Tree On A Box Puzzle? Quick Answer

Chest that can only be opened by solving a puzzle

Japanese puzzle box, closed

Japanese puzzle box, open

A puzzle box (also called a secret box or a box of tricks) is a box that can only be opened by solving a puzzle. Some require just a simple move, and others require a series of discoveries.

Modern puzzle boxes developed from the furniture and jewelery boxes with secret compartments and hidden openings known since the Renaissance. Puzzle boxes made for entertainment first appeared in Victorian England in the 19th century[1][2] and as tourist souvenirs in the Interlaken region of Switzerland[3] and the Hakone region of Japan in the late 19th and early 19th centuries of the 20th century.[4] Boxes with secret openings appeared as souvenirs at other tourist destinations including the Amalfi Coast, Madeira and Sri Lanka in the early 20th century,[5][6] although these were mostly “one-trick” traditions. Chinese cricket boxes are another example of intricate boxes with secret openings.[7]

During and after the two world wars, interest in puzzle boxes waned. The art was revived in the 1980s by three pioneers of this genre: Akio Kamei in Japan,[8] Trevor Wood in England, and Frank Chambers in Ireland.[9] There are currently a number of artists making puzzle boxes, including the Karakuri Group in Japan founded by Akio Kamei, US puzzle box specialists Robert Yarger and Kagen Sound, and a number of other designers and puzzle makers making puzzle boxes around the world World. [11]

Clive Barker’s horror novella The Hellbound Heart (later filmed, Hellraiser, followed by numerous original sequels) revolves around the fictional Lemarchand Box, a puzzle box that, if tampered with, opens the gates to another dimension.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

^ Hoffmann, P (1893). Puzzles old and new. London: Warn. OL25200228M. ^ Sanders, W.; Sanders, C. (1999). Pocket Matchsafes: Reflections on Life and Art. Atglen: skipper. ^ Arenski, J.; Daniels, S.; Daniels, M. (2005). Swiss carvings 1820-1940. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club. Provides details on the Swiss carving tradition but does not cover trick boxing. ^ Iwasaki, S. (2003). Karakuri works in Hakone & Odawara. Odawara: Karakuri Creation Group. ^ Hajek, P. (2008). “Madeira Puzzle Boxes”. CFF. 75:3-6. ^ Hajek, P. (2012). “Sri Lankan carvings with secret compartments”. CFF. 89:21-23. ^ Hajek, P. (2011). “Chinese cricket boxes with secret opening”. CFF. 85:31-34. ^ Yoshigahara, N. (1995). Akio Kamei artworks. Karakuri. ^ Hajek, P. (2008). “Frank Chambers: Obituary”. IPP. 27:123. ^ Karakuri Creation Group, eds. (2008). Evolving Karakuri Box. Odawara: Karakuri Creation Group. ^ Hajek, P. (2021). Enter if you can: The Art of Puzzle Boxes. London: Artemis Press.

What is a Japanese Puzzle Box (Himitsu Bako)?

Japanese puzzle boxes (also called secret or trick boxes) are six-sided boxes with a hidden opening that can only be opened after you solve a puzzle. They come with varied designs and in a variety of different designs. They are also graded according to difficulty. There is a hidden room in the box that you need to get to. Usually there are no drawers. To get inside, you’ll need to make a series of sequential adjustments to the outside of the box to crack the mystery.

Puzzle box design

In the Hakone Mountains – the region of Japan said to have invented the puzzle boxes – there is a very large variety of trees. This led to the wide variety of wood colors found in Japanese puzzle boxes. The highly detailed, intricate geometric patterns used are called yosegi-zuiku, a wood mosaic more commonly seen in handicrafts.

This work by Yosegi-Zuiku is like a parquet floor. It is made by assembling different layers of different types of wood into a pattern and then slicing them thinly. A tough varnish is then applied to add shine and of course protection to the finished item.

