Crooked 6 Piece Burr (Original Version)

Juno designed this puzzle 30 years ago but he never opened the original design to the public. It only appeared on a Japanese puzzle journal. He also put the design of its coordinated motion version on his old web page. The latter design was produced in a very small quantity by a handful makers as well as by Juno himself, who made about five of them at the time.

This original version consists of three identical pieces and three mirror image versions of the pieces.  At first glance, all the pieces look the same. Each piece is made up of two red-brown L-shaped blocks which are connected by a crank-shaped element and is zigzag shaped. This characteristic makes it difficult to identify the head and tail of the pieces. Although this puzzle is not very difficult compared to most of the other puzzle products we have produced, it is confusing to play with the puzzle and many people find that the last piece will not fit in to the assembled shape even though the orientation of each pieces looks right.

The puzzle is good to for the purpose to make fun of your puzzle friends and it becomes even more effective if you have two sets of the puzzle. If your friend is smart enough to solve the puzzle in a short time with the original 3 + 3 configuration, disassemble it, secretly swap one of their pieces with one of the mirror image pieces in your puzzle, and then ask the friend to try it again. The puzzle can be assembled with 2 + 4 or 4 + 2 configurations and it becomes another challenge.  

The puzzle is sold disassembled. The solution to this puzzle will be supplied upon request by Burr Tools file format.

Size: 72 mm x 72 mm x 72 mm

Number of pieces: 6

Material: Bubinga and Koto

Designer: Junichi Yananose (Juno)

Origin: Made in Australia

Ages: 6+