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 2026-01-23: So far I have not been very successful with my plan for this year: Acquire only few puzzles, and solve all the backlog. I made some progress with the backlog, but at the moment I am stuck with a level 139 18-pieces burr, and seem to have found the first 130 moves already, but now hitting a proverbial wall. And then I ordered a new puzzle which was advertised on the Discord this week, because it looked to cute and interesting. And it is! A little Fire Truck in bright red, with the goal to rescue the cat. I haven't even found the cat yet, but have found something that may be some form of oddly shaped tool, with no suitable place to apply it yet. Fascinating!
Added on 2026-01-17: Some time ago I ordered a puzzle box kit and finally I found the time and opportunity to build the box from the kit: Tesseract's Secret. It is a bit smaller than expected, and has a nice size. Unlike most others of this kind, there are tons of M3 screws involved, and no glue, and the result is nicely stable. The box features a handful of locking mechanisms, some of them interacting with each other, and some of them are unlike I have seen before. The solution follows the escape room in a box theme, where you have to find and use clues and then solve the combination locks to open the box.
Added on 2026-01-14: Progress update on the puzzle solving backlog, hence the longer post: I managed to solve Window Lock 4 on the day it arrived, and the solution is a bit sneaky — and the intended one as confirmed by the designer. A great series of wooden locks, for people who like a visual solve of a puzzle lock. Then yesterday until late in the night I worked on some time travelling and solved the Time Traveler's Artifact. After some guidance from an expert puzzle solver on the Discord, I added the hint system to my journey, and this completed the adventure experience. It is an interactive web site trying to determine the state of the puzzle and then provide just the right hint, and also to rebuke the solver in case of trying to brute force it — I tried that for fun to see what happens. The puzzle box is impressive, in what the craftsman managed to get out of simple laser cut plywood boards and 3D printing, the mechanisms inside, and also the adventure story. This is an excellent start for the year of puzzling!
Having managed to reduce my backlock a bit, today a parcel from the UK arrived full of 3D printed and fascinating goodies. And the designer has managed to do it again! After creating a 6 pieces burr with a higher level than should be possible for this, now there is this one at level 15: Thanatos. I am not going to disclose here how this trick may work. Thank you Rich for this extra challenge! The next two are more apparent answers to the question how to extend the level of a standard 6 pieces burr, using longer pieces: Baker's Dozen and Baker's Infinity. That "infinity" part of the name seems to refer to the possibility of driving this principle even further than the level 37 of this one, arbitrarily high. The drawback would be that the sticks also have to grow in a similar fashion. Looking at one of the longer pieces through the bag I think I have already spotted the design principle that allows for this. While my initial conversations with the designer many years ago mainly explored the field of high level burrs, he has recently developed an interest in sequential discovery puzzles. The first two are dovetails of different sizes —this seems to be the latest trend for UK designers like we saw at DCD — and were first presented at the IPP last year: Dovetail Bar has one visible dovetail and two screws, and the considerably larger Dovetail Bar 2 two dovetail connections and only one screw. However, this does not tell anything about the number of parts and tools actually involved in the solutions of the puzzles. The last one was the actual reason I reached out to order these puzzles: S.V. Burr. This seems to be six piece burr shaped sequential discovery puzzle, following the tradition of SDBB and later ones. Of course this is only my assumption, and I heard that once solved also the proper name behind "S.V." will become apparent. One of the most experienced puzzle solvers on the planet nominated this representing not yet solved or fully appreciated last year for his EPP top three, hence I am expecting this to be a good challenge for me.
Added on 2026-01-08: Recently, I managed to solve Window Lock 3, after having solved Window Lock 2 earlier on. At around the same time, a new design in this series showed up, and Peter advertised this one in his EPP event, and emphasized a key part of the mechanism that seems to be impossible to operate correctly to open the lock. I reached out to Dick Hensel to try and order one, and here it is: Window Lock 4. Looking at the window, there is a small ball bearing like for the others from the series, and the mechanism is clearly visible through the window. It becomes apparent which part needs to be retracted to unlock the shackle, however, there does not seem to be a sensible way implementing this, and one central part appears to be stuck in an unsuitable position — by design, I remember seeing this at EPP. A non-spoilery progress report: I managed to operate some mechanism and while there was some reaction of the lock, it was not enough to unlock the shackle. Fascinating!
Added on 2026-01-07: The first puzzle delivery for this year started with a delivery puzzle for me to solve: Coming home, I only knew that the delivery guy had handed over my package to one of the neighbors in the house, not which one. Having solved this using a brute force approach (not against the neighbor's door, just iterating through all neighbors!), I soon had a large cardboard box in my hand, and this contained a box in a box in a box: A nicely decorated wooden shipping box inside the cardboard one, and with metal latches. Inside the actual puzzle box itself, and it looks truly beautiful: Time Traveler's Artifact. The box itself, the packaging, and also some additional paperwork show a high level of attention to detail, which is great. I have met both the designer and a prototype of this puzzle at DCD last year, so I knew what kind and size of box I was going to receive, and also had a bit of a chat with the designer about some manufacturing details that led to this result. Would you believe that simple plywood laser cut boards with some 3D printed ornaments can look beautiful like this? I am looking forward to solving this box from a new designer from The Netherlands. It was playtested by some seasoned puzzlers before and they told me it was great and I should give it a try. Not sure whether I actually needed this kind of encouragement to order this puzzle for my collection. More puzzle fun for this year, adding to the still large solving backlog.
Added on 2026-01-04: Happy New Year 2026 to all puzzle friends! No new puzzles today with the first update of the year, but also some typical Sunday evening activity: Another visit to the Burr Zoo — Kakkerlak, read more details there!
As usual, starting this page rather short and empty, but all the older entries are in the update history page linked below.
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.