Puzzle or Just Puzzley? – Treasure Box

What’s wrong with this world?  How come we don’t have puzzle gift registries?  Why do puzzle gifts have to be received with puzzled expressions and that awkward silence?  Followed by the well-meaning gift giver breaking the silence with, It’s a puzzle.  Of course it’s a puzzle, but … but ... but just … why?  Most people recognize this minefield for what it is and avoid it altogether.  No winners ever emerge from this minefield.  At best, you are a survivor.  If you’re really unlucky, you can even end up as collateral damage at a buddies party.  Jimmy said that his NPSO got him a nice puzzle that he just loves so I got you one too! (NPSO – Non-Puzzling Significant Other).  Your nicely constructed facade just fell over and flattened your soon to be ex-bud.  But sometimes, just sometimes, you get lucky.

Treasure Box is a laser-cut 3D Wooden Puzzle by ROKR.  I received it as a birthday gift from my mother.  It’s not a puzzle but it’s puzzley.  On the other hand, the instruction manual says that it’s a 3D Wooden Puzzle.  On the other, other hand, it’s more of a straight-forward combination look box with very nice mechanical movements featuring many gears.  Then again, if you have another hand to spare, it has a lot of parts that have to be put together, so maybe it really is a puzzle that would fall under the put-together category.  If that’s the case then I definitely cheated in solving it by closely following the 34 page solution manual.

It arrives as 158 very fine and precisely laser-cut pieces.  The pieces are unassembled and in fact are still nestled in the sheets that they are cut from.  6 sheets of pieces to be exact.  Everything is nicely labeled and the pieces are easy to separate from the sheets.  The connecting tabs are amazingly small, work well, and remnants are easy to sand down.  A small bit of wax is also included to help lubricate some of the moving parts.

The box consists of 2 compartments.  A small compartment secured by an iris opening and a slightly larger compartment secured by a combination lock and 2 keys.  Opening each compartment is separate from the other.  As a future improvement, I would suggest making the iris compartment large enough to hold the keys required to open the second compartment.  The iris compartment would also be a good place to put either the combination or a clue to the combination required for the other compartment instead of just writing it in the provided space on the bottom of the box.  Just sayin’.

The box does a nice job of being decorative and highlighting the geared mechanisms.  Many windows are included to provide views of internally moving gears.  I was really impressed with the quality and final appearance of the box.  I still find it amazing how well laser-cut pieces can be bent around corners.

One of the first steps is to put together a gear assembly and it was a good choice to lead with.  It was simple to build and at the same time very satisfying.  Putting the gears together, it seemed tight, but when it came time to test it, it was very smooth and impressive.

No glue is required but beware, I recommend NOT disassembling it as you may break pieces trying to take it apart.  How do I know.  I had to glue a spot that I over-stressed while trying to rearrange something.

Assembly is mostly following a straight path defined by the directions in the 34 page Assembly Instruction manual.  However, there is one fork in the road.  For the combination locking mechanism, you need to decide whether to make it truly lockable or to leave a bailout in the unlocking procedure in case you forget the combination or have an issue with the build.  I’m embarrassed to say that I chose to leave the bailout in and regret doing so.  If I had the opportunity to do it over, I would definitely remove it.  And as I mentioned earlier, you don’t really want to disassemble the puzzle to reconfigure it, which was what I was originally thinking when I made that decision.

The instructions do a good job of describing the construction process and include many drawings of the assemblies and sub-assemblies being built.  Various warnings are provided in the diagrams when needed such as when to apply wax, when to sand, and when to pay special attention to the orientation of the pieces to ensure that a laser-engraved side faces the proper direction.  There were only a couple of times where I said to myself, I don’t get it, and had to resort to thinking.  I’m recovered enough now to finally get this blog out a year after finishing the build.

Most things went together easily and extremely well but the use of tiny laser-cut pins was a pain.  They were difficult to hold in place, needed to be forced into holes too small for them in order to provide a permanent frictional fit, and occasionally broke due to the stress induced by the aforementioned difficulties.  Luckily, plenty of spares are provided.  Thank goodness for play-testing feedback.

Although I don’t consider Treasure Box to be a much of a puzzle, I thoroughly enjoyed building it and seeing how how the mechanisms were implemented.  Being the first model of this nature that I built (Yes, I did it before the Birthday Cake (Surprise! – Birthday Cake)), I found the building of a working 3D mechanical model from 2D laser-cut wood a fascinating process.

If you are not familiar with how a combination lock works, this is a great opportunity to see the mechanism in action as you build and test it.  Since you are required to set a combination, you get to see first hand how that is implemented.

And what about the idea of a puzzle gift registry?  I goggled it after drafting this blog and to my great surprise, I found one.  Brilliant Puzzles supports a Gift Registry capability!  A sure sign that there’s still some hope for the world.