The Minotaur’s Burr

In Greek mythology King Minos built a complex maze-like construction to hold the Minotaur. So what does that have to do with solving a 3 piece burr?

This design was created in 2008 by Frank Potts. Frank was inspired by the 3D maze in Oskar’s Cube. With his love of burr puzzles he wanted to design a maze that could then be disassembled and reassembled inside a burr with a minimum of pieces.

The result is this very elegant puzzle with just 3 pieces. How hard can a 3 piece burr be to disassemble and reassemble?

Each piece of the puzzle is very complex and Brian was concerned that wood would not be strong enough for the construction of the maze and so began the process of sourcing not only a stronger material, but one that could be very accurately cut.

The final product is made from a combination of wood, aluminium and polycarbonate.

The wooden cube ends are made from Western Australian Jarrah. Brian spent a lot of time laminating them with Jarrah veneer to give the finished puzzle a smooth modern look, but this does hide the amount of effort that went into harmonising the different materials into a single piece. Two of the burr pieces have centre mazes which are waterjet cut from 25mm aluminium laminated to wooden ends, the third has a very strong polycarbonate rod joining the wooden ends.

Size of each piece is: 150mm x 50mm x 50mm Solution: BurrTools file can be supplied when you buy the puzzle.