Amazingly Non-Burrish – Gravitational Burr

Yes, yes, it looks like a burr but when you get into it you’ll start to realize the gravity of the situation – it’s amazingly non-burrish.  So if burrs aren’t your thing, don’t worry.  If you can pull the contents out of the belly of a crocodile, you can solve this one as well.

Gravitational Burr was designed by Junichi Yananose (Juno) from Pluredro and made using American Black Walnut.  It consists of 6 standard burr pieces that look like they have been made from wood infested by boring insects.  However, the boring traces were intentionally added to provide a path for a ball bearing to meander along a dynamically changing path.  

Since it arrives assembled, the first task is to take it apart.  Of course, all those boring paths are hidden and you have to blindly embark on this journey.  About halfway through, you can get a good look at the amazing interior and start to deduce what needs to occur to get to the finish line.  Unfortunately as I age, I find that my deducing is reducing.  But deducing I went as I tried to hold a dynamically rotating piston-driven image in my head.  Needless to say, there was a lot of backing up and restarting involved.  And lots of Oh, I’m back here again moments.

When I finally navigated the path to the end, I was super impressed that the ball bearing didn’t just come dropping out.  Juno designed it so that the ball bearing would be secure when it came to disassembling the pieces.  And this attention to detail is what makes Pluredro’s puzzles so special.

Once apart, you can get a good look at all the pieces to see exactly how they interact with each other.  You will also notice a compartment that could be used to store something inside. This internal space can be used to justify it as a puzzle box for those desperate collectors that only purchase puzzle boxes.  Or maybe as a poke to those that collect burrs and refuse to buy puzzle boxes.  I suspect that some people received it with a loaf of bread inside.  The puzzle description indicates that you can store the ball bearing in this cavity to inactivate the maze and reduce the number of moves from 56 to 2.  However, I wouldn’t recommend it since there is nothing to secure it and it will eventually fall out and roll into some dark and mysterious place where things go to never return.

Since this really isn’t a burr challenge, it’s not difficult to get the pieces back into the starting position for the return trip.  To get you started, 2 pieces have matching magnets to provide a nice tactile feel to the puzzle and the other pieces just seem to fall into place to provide the maze required for the ball bearing.  You just need to determine the order to add the pieces, which isn’t difficult.

Surprisingly, I found the reassembly more difficult than the disassembly.  Knowing and doing are really two different things.  Event though I had a mental image of the entire dynamic map, the blind traversal of the path took several tries before I had it back to the beginning.  Again, I was impressed with the design and how it avoided being reset at the mid-point.