4 August 2004 Sue Young

Twisted’s Sister puzzle on wooden stand

Edward Hordern IPP24 Puzzle Exchange – Tokyo, Japan. August 2004 175 made.
Presented by Brian Young.  Made by Mr Puzzle Australia. Designed by Brian Young
Original Price: AU$33.00

The puzzle is to separate the two nails.

The concept for this original design was found by accident during the manufacture of our TWISTED puzzle. Even though it appears to be similar to the TWISTED puzzle TWISTED’S SISTER is VERY different; the moves to disassemble this puzzle are nothing like it’s sister puzzle. The only similarity with the old nails puzzles is it’s simplicity and the fact that once you pick it up you can’t put it down until you’ve solved it.

The story that Brian tells is……..
This puzzle and he says that this idea for Twisted Sister came to him while he was making the standard Twisted puzzles. When he made these originally the two S shaped nails were not identical.  One S was bent so that the pointed end of the nail was slightly longer. The other S that pointed end was shorter.  The head of the shorter nail would not go underneath the longer point.  They only went on one way and came off one way. Different to how others had been making the puzzle.
When he had the nails plated Brian always kept the two batches separate hoping to make the assembly processes easier.
Technically the longer nails should never have gone together. But when every batch of nails was barrel plated he would find some in the longer batch that had joined themselves together and it used to take him a long time and sometimes with force to separate.
He eventually worked out an elegant solution – hence a new puzzle which he made for his exchange puzzle for IPP24 in Japan called Twisted Sister.

Brian has known about the puzzle for a number of years but only recently has he worked on a design that does not come apart or go back together the same as the original puzzle. Entrant IPP Design Competition 2004

Presented on a Torii Gate stand in keeping with the theme of this year’s International Puzzle Party held in Tokyo, Japan. The nails are Gold plated. Size 155mm x 155mm x 30mm (to top of nails as they sit in the stand) Nails are 150mm long.