A spirited journey through the world of collectible artisan puzzles
Pairing craft cocktails with crafty puzzles
Nuclear Option
In the 1930’s, Columbia University physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi set out to determine the nuclear spin and associated magnetic moment of atoms in his molecular beam laboratory.
MRI puzzle by Benjamin Heidt
Brass Lighthouse
Whenever I am visiting a destination where there is a lighthouse, I find a way to fit that into the journey and see it with my own eyes. So here we are again taking a little tour, or detour, to another.
Donay Apple
Last summer I spent a puzzling “sabbatical” teaching classes at the University of Berkeley. The course didn’t take place in sunny California, however; rather, it was located in the English Midlands county of Leicestershire, where master turner John Berkeley resides.
CORVI 2020
Of course everyone responds to a pandemic in their own way. If you happen to be an Australian dentist with lots of drills and no teeth in sight, you start dreaming about a virus puzzle.
Donay Bottle
“I never see the glass half empty because I drink out the bottle” - Ellen DeGeneres
Puzzle Balls
The “puzzle ball” is certainly one of the oldest known examples of a puzzling object. These ivory spheres were hand carved, with freely moving inner spheres nesting one inside the other.
Berkeley Lighthouse
“Lighthouses are endlessly suggestive signifiers of both human isolation and our ultimate connectedness to each other” - Virginia Woolf
Cannon Puzzles
“The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Castle Money Box
Treen Castle is not a castle, it’s a jagged rocky promontory of cliffs that sit on the edge of Cornwall, England in the town of Treen.
Barrel and Ball
Small wooden household and domestic objects were referred to as “treen” in the nineteenth century and earlier, a word derived literally from “of a tree”.
Donay Pear
We’re taking a sabbatical abroad this summer at Boxes and Booze to visit England and shine the spotlight on a very special wood turner named John Berkeley.
Humpty Egg
Let’s start simply, by mentioning the fact that the talented Dr. Stephen Chin, diabolical dentist by day and wily woodturner by weekend, is rather fond of making puzzle eggs.
Ze Genie Bottle
Sometimes, it’s rather useful to have a genie lamp handy. It may not actually produce any genies, or grant wishes, but you never know. Stephen Chin, the master of the lathe, worked some impressive magic with his “Ze Genie Bottle”, which he produced for the 2017 International Puzzle Party.
Drunken Dancing Fraulein
I’m turning upside down with this post as well and channeling my friendly dentist from down under, that madman of mechanical mischief, the Leonardo with a lathe, puzzle maker Stephen Chin.