How This Guy Makes the World's Best Puzzle Boxes | Obsessed | WIRED

This is a

puzzle

box, how would you solve it? Let me show you that you know Kagan Sound, a multi-award winning woodworker and artist who has mastered the craft of designing and crafting intricate wooden

puzzle

boxes

. I made one that was a 5000 move box, but it took so many moves that it would simply wear out before you could successfully open it. You could open it several times, but the wooden pieces would simply wear away with no nails, just carefully interlocked wood and a little glue. King can construct eye-catching puzzles. That's a real challenge to solve. This is the currently locked hedgehog.

This is how it is unlocked. Each piece essentially has a notch and a slider underneath, they lock together until they get out of the way, so every time I move a piece. Unlock the next piece to move, which unlocks the next piece. My favorite feature about

this

is actually not all the sliding motions, but the way the lid comes off when you twist. I find it really amazing and really satisfying, it has a kind of tension that is really beautiful,

this

box is called hex flex and that's how you unlock it. This is a box set where I really pushed the boundaries of the material in an absolutely crazy direction.

The box was in the international puzzle party design competition and therefore took the two main prizes. making it the puzzle of the year 2023, so not only is it an amazing puzzle, it's an amazing box and each of these puzzles begins its life in the woodworking shop of Kagan's house, this is my woodworking space. I've been here for 6 years total. I have been a carpenter for 20 years. I have a degree in mathematics, but when it comes to woodworking, I am completely self-taught. All the tools in this area to process the wood and split it into smaller and smaller pieces here.

I am usually testing finishes many times, if I can determine a finish for a particular type of wood it will unlock a project in itself. Moving here, we have one of the current projects going on, it's called The Bookmark box and to solve it. You actually have to find the right place to press to get a marker out and then it's used to unlock the Box itself, so as the work flows in this direction, these are tools to cut little miniature tracks and notches into the work pieces as the Box comes together, I start taking more and more hand tools to do the fine tuning of the piece and then the main stage where everything happens in a project is really my work table here, as the this piece comes together, Look at something like this that has a final finish and works like a puzzle box.

This box is called a plus box. I named it after the edge pattern on the top that I created with two different colors of wood. The clicking mechanism is created. Entirely made of wood parts, it has a real wood spring that clicks into small indentations. I have an example of the wooden spring in a mechanism that rotates but accomplishes the same thing. The spring is this little piece of wood here with little notches cut into it and it will click when it gets to this notch area here and really all it is is just a piece of wood with a few lines cut in opposite directions and it has a springy quality to it. , so it's the same spring that's inside this box in several places Kagan's most recent creation, the café wall box is in progress in her workshop, ready to be updated.

I have the four basic walls of what will become my puzzle box. Now I have placed a large and very thick saw blade that will make notches in the wood and The Notches are going to create the joint that joins those two rectangles and creates the corner edge of these

boxes

. This cut must be at an angle so that it can make what is called a dovetail track, it is shaped like a trapezoid and has the function of housing a slider that is also a trapezoid, it cannot come off, it is a sliding part and It will remain attached to the box, but will have the ability to go back and forth, so it will only be one side of each. of the trapezoidal notches I'm going to cut the other side of that same notch now what I'm going to do is take these little pieces of wood with my notches and use this tool called a router to remove all the material that is between these two little notches which I made after machining notches into these pieces of wood, now I have a dovetail track after machining.

I'll have to go around myself with a chisel to trim away any fuzzy scraps of material or parts that the machine couldn't reach and turn it into a clean, precise dovetail track, this type of detailed woodworking is a real passion for Kagan, but his Love for puzzles began long before I built with wood. I had always loved puzzles, but when I first saw a puzzle box it was a whole different level. Of interest, the first ones I made was in high school and it didn't even have wood, it had cardboard, it was just a box that had a movement to open but you couldn't see it, it was a very secret sliding lid box. so I carried that thought with me into college and then I was dying to create this out of wood.

