I have been collecting mechanical puzzles (aka brainteasers, Geduldspiele, Casse-tete, hlavolamy, puslerier, puzzels, rompecabezas, パズル ) for many years and from many places. I have been asked, "Don't you have enough frustration in your life?"

At last count, there are over 3260 puzzling items (including over 170 puzzle-related books) shown or described. That may seem like a lot, but there are people who own tens of thousands of puzzles - and who must have very understanding spouses!

Here's what I've been puzzling over lately...

I like most kinds of puzzles, and I really enjoy interlocking puzzles, hidden-mechanism/secret-opening boxes, and tanglement puzzles. Write to me at , and tell me about your puzzle preferences.

I have solved some puzzles by writing computer programs. Clever and useful free software is out there on the web, particularly BurrTools by Andreas Röver, SBPSolver by Pierre-Francois Culand, and Jürg von Känel's burr puzzle solver site. There are many links to U.S. patents on this site - to view them (USPTO instructions here) you'll need a TIFF plug-in for your browser. You can try AlternaTIFF. You might also want to search the European Patent Office. I have reduced the images to make them load faster, using Brett Kuehner's marvelous tool "PictureTray."

The Stegmanns' Home Page

Classification of Mechanical Puzzles

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