Hanayama Cast Puzzle: Cast Marble

Puzzle: Cast Marble

Brand: Hanayama

Inventor: Bram Cohen & Oscar Van Deventer

ST (solve time): ~30 m

Cast Marble

Ok, this is my first blog post so I think I would just start reviewing with my first puzzle. This is the Cast Marble, shaped like a round marble trapped inside a square. At first sight it might seem impossible to get the ball out, but after further examination you'll find that it's actually made of four pieces-two formed the outside cube, and two formed the steel ball. The puzzle had a nice metal finish, which you can tell by how smooth the parts turn and move along.

Before I discovered the Marble, my interest in puzzles were really inactive, since I'm never so into puzzles and haven't did a lot of research (Which I'm starting to do now). I've thought that puzzles were boring wire stuff that ended up with a jumbled mess on your hand, but the Marble in a store really caught up my attention. Since it has a reasonable price, I just bought it-Which proves to be a right choice. Now I'm really exploring the puzzle world in a full new prospective! Thank you Marble!

Opened

The first thing you'll notice when you opened the package is that the two outer parts of the puzzle tends to move in a sideway motion. Don't get trapped! It does let you see and understand the puzzle better-but has nothing to do with the solution. Since I haven't had a puzzle in years, I fiddled with the puzzle with 0% experience. Finally after five minutes I put it down and looked at the [SPOILER] package box for hints. And I did find one indeed! Using the hint, I was able to solve it in a fairly quick time. The solution was precise, but one was able to find it using logic. Looking at others' experience with Marble, I found that even if anyone is able to solve it, they tend to forget how they opened it, thus having trouble in assembling. The same thing happened to me-It isn't until ten minutes later did I put it back into it's original position. Also, the four pieces were hard to manipulate, so usually in the first few times of reassembling another person was needed to help assemble the puzzle. After some practice one can be able to assemble the puzzle by himself. (Thanks Louis!)

Overall a fun puzzle-I recommand this to everybody. A really attractive one on a bookshelf. The only letdown is that the outer part tends to catch fingerprints, and the paint wears off, so may the cleaning cloth be with you!

I brought it from a store in my city, but you can buy it from Puzzlemaster here.