Hanayama Cast Starfish

Cast Starfish

I received the Hanayama Cast Starfish from Puzzle Master. I had seen the sea creature series on their website some time ago and was quite intrigued by how attractive they are (I am a bit of a Magpie - I like shiny stuff!!) I hadn't got any because I felt they were going to be too easy. After the shock I got with the Cast Elk and Rattle I decided that maybe an easy one might be a good idea. The Starfish is rated as a 2 out of 6 on the Hanayama scale and 6 out of 10 by Puzzle Master. It has been reviewed before by Brian here and by Gabriel here.

Like all the other Hanayama puzzles it comes beautifully packaged in a black box and held to card by ties. There is no solution in the package and if you would like one then you can get it here. The puzzle consists of a rather beautiful chrome starfish and locked onto it is a pair of golden mackerel which form a circle with a gap which is gripping the starfish. The aim is to separate the 2 pieces from each other.

Initially only 1 move is possible and the ring just slips upwards off the centre of the starfish. At this point it is not really obvious what to do next - the ring rotates around the starfish but where to go next is not immediately apparent. After a little while and a closer inspection of both sides of the puzzle there is a small "Ah-ha!" moment and it is now quite easy to do the next few steps. The path through it is linear - there are no real decisions to make and suddenly you come to a dead end. At this point I got stuck again and back-tracked to see whether I had missed anything. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing I ended up back at the dead end. A little more fiddling and off it came! A rather interesting little movement is required to finally separate it into its two component parts.

Cast Starfish - you can clearly see the 2 mackerel

 All in all this only took me about 10 minutes. Not particularly difficult (2 out of 6 is probably the correct rating) but really quite a nice couple of discovery moments. I have let some others play and they all solved it but seemed to enjoy the process. A hardened puzzler had no difficulty.

If you are like me and want a nice shiny puzzle then you won't be disappointed with this one.