You have to go back to 1870 to find the first ones made. Three craftsmen, Ohkawa-san, Okiyama-san, and Kikukawa-san created the first puzzle box incorporating Yosegi-Zaiku design, thus creating the first Himitsu-Bako, or Japanese puzzle box.

As early as 1984, both the name Himitso-Bako and the design Yosegi-Zaiku received the designation National Traditional Handicraft from the rulers of Japan. Today, less than 100 people make authentic Japanese puzzle boxes in Hakone.

How to make a Japanese puzzle box?

First of all, it’s really not easy. For real. It’s the incredible balancing act between tightness and looseness and understanding the different levels of friction that different woods offer. Too loose and it’s not a challenge. Too tight and impossible to untie. Mastering the construction of an excellent puzzle box is not something to be taken lightly.

The crate makers work on one crate at a time and are responsible for every aspect. The first task is to choose the woods to use. These will be left for seasoning before work begins. The wood is then cut, planed and sawn to perfection and the various parts are assembled to assemble the Himitsu bako. All aspects of the box are thoroughly tested to ensure they are up to date. The final step is to apply the Yosegi Zaiku design to the outside of the puzzle box. There are no textbooks or online courses to learn from. This is done the old-fashioned way. You start as an apprentice and the art is passed on to you by a master craftsman. There are very few suppliers of high-quality, authentic Himitsu bako because it’s so difficult to make!

How to solve Japanese puzzle boxes

First of all, you need to know something about Sun and Steps. The sun is a unit of measurement used in the construction of Japanese puzzle boxes. That’s the length of a box. A sun is about 3 cm tall. Thus, a 4 Sun Box would be 12cm. The norm is that a puzzle box is in the range of 3 to 6 suns.

The steps indicate how many steps are required to solve the puzzle. Most are between 4 and 66 steps – although the record breaker is a whopping 1536 steps. The most important thing to know about the steps is that they are linear and must be completed in order to access the inside of the box. The number of steps does not correlate with the difficulty of the puzzle. For more advice see: How to open a Japanese puzzle box. Much luck!

See more puzzles

The puzzle box is the laboratory device invented by E.L. Thorndike to study instrumental, or operant, conditioning in cats. Hungry cats were placed individually in a box that could be opened by the animal using a device such as a latch. Once out of the box, the cats were given access to food (a positive reinforcer). Thorndike found that the more training attempts were made, the less time it took the cats to get out of the box. He described this strengthening of the bolt opening as documentation of the law of action.

This was the first experimental apparatus to study operant behavior, later followed by the invention of the Skinner box.

Glossary index

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Article overview

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To play with a Rubik’s Cube, rotate the cube’s segments until all the colors are mixed. To solve the puzzle, position the cube so that the white center piece is on top. Rotate the top, middle and bottom layers both horizontally and vertically and move the pieces around until a white cross appears over the top, then complete the white corners. Next complete the middle layer which should make it easy to move the rest of the pieces into their positions. Read on to learn the order to arrange your white checkers!

” ” The Isis is the first puzzle in the Isis adventure series and players must crack its combination to advance to the next stage in the series. Image courtesy of Sonic Games

Action-adventure films often feature long journeys filled with mysterious clues before the hero or heroine finds a map, puzzle, or locked box that holds the keys to great fortune or to saving humanity from destruction. Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and others found their counterpart in the form of riddles and ciphers, some of which had been lying in wait and booby-trapped since time immemorial. In real life, however, the mystery is both the journey itself and the destination. Those who love a good puzzle do it for the exercise itself and the satisfaction of overcoming the challenge and finding a solution.

Many puzzles, whether they’re math problems, word challenges, or physical objects like 3-D puzzles and scrambled cubes, involve staying at home, one on one, man versus puzzle, while others find an object and quest in the physical world outside combine game. Often referred to as the world’s hardest game, the Isis adventure begins with players finding a way to open a circular puzzle they can hold in their hands. Once inside, a key will lead them in search of a real hidden prize. It’s called an “adventure” after all, so removing the puzzle itself from the box is just the start.

