Harmony

HARMONY

Today I am writing about a puzzle which won the Puzzler's Award and the Jury First Prize at IPP 2010. I refer to the mechanical puzzle HARMONY designed by Dmitry Pevnitskiy and Kirill Grebnev. Again the Japanese Company Hanayama took the Chance and relized their idea for a widely available product and re-named it CAST HARMONY. You can buy CAST HARMONY at the usual online shops or via Ebay for an average of 10 Euros.

When I opened up the package the first impression was really good. We are talking about a disentaglement puzzle which consist out of two parts, a gold metallized treble clef and a silver metallized note. Can you feel the harmony already? Of course your goal is to remove the note from the treble clef. Well, I am a bit ashamed telling you it took me around 10 minutes to solve this quite easy puzzle whereas other bloggers like Kevin (Puzzlemad) or Gabriel Fernandes only needed half a minute.....The short solving time aside I think the whole package (outer appearance and idea) led to the deserved awards in this case and not specifically the difficulty. Hanayama rates it a 2 out of 6 on their scale and since 1,5 is not existing I more or less agree with it.

HARMONY is a puzzle for those who are new to the scene, like nice and shiny showpieces and whose budget is not that big. Also kids will love this puzzle for sure! The puzzlers who are on the outlook for special and rare pieces will most probably not buy it though. I should also not conceal that one can buy an original handmade one on Kirill's homepage for a whopping USD 100.-