Welcome to the second spotlight of the Lilly Library’s Mechanical Puzzle blog series, written by Andrew Rhoda, the Lilly Library’s Curator of Puzzles!
“Take-apart Puzzles” are the second category in the mechanical puzzle taxonomy we use for the Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection. With take-apart puzzles the challenge is to disassemble or open the puzzle. The goal could be to find a secret compartment, unlock a mechanism, or remove something from the puzzle. These puzzles can take the form of boxes, match safes, and trick locks, among others. Some of these puzzles will have a coin, ball, or other item that needs to be freed from the rest of the puzzle for the solution. At times, these pieces that are freed are tools for the next step of the solution. Some of the puzzles in this category started as practical items, used to hide valuables, to lock doors, or to keep matches from igniting accidentally.
Examples of Take-Apart Puzzles
In fact, the earliest mechanical puzzle that we still have a physical example is one of these practical puzzles, a puzzle lock specifically. As I mentioned in the previous article, the earliest documented puzzle is the Stomachion that is associated with Archimedes. However, an example of the Stomachion from that era does not survive. Because of that, the earliest extant examples of mechanical puzzles are these puzzle padlocks. These locks, made in the area where the Roman and Celtic cultures met, date back as the second or first century BCE (Slocum and Sonneveld 2017, 8). These locks saw developments in their design as time went on with an improved version made in Aquileia in the first century CE, which included a three-step mechanism involving a mask covering the keyhole of the lock (Slocum and Sonneveld 2017, 8). As Slocum and Sonneveld write in their book on the topic, Romano-Celtic Mask Puzzle Padlocks, these locks functioned to “secure leather money pouches containing Roman and Celtic coins. Each padlock included a hinged cover with an individually hand-crafted mask of a deity with a human face, a housing that contained the locking mechanism and a shackle that secured the leather pouch or other object” (Slocum and Sonneveld 2017, 8).
Another type in this category are puzzle boxes. Here the goal is to find the hidden compartment, the size of which can vary depending on the dimensions of the box and the type of puzzle box. A famous example of this type is the Japanese himitsu-bako or “secret box.” Secret boxes feature panels on the ends and sides that slide back and forth to eventually create enough room for the top of the box to be removed completely, revealing the interior compartment (Slocum et al. 1986, 54). Secret boxes from the Hakone region feature a distinctive marquetry patterning technique called yosegi-zaiku, developed in the mid-1800s by Nihei Ishikawa (Slocum and Botermans 1994, 68). Ishikawa’s descendants have carried on this tradition to this day, with his seventh-generation descendant Ichiro Ishikawa still crafting yosegi-zaiku (Yosegizaiku, n.d.). The yosegi-zaiku patterning, in addition to enhancing the beauty of the puzzle, also function to hide the sliding panels from anyone solving the puzzle (Slocum et al. 1986, 54).
Puzzle designers from Hakone also produce another type of puzzle box inspired by, but distinct from, the traditional “secret boxes.” Designer Akio Kamei used his knowledge of interlocking figural puzzle design and puzzle box design to create puzzle boxes with unique solution methods (Slocum and Botermans 1994, 69). A hallmark of Kamei’s designs is the inspiration they take from his experience designing traditional figural wooden interlocking puzzles, known as kumiki in Japan. There kumiki puzzles often take the form of buildings, animals, vehicles, or other objects (Slocum et al 1986, 64). Drawing on this experience, Kamei combined the two types of puzzles to make unique puzzle boxes, which have the form and mechanisms inspired by kumiki puzzles (Slocum and Botermans 1994, 69). Taking inspiration from Kamei, fellow designers in Hakone have created puzzle boxes with innovative solutions calling them karakuri-bako or “trick mechanism boxes” to emphasize the new focus (Karakuri Creation Group, 2020). Soon a group of these puzzle designers in Hakone joined Kamei to form the Karakuri Creation Group (Karakuri Creation Group, 2020).
Match safes are another type of take-apart puzzle that originated as a practical solution to a problem. Here the problem had to do with securing matches in a pocket, as early matches could be potentially dangerous. As Jerry Slocum and Jack Botermans write about these matches in their book The Book of Ingenious and Diabolical Puzzles, “The friction lights, particularly the early ones, were quite unstable and could easily ignite accidentally in one’s pocket by rubbing against coins or keys” (1994, 44). To address this issue, contains for matches or “match safes” appeared by the middle of the 19th century to protect the matches and owners’ pockets (Slocum and Botermans 1994, 44). The mechanism for these boxes soon started to develop mechanisms to prevent accidental openings of the match safes themselves, eventually becoming the trick match safes that we know today. Some of these trick match safes also operated as practical jokes. One such match safes is the “W. B. ‘Touch-Me-Not’ Match Safe.” As Slocum and Botermans describe it, “Anyone trying to open the box the ‘obvious’ way, by pressing the little stud in front, succeeds only in pricking their finger on a hidden needle in the stud” (Slocum and Botermans 1994, 46).
These are just a few examples of the different forms that the take-apart category contains. If you are interested in seeing more of these puzzles you can learn more at https://libraries.indiana.edu/lilly-library/mechanical-puzzles, or by attending the Friday Puzzle Tour held from 1:00pm to 2:00pm in the Lilly Library’s Slocum Room.
About the author: Andrew Rhoda is the Curator of Puzzles at the Lilly Library, where he oversees the 35,000 mechanical puzzles in the Jerry Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection, in addition to the Slocum book and manuscript collections. He hosts classes from across disciplines who visit the collection, and he has presented on mechanical puzzles and the collection at puzzle events here in Bloomington and around the world.
Bibliography
Karakuri Creation Group, 2020. “About Karakuri Box.” Karakuri Creation Group. Accessed July 10, 2025. https://karakuri.gr.jp/en/about-karakuri/.
Slocum, Jerry, and Dic Sonneveld. 2017. Romano-Celtic Mask Puzzle Padlocks: A Study of Their Origin, Design, Technology and Security : 156 Artifacts From the 2nd/1st Century BC to the 4th Century AD. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd.
Slocum, Jerry and Jack Botermans, Carla von Splunteren, and Tony Burrett. 1986. Puzzles Old and New: How to Make and Solve Them. Plenary Publications International (Europe).
Slocum, Jerry., and Jack Botermans. 1994. The Book of Ingenious & Diabolical Puzzles. Times Books.
Yosegizaiku, n.d. “Hakone-yosegi-zaiku.” Hakone Planning Tourism Department/Tourism Division. Accessed July 10, 2025. https://hakone-japan.com/yosegizaiku/.
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