Extremely Puzzling - Goetz Schwandtner's Puzzles

Interlocking Puzzles

Burrs and other interlocking puzzles

Disentanglement Puzzles

Puzzles made of wire and/or threads

Puzzle Boxes

Karakuri, Himitsu Bako and other puzzle boxes

Sequential Discovery, Take Apart

Take aparts requiring several steps (sometimes involving builtin tools), usually to free a coin or other award

Puzzle Locks

Traditional and modern puzzle locks

Other Puzzles

Everything else, including puzzle games

Interlocking Explorer

Compendium of Chinese-Rings-Like Puzzles

News/Updates:

Added on 2025-04-14: Yesterday some of us puzzlers met for the German Cube Day in Düsseldorf, and we had a great time there, in a new location which was nice and had enough space for all of us and all the puzzles. The first few puzzles I bought from Alfons — reminding me of DCD, and the first three he had put aside for me, to be added to the Burr Zoo: Minotaur is not an animal, but maybe only half so, and a mythological creature. Spinnekop seems to contain a Spider, and according to Alfons the first one with the correct amount of legs, 8 of them. I will check when solving this puzzle! The last one is again not an animal, but extra pieces relating to history and mythology: Graveyard Gliwice. Apparently in this cemetry in Poland some old graves were discovered which the researchers believed to be linked to belief in vampires, and this would be the third vampire puzzle in the Burr Zoo already! The next one is from a classic category of which I still have some yet unsolved in my collection: 18 pieces burrs group. The Abax introduces a new level of 11 to this page, and while this is not very high, some of the later pieces seem to take more moves. The Bunch 2.2 is a not very difficult puzzle, and I have actually solved this completely already, and it has some nice moves of 9 sticks in a square frame. Femten seems to be a hybrid in a cage of various woods, a 3 piece board burr combined with a 12 piece burr, and looking beautiful. The The Conundrum III is originally a heavy metal sculpture, and this is a 3D printed replica. Only a serially interlocking cube, but with these shapes an assembly challenge (and I have not managed to disassemble it a lot yet!). Arie had one of his beautiful pocket-sized Hexagonal Color Tiles for me, a edge matching puzzle in various woods. The latest cast puzzle was also available at Marcel's table, and from a well known designer, but well known more for tray packing puzzles: Cast Jam. When the next puzzle got its name, both PuzzleGuy and I were visiting Oskar, and Rox mentioned that this looks like the Hong Kong Typhoon warning system logo, hence the name: Typhoon. It is a fascinating puzzle. Those pieces just won't slide apart and seem to be oriented in the wrong way. There are some special moves that can change this dilemma, and I have managed to take it apart. Now for the re-assembly! Bram's Hinged Cube I have seen mentioned by many people recently, and it seems to be of a similar idea like the other folding cube I got recently, and of course has a twist to stop the easy solution from working. Gear Fit is based on one of Oskar's experiments with a gear modelling software. To solve the puzzle, you have to get both the hidden gear mechanism in the base and the visible blue gears to work in unison. There are only a few different possibilities to attach the blue gears to the stars, but that is enough to be puzzling! Michel had some puzzles for me I don't know much about: Octopus where a flat arrangement needs to be constructed from the 8 squares. Triangulus Puzzle is a puzzle that comes in a book shape, and the goal is to take out all the identical pieces and build a certain 3D structure. Thanks for the nice puzzles, and of course also for the great time to all!
Added on 2025-04-03: Not having made a lot of progress with Mortimer's case, another challenge arrived today. I got myself a new padlock, and it contains a cute little padlock with a key attached to the shackle, which seems to be a common theme amongst puzzle locks. Consequently, it is called the Locked Lock. Aside from the littel padlock it features several elements which may become useful in the solution, and there is also a signature of the designer embossed. The puzzle feels nicely heavy and well made, going to be fun to solve! So much for trying to reduce the puzzle solving backlog, but that may be a good problem to have?!
Added on 2025-04-01: He's dead Jim! Today Dead Mortimer arrived, and he was already quite dead upon arrival. This is the latest puzzle release by Dedwood crafts and the goal of this beautifully crafted puzzle is to find out why Mortimer died. I have a hunch the Angry Walter gang may be involved, so I re-solved all of the 4 of the Angry Walter series I have in my collection — and maybe that Burner phone also plays a role in the so-called Walter wars? Mortimer looks sad and pretty dead. There are some elements visible and you can play with some of them, and it immediately becomes apparent that this is not Walter in disguise (or is he?). Well, I hope to find out more soon, after some decent amount of head scratching (of my own and Mortimer's, I guess) and puzzling fun.