I'm almost prouder of myself for finding a place to build that box, it represents a lot to me. much more than just building, it was the path to finding the tools and the passion of wanting the design to be something real to solve the reel box. This works entirely on a principle in puzzles called coordinated movement. You have more than one moving part. and they all move relative to each other in such a way that they also move away from each other, so each one of these panels that is rectangular has a diagonal movement that goes towards the other, so this panel here wants to move diagonally towards this and then this one moves diagonally towards that one and when they all move diagonally at the same time it allows them to move in a simultaneous dance together this is the Rune Cube it's locked and this is how you solve it well, let's get stuck here we go, that's it that I missed, I'm getting confused.

I have it correct. There are a few puzzles I have that would take a while to unlock and this would qualify as one of those. There we go, so as I'm designing these puzzle boxes, it's a lot of it's just contemplative. I'm sitting there thinking about how these things move in my head. I don't really get too carried away drawing them in detail. I mainly just do very rough sketches, sometimes a sequence of movements, but I keep it very loose to give myself flexibility because the designs really change a lot, something like the illusion of changing pattern on the cafe wall actually came from the woodwork where I was creating an inlay piece and I was moving little parts around to make this inlay block and then I realized that they can be turned into other patterns but the amazing thing is that it is made up of five strips of wood and the strips are actually quite simple in comparison to the pattern, so with the lid of the box there are two of these sliders that change the patterns and What I like to do with a lot of my puzzles is ask someone who opens the box to create different patterns throughout the way to solve it.

The patterns start with two different colors of wood and I take these woods and glue them together. and I stack them all together and after they are glued, I take this block and then I machine rectangular blocks at an angle, these blocks are then arranged into a striped pattern and then they will be glued together after creating the pattern. a damp sponge I can wet the top of that wood a little bit, it just has the effect of making the wood more flexible for a plane and then iron it to flatten it and now I have a veneer and I'll just glue a strip of cherry on it, so this rotates from here to here, this side has the top and there are two notches cut into each side here and the top will then slide in like this to force someone to solve these different patterns, each of these controls is required sliders is attached to a little peg and the peg then has to go and navigate through a maze, so I made this cover that goes underneath and it will record each of the sliders and I'll make it so you have to progress. through the patterns to unlock it so it stays here.

I put together a box and finished it for this particular box. I opted to start with a different pattern and transform it into the pattern you saw before as the other one that slides sideways. down then you would slide the pattern and that would be the opening of that box, the maze plate itself is just push it to make it appear and I can see inside the box, as difficult to solve as some of Kagan's puzzles are . encouraged me to try and discover one for myself ok this move you're doing the right thing looking for what needs to move that's what it's all about oh no I'm stuck upside down oh this is really fun yes this is essentially a maze but made of rectangles so you're currently in the Maze oh I just backtracked I think I did that already getting lost in a maze is a big part of solving the puzzle box and remembering where you were recognizing new passages a lot of the fun uh oh I got stuck again so this is a bit psychological, I might have fooled you into thinking you didn't make any progress but I encourage you to keep moving forward on those tiles, you have actually achieved a lot, you have changed. the state of those tiles are now rearranged, so if things are rearranged that might mean something different can happen, oh, so maybe I can push it, oh, so that wasn't allowed to happen before, that's something new oh that's cool yeah when you're playing with a puzzle box you're always paying attention to how things change and it can be very subtle and it can make you think you're not making any progress but you actually are, As long as you keep exploring, you will achieve it.

I'll open it eventually it's really cool. I'm hooked and want to make six more. It is fun. That's why this box is called snake box. I took the block box concept a little further and used rectangles that I made with two different colors. wooden right now is a mosaic that I really like that I refer to as snakes and what it does is it changes the blocks uh around and it transforms into a whole new pattern that is very identifiable. If this pattern is created, then you will have solved the box and can open it no matter how many boxes Kagan builds or attempts.

His love for puzzles continues to grow. I think people love mechanical puzzles because they have a playful nature, they remind us to be children and interact with something on a tactile basis, but also be thoughtful and curious about the object. For me, the

best

puzzles are the ones you can play with for an hour and then hand to your 5-year-old to look at and solve. in 5 minutes I think kids are inherently good at solving puzzles and they're also inherently good at creative projects, they're inherently good at whatever everyone wants to be and I think that's really what gets in the way of people when they try. . to solve a puzzle they almost forget that they are still a child, there is a child inside them that is still there