Interlocked Kube and one with wheels

Kubus

I am a huge fan of interlocking cubes (different to burrs but great fun and often very challenging) and during a discussion with my friend Bernhard (you really should visit his store) this design by Yavuz Demirhan was discussed. Bernhard got permission to make 2 copies and one quickly came to me for a few Euros. Made of Maple and Padauk a few movements ends up with it split into 2 mirror halves:

Mirror images

and then into lots of pieces:

Stunning and very clever

Not difficult but very beautiful and also great for my collection which, thanks to Bernhard is rather huge!

It would be a shame to only get one cube at a time so during my discussions with Bernhard, I ordered a second one. This is the Two Wheeled Cube which was designed by a relative newcomer to puzzle design, William Hu. Bernhard is the world's foremost expert on the subgroup of interlocking puzzles which he has termed the Turning Interlocking Cubes (TICs) having written a series of 3 articles on their development published in the CFF journal. I was lucky enough to be his editor/translator for these articles and subsequently developed my own huge fascination for them.

Two Wheeled Cube

Exclusive to Bernhard's store the Two Wheeled Cube was made by the New Pelikan Workshop and arrived in the same package as Kubus. This is beautifully made out of Robinia. It took me about 10 minutes to find how to remove the first piece - so good was the tolerance and so well hidden the pieces. Having removed the first piece the remainder come apart quite quickly leaving 2 identical "wheels" looped inside each other and requiring multiple rotations to dismantle (Level 1.1.1.2.8)

See the Wheels?

I scrambled the pieces and left them for a while and then singularly failed to put them together - Burrtools was no use so it was going to be a long haul to work it out! A further hour of play (due to the fact that the wheels can be interlocked from 2 different angles) finally lead to a huge sigh of relief!

Whilst you can't get Kubus for yourself, it is definitely worthwhile buying the Two Wheeled Cube whilst Bernhard has stock.

As a special treat for you today I will produce 2 articles - I'm feeling generous! Or is that.......talkative? Keep a look out for the next article very soon.