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Some puzzles that predate The Isis Adventure have a reputation among players for being as difficult – or even more difficult – than Isis, an example being the book and treasure hunt known as the “Masquerade” written and illustrated by Kit Williams. “Masquerade” was released in 1979 and sold more than 1 million copies. Readers studied the images and clues in the book, trying to find real places in England to dig for actual buried treasure in the form of a Gold Bunny Rabbit Amulet. Two physicists found the rabbit in 1982, won the challenge and ended the hunt.

In 2005, Perplex City launched online and was similar to “Masquerade” in that it had a puzzle to solve that involved a complex story that led to a real location. The winner beat 50,000 players from 92 countries and found the buried mystery cube, earning the $200,000 prize [sources: Amrich; BBC; Krotoski]. With those games resolved, “Masquerade” ended entirely, while Perplex City was due to release a new challenge, however, pending as of 2011.

These alternate reality games (ARGs) combine a puzzle mystery with a complex storyline or ciphers and fuse it with real-world locations and prizes for those who solve both parts – the alternate reality and the, well, real reality. Tens of thousands of people around the world have attempted ARGs, either alone or in collaboration with other players, and The Isis Adventure is well underway and is expected to be complete in 2015.

But is it an ARG or something more or less mysterious? Are you ready to learn more? Next, watch how to play The Isis Adventure.

About Japanese puzzle boxes and caring for your puzzle box

Japanese puzzle boxes are very collectible. They are beautiful, functional and fascinating. Our wide range and affordable prices make it easy to start or expand your Japanese puzzle box collection.

Traditional Japanese puzzle boxes can range from relatively easy to very challenging and almost impossible to open unless you follow the exact step-by-step procedure designed specifically for each box. All of our Japanese puzzle boxes, secret boxes and trick boxes come with original instructions. Often these instructions or diagrams are in Japanese, but they are illustrated and easy to follow.

To solve a puzzle box, one or more sliding pieces are moved at one end, allowing the other end to be easily moved. This partially unlocks one side panel, allowing other parts to be moved. These in turn partially unlock the top or bottom. This process continues moving around the box until the top panel can slide, thereby opening the box. Some of the more expensive boxes may open both the top and bottom panels, or contain other secret compartments or drawers. Interestingly, puzzle boxes have no lock and apparently no opening. However, each crafted box contains very intricate mechanisms.

Most Japanese Personal Secret Boxes have a variety of difficulties ranging from 4 to 66 moves. Some large puzzle boxes have an extraordinary number of moves, such as 78, 122, 119, or 125.

Secret puzzle box pattern

Saya Pattern Produced in many variations including Kizaya, Jindai Saya and Red Saya to name a few, this maze-like design is very popular with collectors. Due to the complexity of the pattern, many hobbyists have difficulty with matchstick lines on the Kannuki (foils), which make it a bit easier to see the secret puzzle box’s opening mechanism. Yosegi pattern Kuroasa pattern Kiasa pattern Akaasa pattern Hineri pattern

Sizes of Traditional Japanese Puzzle Box (Himitsu Bako)

The puzzle box makers of Hakone, Japan use the “sun” system to describe the size of a traditional puzzle box. “Sun” is a traditional Japanese unit of measurement for longitude. The translation of sun to a length that we can refer to is that 1 sun is about 30.3 mm or about 1.22 inches. This system is used to describe the approximate size of Hakone, Japan Puzzle Boxes. Note that the solar system does not describe the width or height or the size of the inner compartment.

We consider mini trick boxes, 1 & 1.5 sun boxes as miniature (mame). 2, 2.5 and 3 sun boxes are small boxes. 4 sun boxes are medium sized. 5 sun is the default size. 6 sun is big. And 7 sun is very big.

