My Burrs

I have collected many burr and burr-like puzzles over the years. They include false burrs such as the three piece burr which actually is more of a kumiki puzzle than a burr, to a great grandpapachuck which has 150 pieces. Here are a few of my favorites.  I'll add more in other blogs to give you a flavor of the variety.

"Leaning Tower of Altekruse" by Stewart Coffin

"Decemburr" by Brian Young, aka Mr Puzzle

"Vertigo" by Pentangle

"Windmill Burr", designed by Junichi Yananose, crafted by Brian Young, aka Mr Puzzle

"Visible Burr" Designed by Bill Cutler, crafted by Brian Young

"The Big Crystal"

My Favorite 15 Puzzle Sites

My collection of puzzles grew once I began to travel to countries in Europe and had an opportunity to find special stores, like Hamley's in London.  But the real passion blossomed with the growth of the internet and tools such as Ebay that helped create a worldwide marketplace.  The best puzzles are not mass produced, and are not in your local stores, and are often made in limited production by skilled craftsmen worldwide.  The internet has been a way to share information and bind together a worldwide community of creators, collectors and enthusiasts.  Though my list is long (a few hundred links) and in seemingly constant flux, here is my attempt to list and organize some of my favorite puzzle sites.

Okay I give up... this is a taste of the sites.  Many others have made a job of sorting and organizing them and I will not attempt to duplicate there feat.  I actually went back through this list and reduced the number of entries on this list three times, to give you my top 15.   The title of this blog started as my "Top puzzle sites", then "My top 40 puzzle sites", and finally "My top 15".  Lol   Happy surfing!

Resources:

The best puzzle site, without equal, has been Puzzle World at http://www.johnrausch.com/puzzleworld/.  This site was created by John Rausch, and is a fantastic collection of images that spans the collection of puzzles.  Although it has not been heavily updated in recent years, it is still a repository of the best work available over the last few decades.

Puzzle Place is the best wiki out there that I have found, and is continually updated.  Anything you want to know is probably on or linked from this site. The gallery alone has 2300 puzzle images. I think this is the current best source of information. : http://www.puzzle-place.com/wiki/Main_Page

The Puzzle Museum:  http://www.puzzlemuseum.com/

IBM's Burr Site: http://www.research.ibm.com/BurrPuzzles/

It is all about the geometry: http://www.puzzleman.com/

And More Geometry, in this case VRML: http://www.polyhedra.jp/index-e.html


Puzzles for Sale: 

In my opinion Mr Puzzle, of Australia, is one of the best sources for quality burr puzzles.  Brian and Sue Young have given me years of wonderful service and fantastic puzzles, especially the limited editions that Brian has made over the years.  http://www.mrpuzzle.com.au/  You will see in a future blogs that they have played a special role in my inspiration.

Bill Cutler's Burr site, which is one of the best designers and craftsman in the market world:  http://home.comcast.net/~billcutler/index.html 

I first discovered Pentangle Puzzles in Hamleys of London, before the internet:  http://www.pentanglepuzzles.co.uk/

On of the best sources for Kumiki Puzzles:  http://www.cleverwood.com/

A great site for reselling your puzzles and open discussions: http://www.cubicdissection.com/

Puzzle Software:

This free software has really improved over the years.  if you are a serious designer or enthusaist you have to have this tool.  and of course please donate to the cause. : http://burrtools.sourceforge.net/

Blogs

My new favorite puzzle blog, Brian's Damn Puzzle Blog, has lead me to many other bloggers on puzzles: http://mechanical-puzzles.blogspot.com/

Puzzle Organizations:

The Nederlandse Kubus Club or "Dutch Cubist Club" is a club of puzzle-enthusiasts founded in 1981. : http://cff.helm.lu/

Puzzling Art

Great bronze puzzling sculptures.  A fantastic example of digital metal printing:
http://bulatov.org/

The Six-Piece Burr Puzzle

1928, Bruce Publishing Company

The root of the burr puzzle is the six-piece burr puzzle.  An interlocking puzzle of 6 rods, with 2 on each axis at 90 degrees to each other.  The puzzle is known to date back to the 18th century and was produced in both Asia and Europe.  Six-piece burrs are also documented in the Bestelmeier Toy catalog from 1803.  According to the IBM research the first US patent was issued in 1917 for a burr puzzle.  Edwin Wyatt published Puzzles in Wood in 1928 documenting the construction of multiple burrs, and this book is still in reprint today.  Although burrs now can be found with odd solutions, ropes, magnets and pegs to complicate them, the purist puzzler knows the best are the simplest, in high precision notched wood.  Bill Cutler is the modern father of the burr puzzle having written his paper in 1978 that showed that there were 25 possible notchable pieces that can be put together in 314 ways.  A notchable piece  can be cut on a table saw with no inside corners.  Once you expand the concept to non notchable pieces, which require a chisel to notch and inside corner, there are 369 pieces in total and the possible solutions escalates to 119,979 ways to make a solid burr.  in all these cases a solid burr is one where there are no empty internal spaces in the assembled puzzle.  Once you begin to analyze non-solid burrs, as Bill Cutler did in the 80s through the mid 90s, the combinations become astronomical numbering about 35 billion and requiring multiple moves to even separate the first piece.  The masters of today's Burr puzzles, still include Bill Cutler, joined by Stewart Coffin, Philippe Dubois, and Peter Marineau.  Many other have now come up with wonderful designs expanding from the simple six-piece burr  to ones that are 6 by 6 by 6 and some that are not even rectilinear.

IBM's Site at http://www.research.ibm.com

A few sites tell the story of the 6 piece Burr, but in my opinion, none is better than IBM site: http://www.research.ibm.com/BurrPuzzles.  I first discovered this site as a fantastic way to understand the history, the mathematical terminology and the huge variety of Burr puzzles, all made up from six rods.  I believe the site was an early experiment in cloud computing, which I find very purposeful and successful.  This predates the wilder experiments such as "Watson" which many of you might be familiar with from Jeopardy.  This site has not only the history, some of which I referenced above, but all the definitions and detailed descriptions of the mathematical nomenclature.  The site also has a burr calculator to help you design your own puzzles, or even solve the ones you have that you simply cannot figure out how to put back together.  It is the first stop for any novice burr puzzler, and the reference that everyone still uses, although many of the links are outdated because IBM does not maintain the site.a quick Google search will fill in the gaps.  and i will cover some of my other favorite sites in a future blog.