Added on 2025-03-25: After having a lot of fun with the excellent LEGO built puzzle boxes (and not having completely solved the most complicated one even), today the mailman brought a parcel from Rex with some nice puzzles pre-ordered earlier. The first one is from a new category: My Way. While there are quite some sequential discovery unpacking puzzles (like the cute Minima Smiley), this one requires you to solve sequential discovery elements for packing the pieces into the puzzle. The result should then be a green cube in the frame without any piece moving when shaking the puzzle a bit. The other two continue the series of hybrids of twisty puzzles with sequential discovery elements. The previous one (also a 2x2x2) was fun to play with, and here are some nice new ones: Algorhythm and The Floppy. The first one has a lot of strange elements visible on the surface, making it clear that it is not a regular twisty puzzle. Actually the goal is very well known for this designer: Free the coin. The second one looks like a large Floppy Cube, and the first moves are similer to the floppy cube, but then it suddenly becomes evident that this is no regular twisty puzzle. Looking forward to solve these (and also the still unsolved puzzles) for some puzzling fun.
Added on 2025-03-15: From the previous puzzles, I have already solved the daily challenge, and that is a nice calendar puzzle, but the Duck Stew has left me hungry so far and it seems this needs a more complicated recipe, and then freed some coins from other puzzles, but have not fully solved those yet. Today more plastic puzzles arrived, but in the form of puzzle boxes beautifully built from LEGO (but not LEGO sets). They came very well packaged with a lot of attention to detail, and each of them has a little story around the puzzle and solve. The first one was the reason for my order, after enjoying the previous Crayonland Bricks box a lot: Maki Shiro Sushi Roll Castle. It is a brand new puzzle, and obviously is themed around sushi. In this beautifully constructed house there seem to be several gold bars to be found, but the real goal is a try of maki rolls, and the gold bars are mere tools. The prize can actually be seen from the start, but it is still securely locked away. The next one immediately reminds me of a game I used to play: Sokoban Puzzle Box. It features a light grey key (which I have already found) and according to the instructions, the goal is to extract some goods from this warehouse and also use a forklift on the way. That is going to be fun! The third one has a nice colourful look, and one can see a kitten inside: Koneko Forest Puzzle Box. Of course the goal is to free the poor thing from it prison, and disassembly of the box is obviously not allowed! This is going to be a lot of fun playing with LEGO bricks without actually assembling or disassembling them!
Added on 2025-03-11: Today a parcel from Puzzleguy with some of his latest offerings in his etsy shop "PuzzleguyStore" and very interesting 3D printed puzzles. The first one will take me a long time to solve, guessing it will be a year, and that even though I have already solved it apparently. How does that make sense? It is a calendar puzzle with a challenge for each day: Calendarium 2. In this unassuming nice little frame with the digital numbers diplayed, it does not look like much, but after sliding off the cover, it is a surprising packing puzzle. Each digit is created using 4 blocks with patterns on them allowing to build the digits, and those will then appear in the windows after sliding the cover back on (or some wild pixel arrangement for non-solutions). At first the solve with all those patterns may seem chaotic, but in reality it can be solved nicely by systematic reasoning. Instead of more explanation, let me refer you to "Pluton's Puzzles" YouTube channel showing this puzzle in more detail and many others. The second one is food related: Duck Stew with 8 identical ducklings in a pot, and they all consist of 3 cubies attached shifted by half a unit. Of course, the stew is no good when something is sticking out, and this is the same for this puzzle. The inspiration seems to have been the recent duck soup puzzle, with a square cavity in the pot, while this one is a proper round pot. The last one I have seen on a video before and it looks fascinating: Non-infinity Cube. First, it seems a bit like one of those fidget cubes to be folded into just a few configurations, or maybe a snake cube puzzle with the cubies attached via hinges on the edges. However, this one has a seemingly arrangement of hinges restricting the folding movements in various ways. Just playing around with it and then trying to make the obvious shape of a cube shows that this is not a fidget toy, but a serious puzzle. And then there are 23 other challenges provided with the puzzle. Looks like now I have a lot of challenges to solve in the next days, and also some fascinating puzzles. Thank you, Ivan!
