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How is it possible to receive an SMS with this old telephone? That is the goal of this puzzle.
To do this you will need to open more than one compartment in the SMS Box. When you can read the SMS you’ll know that you’ve solved the puzzle and found all the compartments.
All locks (and there’s a lot of them!) in the puzzle are manipulated and solved with tools provided. Even though there are lots of magnets and springs you don’t need to hit anything or use any external force. There are many tools provided to solve the many stages along the way and there is a tool for everything. No external items are required or allowed, so no raiding the office or kitchen drawers!
Unlike Katie Koala or the Opening Bat these tools are much more difficult to recognise and you’ll notice at the end of solving you won’t have anywhere near the same number of small pieces. The smallest piece that is removed from this puzzle is about the size of a micro sim card. Certainly there’s no shortage of magnets, springs and other small moving parts inside the puzzle, its just that they are not removable.
The puzzle has some deliberate booby traps built into it so even when you think you’re on the right track you may have been going up the proverbial garden path. If you’re into mapping puzzles another puzzling element will be to understand the booby traps themselves; a. To stay away from them and b. To work out how to get back out of them. When the first prototype was finished Brian and Juno looked at several aspects of the puzzle and decided they were ridiculously hard so they went to great lengths to make the solutions to different steps more straightforward and consequently more elegant.
Brian designed most of the puzzle during Easter 2014 and has been developing and building the puzzle ever since. It’s his first major project since Katie Koala was completed in 2013. He has no plans for another for the remainder of this year or until at least the end of 2017.
Brian wants to especially thank Junichi for getting the concept and design out of Brian’s head and into CAD. Juno really helped make this puzzle a reality; he’s a great sounding board and a great help to Brian with woodworking and assembly of the puzzle. It’s fair to say the puzzle consumed them both for many months.
A bonus puzzle. Unintentionally we incorporated an optical illusion. Can you find it?
This telephone comes with a lifetime membership to Mr Puzzle’s wooden telephone network with unlimited disassembly and re-assemblies of this puzzle per month.
Woods: The SMS Box is made from Queensland Blackbean. The dial is made from Queensland Silver Ash.
Size: The box is 150mm x 105mm x 68mm plus the handset on top.
The puzzles are individually numbered in the set (No.73/130) and signed and come with a certificate.
A complete solution booklet will be sent as a pdf file upon request. It has instructions and photos and includes hints for reassembly of the puzzle as well. We don’t want to send without request and spoil the puzzle experience.
This is an extremely complex puzzle; the hardest Brian’s ever done. It’s not recommended for puzzlers who’ve not done these types of sequential discovery puzzles before. Even experienced puzzlers have had trouble with this one. Even if you have seen a YouTube video of this puzzle being solved many of the actions to solve each step are hidden inside the puzzle and rely on feel, sound and other senses that don’t come through in a video.