Boxes and Booze 5/21/22 Boxes and Booze 5/21/22

Ice Capades

It’s getting hot here in Houston Texas, so let’s crank the AC and head to the local ice house for a few cold drinks.

Boxes and Booze 5/14/22 Boxes and Booze 5/14/22

Into the Vortex

The vortex theory [of the atom] is only a dream. Itself unproven, it can prove nothing, and any speculations founded upon it are mere dreams about dreams. - Lord Kelvin

Boxes and Booze 4/30/22 Boxes and Booze 4/30/22

Dutch Treat

Dutch puzzle designer Benno Baatsen (nom de puzzle de Grote) is pretty pleased with his newest creation, a nod to his homeland and a combination of many of his favorite puzzle styles.

Boxes and Booze 4/9/22 Boxes and Booze 4/9/22

Lift Off!

Spaceflight historians acknowledge the three “fathers” of rocketry who helped launch human beings into space.

Boxes and Booze 4/2/22 Boxes and Booze 4/2/22

Pirate’s Compass

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.” — Mark Twain, ‘Life On The Mississippi’.

Boxes and Booze 3/19/22 Boxes and Booze 3/19/22

Piston

Louis Sullivan was the pioneering American architect of the Chicago “Prairie School” style which embraced his famous tenet “form follows function”.

Boxes and Booze 3/12/22 Boxes and Booze 3/12/22

Angry Walter

“The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” ― Isaac Asimov, I, Robot

Boxes and Booze 2/19/22 Boxes and Booze 2/19/22

Burr Bot

Burr Bot is a hybrid puzzle box and burr puzzle which also incorporates sequential discovery elements. For a non-burr puzzle enthusiast, it’s also an approachable and addictive introduction to the genre that manages to be both seriously challenging and incredibly fun.

Boxes and Booze 2/5/22 Boxes and Booze 2/5/22

SunDial

Jesse Born and Robert Yarger, two of the world’s best puzzle box artists, have created a modern masterpiece of mechanical secrets.

Boxes and Booze 1/22/22 Boxes and Booze 1/22/22

Box of the Celts

How do you fit all the “Gauls, Celtiberians, Gallaecians, Galatians, Britons, Gaels and their offshoots” (Wikipedia) into a little box? That stunt would take some gall, I imagine.

Boxes and Booze 1/15/22 Boxes and Booze 1/15/22

The Tippenary Mystery Tour

Goodbye, Piccadilly, Farewell, Leicester Square! It's a long long way to Tipperary, But my heart's right there. – Jack Judge and Harry Williams, 1912

Boxes and Booze 1/1/22 Boxes and Booze 1/1/22

Abraham’s Well

Beersheba, in the Ottoman Empire at the time, was the site of a pivotal battle in World War I.

Boxes and Booze 12/11/21 Boxes and Booze 12/11/21

Bassackwards Box

Abraham Lincoln might have appreciated the newest creation from Ryan Hughbanks, his finest effort to date and one of the most enjoyable puzzle boxes of the year, in my humble opinion.

Boxes and Booze 10/16/21 Boxes and Booze 10/16/21

Chess Box

Fans of Benno de Grote have come to expect a lot more than meets the eye inside his hand made laser cut puzzles.

Boxes and Booze 10/9/21 Boxes and Booze 10/9/21

Sequential Discovery Cubed Box

It’s adventure time again as we head to the outback and visit with the brilliant Junichi Yananose from Australia. Juno is well known for his complex and unusual interlocking puzzle designs which come in many styles, shapes and sizes.

Boxes and Booze 9/25/21 Boxes and Booze 9/25/21

Blah Box

What a meal we’ve had! I hope you’ve saved room for dessert because it’s definitely worth the calories.

Boxes and Booze 9/11/21 Boxes and Booze 9/11/21

Dabbit Invasion!

This story arguably starts back in 1892, in a German satire magazine called Fliegende Blätter (flying leaves / loose sheets), where the first published illustration of these ambiguous animals appeared with the caption “Rabbit and Duck”. Was it a rabbit, or a duck?

Boxes and Booze 7/3/21 Boxes and Booze 7/3/21

CORVI 2020

Of course everyone responds to a pandemic in their own way. If you happen to be an Australian dentist with lots of drills and no teeth in sight, you start dreaming about a virus puzzle.

Boxes and Booze 6/5/21 Boxes and Booze 6/5/21

Small Cabin

Benno de Grote has been tinkering with his puzzling ideas since he was a little boy, and despite limited access to materials and tools, has been able to produce quite a number of puzzle boxes which many will recognize.

Boxes and Booze 5/8/21 Boxes and Booze 5/8/21

Portal

According to Arthur C. Clarke, the Monolith ought to be an evolutionary accelerator. I’ve always thought of it as more of a “portal”. But it turns out that there is another portal, and perhaps all of this messing around in space ships has been a colossal waste of time. Why take the space highway when you can just teleport from point A to B in an instant?

A spirited journey through the world of collectible artisan puzzles