Measurements and “sun” sizes in inches

Small boxes 1 sun = 1.22

1.5 sun = 1.83

2 suns = 2.44

2.5 sun = 3.05

3 sun = 3.66 medium boxes 4 sun = 4.88

5 Sun = 6.10 Large Boxes 6 Sun = 7.32

7 sun = 8.54

How to care for Japanese puzzle boxes… Because Japanese puzzle boxes are intricate works of art and are made from exotic woods, here are a few things to keep in mind so that you can enjoy every Himitsu Bako for many years to come.

Avoid areas with high humidity and high temperatures. To clean, wipe the surface with a clean, dry cloth. DO NOT use abrasive cleaners. DO NOT drop or shock the box. NEVER force parts to move.

” ” Never use force to move a puzzle piece. If you want it to move, it will move slightly. iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Puzzle boxes are decorative wooden boxes that require a series of often complicated movements to open, including sliding, unlocking, lifting and pushing. Some crates only require one or two such moves to open, while the most complicated have upwards of 100. Often a key is hidden in the box and used at some point in the process to unlock another section or for the final opening.

If you can open a puzzle box, it often contains a small gift or lucky charm in a secret compartment, usually lined with velvet. It’s actually the secret compartment you’re looking for; Just opening the box isn’t the only goal.

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While puzzle boxes are often square or rectangular, some styles are fashioned into items like a tooth, pineapple, heart, or house. Puzzle box banks equipped with a money slot are also somewhat common. If you have a puzzle box bank, you can usually deposit your coins easily, but withdraw them only if you know how to open them. In a Japanese version, you must deposit a certain number of coins before the bank opens, even if you know the moves required [source: Puzzle Box World].

Typically, new puzzle boxes come with a difficulty rating — for example, beginner, intermediate, and advanced — or tell you how many steps it takes to open them. Most boxes also come with instructions, but some retailers will let you unsubscribe and email you the opening sequence later if required [source: Net Shop UK].

Puzzle boxes originated in Japan but are now manufactured all over the world, most notably in Costa Rica, Poland, Turkey, Vietnam and of course Japan. American puzzle boxes are notable for their various locking mechanisms that can be made by pins, magnets, gravity, and inertia. Unfortunately, there are not many traditional puzzle box craftsmen left. On the bright side, people are starting to collect puzzle boxes and a new breed of talented crafters is emerging [source: Japanese Puzzle Boxes].

On the next page, learn how puzzle boxes were originally created.

Show me the money Not surprisingly, the price you pay for a puzzle box depends on whether it’s new or antique, how complex it is, and how much labor is required to make it. Many can be purchased for less than $100 — even as low as $15 — while limited edition or one-of-a-kind handmade pieces can easily cost several hundred dollars. While there’s no guarantee your box will appreciate in value over time, well-made one-offs often do.

A simple kakuro puzzle

Solution to the above puzzle

Kakuro or kakkuro or kakoro (Japanese: カックロ) is a type of logic puzzle often referred to as the mathematical transliteration of the crossword puzzle. Kakuro puzzles are regularly featured in many math and logic puzzle publications around the world. In 1966[1] Canadian Jacob E. Funk, a Dell Magazines contributor, came up with the original English name Cross Sums[2] and other names such as Cross Addition were also used, but the Japanese name Kakuro, short for The Japanese kasan kurosu (加算クロス, “addition cross”) seems to have caught on in general, and the puzzles now seem to be so titled in most publications. The popularity of kakuro in Japan is immense, second only to Sudoku among Nikoli’s famous logic puzzle offerings.[2]

The canonical Kakuro puzzle is played on a grid of filled and locked cells, “black” and “white” respectively. Jigsaw puzzles are typically 16×16 in size, although these dimensions can vary widely. Aside from the top row and leftmost column, which are entirely black, the black cells divide the grid into “entries” – rows of white cells. The black cells contain a diagonal slash from top-left to bottom-right and a number in one or both halves, such that each horizontal entry has a number in the black half-cell immediately to its left, and each vertical entry has a number in the black half-cell directly above it . These numbers are commonly referred to as “clues” to borrow crossword terminology.

