Half Hour - Stewart Coffin by Brian Menold

I’m sure most puzzle collectors will have this classic Coffin design in their collection however this is Brian’s take on this one.

Here’s  Stewart’s description:

“As the reader can probably tell, I 

sometimes run out of names faster than ideas. Some solve this easy looking puzzle quickly and are apt to question the name, but others take a lot longer and question it for the opposite reason. The simple fitting together of puzzle pieces made of cubic blocks joined together different ways has enjoyed a universal appeal all down through the ages. I well remember the first such puzzle that I made. It was a six-piece 

dissection of the 3x3x3 cube shown in Mathematical Snapshots and known as Mikusiński’s Cube after its Polish 

mathematician inventor. In my teens I crudely fashioned one of scrap lumber to satisfy my curiosity of the stated two 

solutions. Thirty years later I decided to seek an improved design with the same features but only one solution. Result: 

the Half-Hour puzzle. 

For a 3x3x3 cubic dissection, there is an optimum number of pieces. If one were to plot a graph of difficulty vs. number of 

pieces, it would start out at zero with one solid cube, ascend into a playful arc, and return back to near zero with 27 cubic blocks. Here the optimum number of pieces is six. One would prefer that they all be dissimilar and non-symmetrical, and of course with only one solution. But not all that is possible so one must accept compromise. The Half-Hour puzzle is my best effort. It has only one solution. It was the culmination of quite an exhaustive investigation into the near countless number of possible designs.”

Shipping cost to be determined at close of auction.