Ages

Description as found on Mr Puzzle website:

"The ultimate goal is to find the piece of Australiana inside the puzzle.
At the end of the solve you will find a small compartment that holds a piece of Lightning Ridge opal. Don’t get your hopes up, whilst it is a small piece of genuine opal from the Lightning Ridge opal field, the compartment is small and it’s not the Aurora Australis!

Looking for a simple puzzle you can solve easily? This is not going to be it.
Looking for a quick solve? That’s not going to happen.

This may not be the hardest puzzle in the world but if you think about the Coming of Age MkII combined with the SMS Box with fewer pieces and fewer tools. You have it!

The puzzle has trick locks, tools, elements of sequential discovery but essentially it’s a very hard burr puzzle. If you’re looking for a walk in the park don’t buy this one.

Brian has included ideas in this puzzle that he’s never seen in a puzzle before. Solving a new puzzle often draws on previous puzzle-solving experiences so having lots of puzzles in your collection can be a big help. But the inclusion of ideas not seen before instantly bumps up the difficulty a lot........"

"This is not a binary burr even if it seems to have some of the elements. All the moves are random. That makes it less predictable to solve. And the burr has no frame; even the Coming of Age MkII pieces are technically making a frame which is how they can get so many moves. But how to get so many moves without a frame and still keep it stable while you play with it? Brian thinks he has done that here.

The first burr piece can be removed without any rotational moves but things are not so straightforward after that. Although Brian has left some rotational moves in the puzzle there is definitely no force required to rotate them so if it’s a tight fit then it probably isn’t meant to rotate. More than half the pieces have been strengthened with splines but don’t forget this puzzle is made of wood, not metal so no undue force, please.

All tools have been provided to do this puzzle. No external tools and no hitting is required."

Repairs: This is hard to describe without it being a spoiler. Upon solving a small part that was not intended to be removed came out. The puzzle was sent to Brian Young (the creator) and has been repaired back to the original condition. There are no signs that a repair has been made.

Winning bidder will be contacted/invoiced with the auction total (winning bid amount the actual shipping costs to be calculated after the end of the auction 3.5% paypal charge).