Welcome to the sixth spotlight of the Lilly Library’s Mechanical Puzzle blog series, written by Andrew Rhoda, the Lilly Library’s Curator of Puzzles!
Dexterity puzzles feature manual dexterity as the challenge, with the dexterity applied to moving the pieces of the puzzle using gravity, or something similar, to get to the solution. Most of the puzzles in this article will have you catch a piece of the puzzle or guide a piece of the puzzle to a goal on a path. As Jerry Slocum and his co-authors write in Puzzles Old and New: How to Make and Solve Them, “Dexterity puzzles have been popular for centuries in many different cultures and civilizations. Although they are often called games, they are puzzles since they are solved by only one person and are based on the use of manual dexterity. Many different types of puzzles are based on the use of manual dexterity for a solution. These types include Throw and Catch, Mazes with Balls, Glass Topped Rolling Ball Puzzles and many more” (Slocum et al. 1986, 142). Included below are a few examples of these puzzles.
Examples of Dexterity Puzzles
As mentioned above, one type of dexterity puzzle that most people will be familiar with is the “throw-and-catch” puzzle. These puzzles can take several forms, but the “cup-and-ball” or “bilboquet” is probably the most well-known type. These puzzles will have a cup at the top of a stick with a ball attached to the stick by a string. The goal is to swing the puzzle so that the ball is thrown into the air and then catch it in the cup. There are variations of this puzzle from across the world. This type of dexterity puzzle existed in the pre-Columbian Americas (Slocum et al. 1986, 142). Another variation is the balero, as it is known in Mexico where it is, as Puzzles Old and New: How to Make and Solve Them puts it, “thought of as a traditional folk toy” (Slocum et al. 1986, 142). With this variation, instead of a ball, you have a larger barrel with a hole in one end, and in place of the cup you have a peg. The goal remains the same as other “cup-and-ball” puzzles: you have to throw the barrel and catch it with the peg.
Another puzzle in the “throw and catch” subcategory is the kendama from Japan. This puzzle features a ball with a hole, the tama, and a handle with three cup areas on the sides and the bottom of the puzzle and a peg at the very top, the called the ken (Kendama USA, n.d.). The Japan Kendama Association points to the encyclopedia “Kiyusyoran” as the first documented reference to a “cup-and-ball” puzzle in Japan, with the Nichi-getsu Ball (patented in Hiroshima in 1919) as the source for what has become the modern kendama design (Japan Kendama Association, n.d.). The kendama has also gained a performance aspect with people competing in timed events and in head-to-head trick competitions (Sol Kendamas 2025).
Another type of dexterity puzzle that might be familiar are puzzles in the “rolling ball” sub-category. In 1889, Charles Crandall produced a version of this puzzle, “Pigs in Clover,” that popularized this sub-category (Slocum and Botermans 1994, 129). The puzzle featured concentric rings with small cut outs, a covered center “pen,” and marbles representing the porcine escapees. As Slocum notes in his chapter on early puzzle crazes prior to the Rubik’s Cube for the book The Cube: The Ultimate Guide to the World’s Bestselling Puzzle, “To solve the Pigs in Clover puzzle, the player uses dexterity to roll four clay marbles through a circular maze into a ‘pen’ in the center. A huge craze resulted when the inventor, toy maker Charles Crandall, introduced it in February 1889. Three weeks later, Waverly Free Press reported, ‘The toy works are turning out 8,000 Pigs in Clover a day and are twenty days behind in their orders” (Slocum et al. 2009, 17). Puzzles Old and New: How to Make and Solve Them notes that similar puzzles were documented as far back as 1840 and may have served as the inspiration for Crandall’s popular design (Slocum et al. 1986, 142).
The British company R. Journet and Company was well-known for producing rolling ball puzzles. As Slocum and Botermans write in The Book of Ingenious and Diabolical Puzzles, “The firm R. Journet and Company of London designed and produced well over one hundred different glass-top dexterity puzzles beginning in 1891 and continuing until the 1970s” (Slocum and Botermans 1994, 129). Some of these take the form of maze-based puzzles, somewhat like the “Pigs in Clover’ puzzle. Others feature an image in the background that provided some visual support for the narrative of the puzzle. Lunch counters, WWI air battles, and sports matches are all subjects used in dexterity puzzles. Literature could also inspire the puzzles produced by R. Journet and Company, as you can see here with Alice in Puzzleland.
A unique version of this category of puzzle would be the dexterity puzzles made by Japanese producer Torii. As an advertising sheet held in the Slocum manuscript collection from the 1984 global debut for these Torii dexterity puzzles reads, “In most dexterity puzzles it is necessary to get one or more silver balls into their respective holds. In these puzzles various objects or shapes must be maneuvered into particular positions so as to complete a picture” (Torii Dexterity Puzzles Design Sheet). With Torii’s dexterity puzzles there are often fixed elements of the picture that will be part of the final image but often will also unexpectedly move the sliding parts of the puzzle. Thereby the fixed elements of the image will add to the difficulty of the puzzle. As the advertising sheet mentions, the series of thirty-five Torii puzzles presented there featured four levels of difficulty, numbered from the easiest at “1” to the most difficult at “4” (Torii Dexterity Puzzles Design Sheet).
If you are interested in seeing more dexterity puzzles in the Slocum Puzzle Collection 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 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
Japan Kendama Association. n.d. “Kendama Origins.” Accessed January 8, 2026. https://kendama.or.jp/english/history/kendama-origins/.
Kendama USA. n.d. “What is Kendama?” Accessed January 8, 2026. https://kendamausa.com/what-is-kendama/.
Slocum, Jerry, David Singmaster, Dieter Gebhardt, Wei-Hwa Huang, and Geert Hellings. 2009. The Cube: The Ultimate Guide to the World’s Bestselling Puzzle. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers.
Slocum, Jerry. and Jack Botermans. 1994. The Book of Ingenious & Diabolical Puzzles. Times Books.
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).
Sol Kendamas. 2025. “Kendama Competition Formats Explained: A Complete Guide to How Kendama Tournaments Work.” https://www.solkendamas.com/blogs/announcements/kendama-competition-formats-explained-a-complete-guide-to-how-kendama-tournaments-work.
Torii Dexterity Puzzles Design Sheet, Slocum mss., Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana., https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAC0577aspace_VAC0577-01814.
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