The object of the puzzle is to fill in each white cell with a digit from 1 to 9 inclusive so that the sum of the digits in each entry matches the corresponding clue and no digit is duplicated in any entry. It is this lack of duplication that allows for the creation of kakuro puzzles with unique solutions. As with Sudoku, solving a kakuro puzzle involves exploring combinations and permutations. There is an unwritten rule for creating kakuro puzzles that each clue must have at least two numbers that add up, since including only one number when solving kakuro puzzles is mathematically trivial.

At least one publisher[3] includes the restriction that a given combination of numbers can only be used once in each grid, but still markets the puzzles as plain kakuro.

Some publishers prefer to print their kakuro grids just like crosswords, with no labeling in the black cells and instead numbering the entries and providing a separate list of clues, similar to a list of crosswords. (This eliminates the completely black rows and columns.) This is an image-only problem and does not affect the solution or the logic required to solve it.

When discussing Kakuro puzzles and tactics, the typical abbreviation for referring to an entry is “(clue, in numerals)-in-(number of cells in entry, written out)”, like “16-in-two” and “25 -in-five”. The exception is what would otherwise be called “45-in-nine”—simply “45” is used since the “-in-nine” is mathematically implied (nine cells is the longest possible entry, and since it cannot duplicate a digit it must consist of all the digits from 1 to 9 once). Oddly enough, both “43-in-eight” and “44-in-eight” are still commonly referred to as such, though the suffix “-in-eight” is equally implied.

Solving techniques[edit]

Combinatorial techniques[edit]

Although brute force guesswork is possible, a more efficient approach is to understand the different combinatorial forms that entries can take for different pairings of clues and entry lengths. The solution space can be reduced by resolving allowable intersections of horizontal and vertical sums or by considering necessary or missing values.

The entries with sufficiently large or small hints for their length have fewer possible combinations to consider, and by comparing with entries crossing them the correct permutation – or part of it – can be deduced. The simplest example is where a 3-in-2 crosses a 4-in-2: the 3-in-2 must consist of “1” and “2” in some order; the 4-in-2 (since “2” cannot be duplicated) must consist of “1” and “3” in any order. Therefore, their intersection must be “1”, the only digit they have in common.

When solving longer sums, there are additional ways to find clues to finding the right digits. One such method would be to note where some squares share possible values, eliminating the possibility that other squares in that sum could have those values. For example, if two 4-in-2 clues with a longer sum intersect, then the 1 and 3 in the solution must be in those two squares, and those digits cannot be used elsewhere in that sum.[4]

This can lead to useful hints when solving sums with a limited number of solution sets. For example, a 30-into-seven sum has only two solution sets: {1,2,3,4,5,6,9} and {1,2,3,4,5,7,8}. If any of the squares in this sum can only take the values ​​of {8,9} (if the crossing clue is a 17-in-two sum, for example), then this becomes not only an indicator of which solution set fits sum, it concludes rule out the possibility that another digit in the sum is one of those two values, even before determining which of the two values ​​fits in that square.

Another useful approach in more complex puzzles is to identify which square a digit belongs in by eliminating other digits within the sum. If all the crossing clues of a sum have many possible values, but it can be determined that there is only one square that could have a particular value that the sum in question must have, then whatever other possible values ​​the crossing sum would admit, this Intercept must be the isolated value. For example, a 36-in-eight total must contain all digits except 9. If only one of the squares could have the value 2, this must be the answer for that square.

Boxing technique [ edit ]

Occasionally a “boxing technique” can also be applied if the geometry of the unfilled white cells lends itself to it at some stage of the solution: by summing the clues for a series of horizontal entries (subtracting the values ​​of any digits already added to those entries) and subtract the clues for a mostly overlapping series of vertical entries, the difference can reveal the value of a sub-entry, often a single cell. This technique works because addition is both associative and commutative.

