Double Monad

DOUBLE MONAD

Today’s review is about a work from Doug Engel who produced quite a few metal puzzles for Puzzlemaster. His puzzle entry into IPP 2004 was called DOUBLE MONAD (currently it is sold as YIN & YANG) and is still available for CAD 15,99 (~Euro 11.-) from Puzzlemaster or ~ Euro 25.- from Sloyd.

DOUBLE MONAD consists out of 4 aluminum parts (2 anodized black) symbolizing the YIN & YANG symbols. Your goal is to take it apart and put it back together. I have to say that this is the first IPP competition puzzle I am really disappointed with. The quality/finish of the metal is poor and the whole “object” has an extremely loose feel to it. The challenge is practically no challenge as it took me half a minute to take it apart and a day later it took me less than a minute to put it back together. Difficulty rating for me is 1 out of 10 (Puzzlemaster has a 5 out of 10 but their scale is only starting with 5 so it seems to be OK).

Consequently I cannot recommend to buy this puzzle unless you have a little child who is interested in very easy puzzles. The only good thing is you can use it as an optical eye catcher in your puzzle cupboard, however, do not come too close to it in order not seing the earlier mentioned flaws.