Curly Burr N8
Designer: Frans De Vreugd
This puzzle measures: 64 mm x 64 mm x 64 mm
Material: Maple/Merbau
Kevin Sadler wrote about it:
“This has been beautifully made with Maple and Merbau. Frans is an interesting designer – he is not prolific but everything he designs has something very different from the usual run of the mill burr designs. There are either interesting shapes or, more usually, interesting ways that the pieces interact and move. The Curly Burr N8 is definitely designed along those lines…it looks like a standard 6 piece burr and, indeed, there are 6 pieces, but they form frames that interlock inside each other along the same axis as well as interlocking along each perpendicular axis. The upshot of this is that the pieces need to move apart from each other before any axial movements can occur. This makes it much more fun and much more mind-bending to solve. There are a few blind ends but not along long pathways and then the first piece comes apart after just 8 very odd moves. After this, the remainder dismantles sequentially. The moves are so unusual that despite paying proper attention to what I had done, I could not reassemble it without Burrtools. I think that even the burr aficionados amongst you will find the reassembly from scratch a real challenge due to the unusual way the burr pieces move.”