Added on 2025-03-10: Today a parcel arrived with some brand new 3D printed puzzles continuing a series each. The first is a hefty chunk of purple with white buttons on it, and that is already an indication of the series, only that this one has a larger volume and weight than the others combined: Free the Two. Two coins inside (the usual game money) and some nice white buttons. One of them can be pressed in and has some nice spring loaded action, while the other is something that reminds me of Free the One. I am really curious to solve this and see how it works. It has many slots that may a coin to fit through and maybe this is part of the second half of the solution: Resetting everything into a state like in the beginning. The instructions mention that one should take good note of how the puzzle behaves in the beginning, so I am assuming there are several mechanisms inside that can be manipulated to behave differently. The second one is by the same designer and of the smaller pocket change series: Pocket Change green. A new colour and a new challenge, and I am looking forward to solve this one, too!
Added on 2025-03-06: The Pelikan release last week contained 11 new puzzles, and some of them sold out quickly. I only went for 5 of them, and they all look beautiful and are very well crafted from more or less exotic woods. Contrary to what many others like, I only added one packing puzzle to my shopping cart: The Horns of Booth. Of course, this will not be a "throw the pieces into the box after some pondering of a few minutes" style puzzle, but I am expecting a difficult packing puzzle with pieces moving around in odd ways before everything is inside. The arrangement on the picture is not a solution, but displays what must be some of the horns from the name, and the pieces seem to have some similarity with the other latest puzzle by the same designer, i.e. pieces combined from half voxels/triangular prisms. And in this case, there is only a restricted opening in the box, making even the extraction of the current arrangement non trivial. The others are all interlocking puzzles of some sort: Zack die Krone is a nice CCO burr in a frame (with more complicated pieces), and beside wood it also features magnets for increased stability. The frame has some wide open gaps, but that does not mean the pieces are easy to remove! The next one is only a six piece burr, but the pieces have special additional voxel making them interlock in unexpected ways: PSI. This one I have disassembled and re-assembled already, and my impression was between the most chaotic and complex solution I have seen for such a six piece burr so far. Well done, that is a lot of fun and a nice challenge both ways! This is also visible in the level, which is higher than anything for six piece burrs of this grid seen before, even when using colouring and markings. From the same desiger comes Heavy Lifter and it seems he does not like complete cubes to be sold, but leaves this as an excercise to the solver. The goal is indeed to construct a cube from the pieces, so that nothing sticks out. So far I have noticed pieces of varying size and shape, and some of them could also be counted as frame pieces, but not solved yet. Slight spoiler: It seems that the pieces sticking out could be packed into the arragement of the rest, but when trying the pieces start misbehaving and it looks like a whole lot more disassembly is required. At least the goal configuration should be obvious now, that may help. This is a new interlocking cube, not a TIC. When someone said that everything to be known about 4x4x4 interlocking cubes was already discovered, then that was clearly a misstatement. We are now even seeing new non-TIC 4x4x4 interlocking cubes! The last one is a burr in a frame again: Sierpinski's Burr, which had some accident with some saw blades, but probably already in the design phase. Two opposite corners went missing, and what remains has a shape like a small Sierpinski triangle with a large triangle in the middle and three smaller around it. Playing with this already showed my some interesting moves and sequences, and I am sure this level 40 will be fun to solve and take a while!