It is common to mark potential values ​​for cells in the cell corners until all but one have been proven impossible; For particularly challenging puzzles, whole ranges of values ​​for cells are sometimes noted by solvers in the hope of eventually finding sufficient constraints on those ranges of cross-entry to be able to narrow the ranges down to single values. For reasons of space, some solvers use positional notation instead of digits, in which a potential numeric value is represented by a marker in a specific part of the cell, making it easy to place multiple potential values ​​in a single cell. This also makes it easier to distinguish between potential values ​​and solution values.

Some solvers also use graph paper to try different combinations of digits before writing them into the puzzle grids.

As in the Sudoku case, only relatively simple kakuro puzzles can be solved using the above techniques. More difficult ones require the use of different types of chain patterns, the same types found in Sudoku (see Pattern-Based Constraint Satisfaction and Logic Puzzles[5]).

Mathematics by Kakuro[ edit ]

Mathematically, Kakuro puzzles can be represented as integer programming problems and are NP-complete.[6] See also Yato and Seta, 2004.[7]

There are two types of mathematical symmetry that are easy to spot in kakuro puzzles: minimum and maximum constraints are dual, as are missing and required values.

All sum combinations can be represented using a bitmap representation. This representation is useful for determining missing and required values ​​using bitwise logic operations.

Popularity[ edit ]

Kakuro puzzles appear in nearly 100 Japanese magazines and newspapers. Kakuro remained the most popular logic puzzle in the Japanese printing press until 1992, when Sudoku took the top spot.[8] In the UK they first appeared in The Guardian, followed by The Telegraph and the Daily Mail.[9]

See also[edit]

Killer Sudoku, a variant of Sudoku solved using similar techniques.

A Brief History of Japanese Puzzle Boxes

Japanese puzzle box | © Emil Erlandsson/Flickr

Alicia Joy Tokyo Writer January 18, 2017 View

At first glance, the Japanese puzzle boxes known as Himitsu-Bako appear to be nothing more than decorative jewelry chests. In reality, however, these tricky boxes are so much more than that, they hide hidden treasures. Their story begins almost two hundred years ago in Hakone, Japan. We learn more.

The first Himitsu-Bako were just small trinkets to hold odds and ends like a needle and thread. As they got larger and more sophisticated, they became known as sikake-bako or tei-bako – box of tricks or clever box. They were a popular souvenir for the tourists visiting Hakone’s famous hot springs. While Hakone was a tourist destination in its own right, it was also a busy travel route connecting Osaka and Tokyo, meaning the region saw its fair share of tourists throughout the 19th century.

Parquet Workshop | © Alt_winmaerik/WikiCommons/Himitsu-bako | © Nipaylah/WikiCommons/Himitsu-bako | ©Rama/WikiCommons

It has been recognized that the puzzle box concept has infinite uses beyond protecting children from needles. They were designed to be used by workers to keep their tools safe, by samurai or warlords to send secret messages, or for travelers to protect their belongings while travelling.

Himitsu-bako took its current form sometime during the Meiji period in the late 19th century. Three craftsmen, Takajiro Ohkawa, Tatsunosuke Okiyama and Kikukawa-san are credited with creating the modern puzzle box. They took the plain puzzle box and applied the yosegi-zaiku, a mosaic-like type of woodcraft that Hakone was famous for.

The puzzle box is the laboratory device invented by E.L. Thorndike to study instrumental, or operant, conditioning in cats. Hungry cats were placed individually in a box that could be opened by the animal using a device such as a latch. Once out of the box, the cats were given access to food (a positive reinforcer). Thorndike found that the more training attempts were made, the less time it took the cats to get out of the box. He described this strengthening of the bolt opening as documentation of the law of action.

This was the first experimental apparatus to study operant behavior, later followed by the invention of the Skinner box.

Glossary index