10
I have bought myself a Cabriolet, and in the middle of the winter. Does that make sense? The first update of this year contains two of the latest beautifully crafted puzzles from Pelikan: The first one is the mentioned cabriolet: Euklid's Cabrio. This is a combination of two earlier series, the cabrio packing puzzles with a sliding lid with some space in the lid, and then the cuboid shapes from the Euklid series. These are not only made from beautiful dark wenge wood, but they also seem to come in different sizes and shapes making this a non-trivial packing exercise, I guess. The other one is tiny compared to this, but that is due to its name and also due to being part of a mini puzzle series: Minima Smiley. Like the one shared as an Exchange gift at the latest IPP, this one has a screw and is some form of sequential discovery puzzle, with the goal to get the simley out — a small yellow wooden ball with a smiley face on it. While I have made some progress solving some puzzles recently, it seems I am now stacking up again, but there are still many puzzles in my solving backlog.
Other/Older updates:
Can be found on the update history page

Hints:

Hints: If you need solution hints to any puzzle in my gallery, feel free to e-mail me. My e-mail address can be found on my homepage.