Added on 2025-03-03: While I have been collecting Juno's sequential discovery boxes from the beginning on, there was one I missed out on when it was released: Sequential Discovery Board Burred Box. This is the second one in the sequential discovery burr series, and of course shaped like a board burr, also a typical one of Juno's puzzle shapes. When I saw an offer for a small run of officially licensed 3D printed reproductions of this puzzle on the Discord, I immediately ordered myself one, and today it arrived: SDBBB-3D. The box is entirely 3D printed, except for the multiple magnets which found their way in (and some other small components, like in the original). It has a nice heavy and high quality feel to it, and during the solve it works precisely and very well. I can comment on the whole solution for this aspect, as I have already solved it. Such a fun and not too difficult solve where all the pieces seem to make sense, a typical Juno puzzle! While I am still preferring the wooden versions of these puzzles, this is now another excellent puzzle in my collection.
Added on 2025-02-22: Today two parcels with new sequential discovery puzzles arrived. The first one arrived via the mail man in the morning and contains a beautiful and colourful puzzle built from LEGO bricks: Chocolate Factory. This is the second puzzle by this designer, and again sweets themed. This one has a story around the chocolate factory movies, and there is even a golden ticket offering assistance if required. From the piece shapes I have an idea what may happen near the end of the solution, but so far nothing of that moves, and I have just found a first move. Of course disassembly is not part of this brick-built puzzle. The other parcel was brought later by the DHL delivery guy and is quite a bit larger, and made beautifully from wood and with a nice wood scent: Iteration 23. This is the 4^th puzzle in the Angry Walter series (Angry Walter, Menace, and Walter's Radio), and another stage of the war against the Angry Walters. The box comes with a beautifully printed card providing some background of the story and also the goal to be achieved: Four objects to be extracted from this box, and then to be assembled (but not to be used as tools during the solution). A nice touch is that there are some first moves to be found immediately and offering some view of some of the inside and some interesting spots, but nothing more so far. More puzzling fun!
Added on 2025-02-20: Today a parcel from PuzzleGuy arrived with nice new 3D printed puzzles. While I already have a SIX T puzzle by Volker Latussek, this one is a new one and spelled slightly differently: SIXT. And the pieces are completely different from that other puzzle with the 6 T pieces. Here they are a happy mess of half cubes (or triangular prisms) attached, 5 such half cubes per piece. Adding up the units, it seems that there is still a lot of space left in the box, and with the box having no restrictions, this may be easy?! The second puzzle has also a name starting with "Sixt", but here we have 16 pieces, and it is a jigsaw puzzle: Sixteen Piece Jigsaw. However, this is a jigsaw puzzle with a disassembly challenge to be solved first, and then to be re-assembled. Having watched Oskar's demonstration video for this one, I am still not sure whether I will be able to solve both. The pieces don't have any pictures on them, but various large and small connectors, and they even have a 3D orientation which is important. So far I have managed a first small part of the disassembly challenge already, but then stopped being scared of producing a messy pile of disconnected pieces. That will come later, I am sure! The third one I have solved already: 3 Cubes. There are 3 identical pieces that just need to be packed into a shape with 3 solid cubes. There is more to the pieces than at first sight, and a surprise awaiting. A nice little puzzle, thank you Ivan!
Added on 2025-02-17: While I don't aim at collecting all of them, I have quite some of the MINIMA puzzles, which are usually packing puzzles with a small 2x2x3 units box. The ones I prefer are the ones where you have to extract pieces instead of entering pieces, like the enjoyable MINIMA Smiley recently. Today there is another one, and it is a collaboration. A 3D printed coin release puzzle: MINIMA COINMA. While it looks quite different, the inside of the box seems to be the typical 2x2x3 shape again, just that the coordinate grid was heavily squashed, resulting in a flat box, and my guess is that now the coin fits in a 1x1x1 unit. While the front shows the name of the puzzle in its original writing (unicode required!?), the back has a beautiful pattern and a hole with the coin looking out. Or rather, the head on the coin is looking out and does not look happy, maybe a consequence of the imprisonment situation? I have some doubts that the facial expression will change, but let's get this guy on his coin out anyways! There are some moving parts and gravity seems to play a role here, and that is not completely unexpected. More puzzling fun, and this time with a prize!
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.