Customer Reviews

Geometric Puzzle Design

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book covers a large number of puzzle designs, most due to the author. Most of these puzzles have become sought-after classics. The puzzles are mostly 3D interlocking burrs, but there also included are 2D designs, sliding block puzzles, and non-interlocking 3D puzzles. The author also talks about how to build puzzles, characteristics of wood, etc.

I am not a puzzle builder, but enjoyed the book immesely. The author is an excellent writer and his musings about symmetry and general design considerations I found fascinating. Solutions in general are lacking and much is left to the ingenuity of the reader to keep the mystery of solving these puzzles fresh.

Although you can download the OLD EDITION of this book, I enjoy the physical copy for perusal. Highly recommended. Look for the old edition under the title "The Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections".

Written by veteran woodworker and expert wood puzzle designer Stewart Coffin, Geometric Puzzle Design is a one-of-a-kind guide to creating intriguing, three-dimensional wooden puzzles. Special techniques for creating oddly shaped small puzzle pieces accurately and safely, recommendations for drafting one's own original designs, mathematical concepts that can be applied as engineering tools, and much more fill this original craftsman's manual. A "must-have" for intermediate to advanced woodworkers seeking to create truly brain-teasing gifts.

Coffin does it again, with the quintessential wooden puzzle builder's guide. If you're fortunate enough to have previous works by Stewart, keep in mind that this is an updated version, so a lot will be repetitive. Then again, if you have the previous version, you're probably a Puzzle Junkie, in which case the updates alone are probably worth it.
If I were going to be stuck on a desert island...and there were trees, and I had a knife and a sharpening stone...then this would be the One Book I'd want.

as a long time collector and producer of wooden puzzles is this new puzzlebook an absolute Must for every puzzle interested people; although I have all Coffin`s former editions this new review about his designs is usefull for collectors as well as for producers of puzzles;

Puzzles made from high quality wood are not only challenging to solve, they also are works of art. Coffin is clearly a master of the wood tools and in this book he describes some of his most imaginative creations. He deliberately does not give detailed shop-style drawings of the puzzles; he leaves the understanding of the mode of their creation to the interested reader.
My perspective is that of someone interested in the mental challenge of puzzles, I am completely lacking in the ability to create fine structures from wood. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by his explanations of the woodworking tactics used to create the puzzles.
The enormous breadth of the puzzles is something that will fascinate both the woodworker as well as the puzzle aficionado. Most of the puzzles are complex three-dimensional structures made up of interconnected parts where a few are key to maintaining the integrity of the structure. The puzzles go both directions, from the pieces to the whole and from the whole down to the pieces. In page after page he demonstrates puzzles and often points out that children generally are able to (de)construct them.
It is a rare occasion when a book is written that can appeal just as much to the master woodworker as it can to the mathematician. This is such a case; teachers of mathematics from elementary through advanced college will find many educational tools in this book. Nothing could please me more than to find one of these puzzles in my Christmas stocking.

Book is well written. Theories are great. I would have prefered more instruction on making the puzzles rather than just the theory.