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This limited edition puzzle comes apart into 3 pieces and requires 2 mazes to be solved simultaneously in order to separate the pieces!
Medallion is another interesting take-apart puzzle designed by Oskar van Deventer and produced by Hanayama. The folks at Puzzle Master were kind enough to send me a copy to review. Thanks!
As with many of Oskar's puzzles for Hanayama, this one is a maze, perhaps more clearly so than some of his other work. However, as you would expect, there's a bit of a twist. The way you navigate the maze is by rotating the metal plate and sliding the left and right sides of the medal in and out.
This would all be fairly straightforward, except there's another, different maze on the opposite side! So you have to flip back and forth, figuring out how to proceed through both mazes simultaneously, which often requires doubling back on one side so you can advance the other.
There's nothing tricky about this one, it just takes a bit of time and patience to figure out what moves are required. That's a great thing about a puzzle like this, it is all fairly logical, but you still get a good feeling of accomplishment from figuring it out, since it is certainly not easy. This would be good to hand to somebody who has patience as long as they feel like they're making progress.
Hanayama version of Marcel Gillen's original Chess Piece Puzzle designs .
Being cast, each piece has a nice weight to it, and they have been finished with Hanayama's trademark high-quality chrome plating.
A limited edition of 100 gold plated sets were also made and sold at IPP35 in Canada.
They all have their name engraved on the base. The size of the pieces have been reduced compared with the originals. The King (the tallest) stands at just under 11cm.
Modifications were made to how some of the designs work, but these are certainly for the better. For example, one of the original designs had a slight tendency to lock itself up......permanently. This problem has been completely solved in the Hanayama version. The overall solving process for each of the pieces is either identical or very close to how Marcel designed to originals to work.