Maze Box Puzzle with Interchangeable Mazes

Boys and Girls,

 

I hate it when I have a sober moment and the mind decides to think… after all, I’m too pig headed to drop the idea and find myself compelled to follow it through.

 

The vocals out of that Karen’s mouth about my JMBP (Japanese Maze Box Puzzle), still regurgitate in my dreams and even raising the degree of difficulty did bugger all to appease my ego.  This all had me begging SWMBO to fetch me another cask in the middle of the night.

Naturally she told me where to go, so while I was circling the fridge like a starving white pointer,

 

 

I started thinking SketchUp and gravitated towards my computer.

 Completely rehashed the inner box/base of the JMBP to permit the interchange of the maze part of the puzzle,

 

The trick of this new design was to devise a way to captivate the interchangeable mazes… to prevent them lifting up when the guide pin gets caught on a dead end and the solver gets a tad frustrated.

 I created a “key” in the base that can be turned into a slot on the maze to lock it in.

To permit an opening in the inner box/base top, I had to devise some braces for the top… finger joints came to the rescue… if only to provide a greater glue surface area.

 

A grid of guide lines were laid out in SketchUp, and provided I kept within the confinements (allowing for the slide - blue) 

it was open to imagination for whatever maze was created.  It just had to fit centered on the blue backing plate.


These are the 3 mazes (and included instructions) for each set,

While the paths may look similar for each different maze, it's the dodgy dead ends that contribute to the level of difficulty... remembering that  on the difficult level people are trying to solve blind and only by feel.

Now all that looked good on paper, but lets put it into reality...

I should have flocked the base… I am a naughty, naughty boy and should be reprimanded,

 

The cutout maze was separated from the waste,

and glued to the backer/slide using alignment dowels/toothpick

which were subsequently flush trimmed.

 

The spare/idle mazes can be stored inside the inner box/base,

 

Shame I don’t have grand kids or artsy-fartsy friends, as I reckon these waste pieces could yield some interesting creations,

 

The new, more  complex maze is ready to be posted to the Karen, woth the solution path, 

as she is not invited back empty handed (without a few cask-o-vinos).

 

Anyone sick of reading the above, can bypass it by trying to watching my “build” video,

Again I’ll take the opportunity to mention that all my stuff can be downloaded from this link.