That's Amazing, Tim!

foreign [Music] but actually no this is some this is actually something else it's actually a maze which you believe look carefully it's got a ball bearing there which you've got to go for one end where there's a black pin here so there's a red pin there so it's actually a toy maze extraordinary one and I've bought quite a few of these along to show you this is one of the complicated ones so I thought I'd start with simple flat mazes and we'll come back to that later and I'll show you more detail so here's the flat mazes and they are some of them are very exotic there's two particularly exotic ones here which are flat mazes the first one is from about 40 years ago when they're still allowed you to have mercury in it and these are Blobs of mercury they're not more bearings if I get them together you'll see they'll coalesce into a single blob like that before it turns out the best way to guide us through to the middle is to break it up into two bits or three bits and let them come from the passages here because it's got a high surface tensional Mercury and it wants to stay as a as a round job and you've got to make it to go into a long sausage to go down to these various passages so it doesn't like that so break it up and it makes it easier and then you can bang them in the center so this came out about um well 1978 it was actually made from long Crane and Broxton and I bought it in 1981 I've had this suit and it's still going it hasn't got any adjustment or anything start to scratch your surface but a lovely quivery bit of um Mercury which is in unfortunately bang because it's just poisonous so I wouldn't take it out of its piece out of its box I can't actually so that's safe enough but so that's a funny one it's not a ball bearing and here's another one which they all ball bearings but they're put into little lozenges and this is a lovely idea because it looks so comical you see them flipping about like they call them mixing jumping beans which is a ball bearing in a sort of oblong pill type shape of plastic hollow inside and then the ball bearing flips back and forward it makes the scene slip up and down and a very comical wave and it's a very simple maze you've got to take it from the outside to the inside back and forward back and forward but there's a lot of fun to do and quite skillful as well because they've suffered they're misbehaving very very difficult way to to manage nevertheless I have managed to get it in a couple of times in the today's center all all five of them all four four and two green a pink and a black that's made by a company um puzzles well I think it is from Germany how bright I used to meet them at Nuremberg and he invented this about 30 40 years ago I think it was the unusual version of a ball bearing maze so the next one is the thing will very amazed but with a little twist to it both these are the same idea there's a ball bearing at last you can see a purple ball bearing you've got to move this to make it move around but if you look at this you'll see I'm moving this around there's actually a maze which is made of clear plastic at the top and there's a maze made of um little walls of yellow plastic at the bottom so there's two mazes one from the bottom sticking upwards it won't be top sticking downwards and you've got to manipulate it through so there's two different mazes from a start position which is probably here to the thinnest position which is um somewhere else so it's over here that's right it goes one one side from where the area points up to that side and it's a tricky thing to do I have knit some got back to solving it I've had it for some time and the same idea is this one here which is much smaller but very Neato in a way and again it's two mazes the top Maze and the bottom maze in this case when you finally solve it you can actually take it out of there and put it into your hand if you want to to finish it but that's got two mazes and you've got to manipulate the top surface so that it's um it's guiding it through both the top of them and the bottom set of walls those are the same sort of just a little bit unusual and here's another one which is actually very widely valuable this one you'll see it in a lot of maybe all the catalogs it's a straightforward maze except that at the end of it all you've got the ball when you find it in the M position and then you can open the box which contains some money or a card or a gift or a happy birthday wish or something I've got it on the end it was a bit of difficulty the stop this is right beside it but you have to work it also always for The Maze both sides and basically get exact position there when you push this forward and do a little click like this to work come on fellow woof and no no oh I'm going to push it up [Music] Knox it's easy to do this oh I guess you pushes you've got to push his hair I don't know what to do with it there should be a little kick what I think my might do is because when I do open it up is to put a slightly bigger ball bearing inside because it should click and the bottom drops out and you get your prize it's a very very widely available puzzle the one which includes a little gift inside which you have to get at by first of all solving the maze but again it's a flat maze and the last one is a show which came from one of the international puzzle parties I go to is again it's a flat maze but it's on two levels in this case we don't turn things you just slide these back and forward can you see if they think through the glass there a ball that's moving back and forward click click click and I'll turn it the other way it's still a little bit difficult to see because it's quite thick plastic it uses but there's a different maze here to the other side and you have to manipulate it from the start from the start position here we push it into a little hole and you get it out through the hole there and you finish with this and it's quite a tricky thing to do you've got to go both sides and work out a root which includes sliding this back and forward so all those are fat raises but a little originality well the level of scenarios is appeared with just an ordinary one which this sort of says what without Mercury just a little ball bearing inside would be a perfectly normal flat maze now you move up into a three dimensions and you come up to some extraordinary ideas here the one I showed I'll perhaps I'll do that first it's a cylindrical maze that you're going from this black pin here up to the red pin up there and It's tricky to do because you're working all the time on a curved surface not a flat surface like this and so they help you by having these little walls which have got to see there's a little upright pins to help you to lower this ball against them and help you to guide it through it otherwise it'd be almost impossibly difficult to solve this because it's a curved surface all the time I have solved it once I think but it took me a long time to do I have to say and you could just park it somewhere and then go away and come back the next day and finish it off but and that's what I like about it it's gonna probably be a rolling pins it's got a lovely feel to it it's feels ergonomically very satisfying to do and it's very pleasant and pleasing version of the maze in three dimensions there's another one here which is also three dimensions which is would you believe a circular maze extraordinary ideas there's the alpha maze path itself there's a little light to show you where you're going and what's holding it in position and making you go down and see here is this one here contains a tiny little pin inside where my finger is I'll put it there I'll show you there's a little pin there that protrudes upwards and puts it all between up or down but into the path of the maze as it goes through and makes it actually it has to follow a path in order to make it move so you put the top on we'll set