Medallion

Puzzle: Medallion
Brand: Hanayama
Inventor: Oscar van Deventer

ST: ~15 min

Medallion

This is the Medallion puzzle, invented by the puzzle genius Oscar van Deventer and brought to me by Puzzlemaster. Thanks Puzzlemaster for sending me this puzzle free for review.

The Back

The Medallion was made out of anodized stainless steel, excellent quality as Hanayama puzzles always were. It was conveniently palm-sized, having a good weight when held. Being a medal themed puzzle, it was shaped around one from top to bottom - I think it just looks brilliant with the Gold & Silver anodized plates and it's medal shape! The slot on the top was possibly meant for inserting a strip of ribbon to wear, though I for one thing wouldn't be wearing it anytime soon.

Medallion Opened

This is a sequential movement puzzle (5.5 in the Jerry Slocum classification if you are precise), and it's goal was to navigate the pins through the two plates until they reach the holes at which point the puzzle would come apart. The puzzle was navigated by rotating the two disks and pushing/pulling of the two halfs of the medal. This is one of the more unique maze puzzles to solve as there aren't two mazes, but four! In order to move a pin in it's maze one of the adjacent mazes would also have to be move into the correct position, which requires another maze to be positioned. In the solving progress one would have to look after each maze, flipping back and forth to get things right. To puzzle veterans it'll be a breeze, but even the non-puzzlers would be able to solve this with a bit of persistence.

Medallion Disassembled fully

My first opening probably took me around 5 minutes (though mostly with blind luck), then I had a few more tries before I got fluent with the opening. The puzzle was not overly hard-when one first plays with the puzzle it seems complicated, but you will find that as the solving goes, the movements flow along. Up until today, I still never bothered to memorize the exact steps, so each new solving was a bit of challenge, even if just a bit, and I throughly enjoyed opening it every time.

All in all another great Oscar design with excellent Hanayama quality - for my two cents, when those meet together, you just can't pass it pass up. It is for sale at Puzzlemaster here for about $20 U.S dollars.