this up with the with the uh with the flashing button at the top and then we'll put that on and then you can see it's definitely there and then you've got to move it around so that it ends up in the bottom and I'll start the maneuvering around to see if I can get it out of the range of that some of the tops I can't do very well I'll I'll cheat by just turn it sideways so when you finally get it a bit further in you'll see you can still see the point there shining through the red spherical hemisphere that's holding it so you can see where you've got to as well and you're trying to get that from the top position through to the bottom position by manipulating and you've got your fingers here to move this around this way and that way to make it do this that a tricky thing to do I haven't actually solved that one so sometimes I've got to do it and when I first got it I had to find out how to actually take this into the parts which I love doing and finally that inside the thing is a little cavity where they have a battery would you believe this is a very old toy this it's got the old printed circuit board which creates a tiny little flashing current not a chip because this is very early days so that's the setup for now some more 1980s I think it was the spherical maze which is very very interesting pattern a very true design of of Maintenance abuse then there's cubic mazes mazes on cubes and there's this one here which if I can get it started will relies on um releasing the ball bearing from the top here there's a ball bearings here where it says start and you've got to get all the way through to the Finish Line If I get this to twist a little bit when I was hamara key and then what you've probably got to do I suggest is visit each of the Six Faces in order to um get to the expected solution if I turn that like that there we are now we're starting and I can get the ball to move over different patterns and then it's going to move into this side I think you've probably got to visit all six sides of the cube in order to end up finally at the end position and then then you're done you're finished a very nice idea for a cube maze but now look at this Cube names this is extraordinary this is about eight years later they came up with this wonderful idea with a huge number on there six 699 000 different puzzles how could that be let's have a look at it something very odds going on here because for a start you won't find any ball bearing waiting to be manipulated there's no ball bearing anywhere around so what do we do about that well the answer is this is a maze which comes apart and then you can put it together in 700 000 ways look at this I unslide that I cut it upside down and whoosh there's a ball bearings and now you've got this is a clever bit this one piece here number one can be set that way or that way or that way or that way that's four different ones it's the same thing with this one and it's all four to the power of six it's about two two thousand different ways of putting these in orientation in addition to that when we put that in the bottom it could be on the bottom but it could be on the side there or that side there or that side there or the top position so we add it all up if you come up with this extraordinary number of 699 840 different measures from this one piece so by setting up to start with they've got they've got numbers on them which does help now since I've got like this and I set up this one here like this each of the matches so that the pars when it goes around to the next face of the cube are in line so there's no trouble getting it from one to the other so you don't put the ball bearings away you want to keep them you've ever got to find how to put this last bit back again I think it goes in there towards it the other way up no secret signatures in there let me just check this checklist oh that's probably starting like that you know I'm not sure why this one goes actually anyway we actually found in position like that you can then play with the ball maneuver it around and say well I've completed one of 700 000 possibilities there's a whole lot more to do too many but what a lovely design what a lovely idea that is so very very clever have a bit of um design work to go from this simple one to a very complicated and extraordinary idea for something there's so many possibilities I think that's just that's wonderful there's another one here which is very extraordinary because it's actually a working pen would you believe this is something we put in the Christmas pack a few years ago I've cheated by checking that out here's the maze on it there's a there's a sharp point in the end of this screw thread which screws in and when it's screwed in it now penetrates into the into the paths of the Maze and it means in order to solve this you've got to actually manipulate it through in out of the leather and it might take a bit of time to do the problem is if you're on the phone to someone and you want to know a number down you can't do it quickly so you have a cheat whereby you unscrew it and then you can put it straight through and there we go there's the pen coming out and I can work with it so that cheats it but it's nice to have that but then when you've got more leather you can slowly work your way out and follow the Maze and see if you can solve it the proper way so it's a bit of fun the last two are really very strong with unlike anything else this is Oscar vandeventer a very very talented Dutchman who makes the most extraordinary puzzles this is amazed definitely those three dimensions and the idea is to go from somewhere there's a square box here which is a start position there's a round circle here which is the finished position but the same thing occurs on each of the sides you've got to get you've got to start with the into box of the red side of the green side and the blue side I'm going to start in each case with the piece actually in the box and then move to where the circle is and it's a lot of work and working out in advance where you can move where you can't move because of the three-dimensional aspect of that extraordinary piece it's a very very clever idea Oscar's cube is one of the most some extraordinary looking puzzle mazes I've ever come across and it came out about 20 years ago and it's still I think in production because it's such a an original idea and so so look at look at the ball it's it's got tremendous photogenic possibilities it's unlike anything else to see nothing the last one is something that's becoming very popular over the last few years I think when the Technologies moved on they can make these it's one of the ones where you have a ball there it was just hidden away in here and it's got to work through the maze you're going to move all sorts of different directions and things move about and eventually get it to the to the to back to the finish it starts there and finishes in the next Channel next to it so if I start I think by taking the pin out like that and now the ball is inside now going to work its way through to Spirals and twists and turns and turntables and swingers there's all sort of extraordinary things so it's um they call it a maze in a ball I suppose it is a sort of War but that certainly is a very very popular toy to come out in the recent years and I've got about four or five of my collection of things these toys that have really enormously increased Center develops in the last 20 30 years that I've been collecting toys hard from very simple flat main flat flat amazes it's with some of this stuff here which is very very Advanced thinking and creativity and I don't think it's over yet I think looking every few years you'll find a clever new development of the maze toy start looking [Music]

Channel: Grand Illusions

Views: 147,101

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Id: He1iJ8FExR4

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022