Trick Opening 6PB, Resumed US shipping

We have released a new burr puzzle, Trick Opening 6PB.

This relatively easy puzzle was designed by Juno after he discovered a piece of hardware that seemed suitable for use in a puzzle. Although it is a small puzzle, it features six different types of wood, making it quite eye-catching.

A major challenge with this new release was determining how to handle the tariff imposed on shipments to the United States. All items shipped from Australia to the US are now subject to a 10% tariff, and sellers are required to pay this tariff in advance before a shipment can even be sent - making it necessary for us to find a workable solution.

Some customers have suggested using courier services, which allow tariffs to be paid by the recipient. However, using couriers presents several problems. One of the biggest issues is shipping cost - for example, when using FedEx, the shipping fee for this new puzzle would be more than five times that of Australia Post's standard service rate. On top of that, customers would also need to cover tariffs, state and city taxes, and handling fees. By the way, when using FedEx through Jetkrate, which handles international parcel forwarding from Australia, the cost including shipping from our location to Jetkrate appears to be lower than sending directly from our location via FedEx.

Another major issue is that our location is in a regional area, where using courier services is quite complicated. Here, FedEx and DHL rely on subcontracted local companies for pickup and delivery, so the level of service is not what one would expect when dealing directly with FedEx or DHL in metropolitan areas.

The last time we used DHL was when we had to send a laptop for manufacturer repair after its motherboard failed. Since DHL was the manufacturer's designated courier, we booked a pickup and waited for their contact. DHL scheduled the pickup a few days later, with only a vague "morning or afternoon" time window, so we had to stay home and wait without knowing when they would arrive. On the scheduled day, the subcontracted pickup company never showed up. We contacted DHL to reschedule, and again the pickup date they provided was several days later. With no alternative options, all we could do was wait again - but once more, the subcontractor canceled the pickup without notice. Eventually, DHL arranged for another company to collect the package on an emergency basis, but the whole ordeal cost us a great deal of time and effort.

An alternative would be to drive to a courier drop-off point instead of waiting at home, but that would require about a two-hour round trip, followed by waiting in line until it's our turn at the drop point. Spending so much time and effort on things that are outside the main focus of our work, which is designing and producing puzzles and science toys, is not something we wish to do. To be honest, we simply do not want to go that far.

Thus, we decided to continue using Australia Post, which is the only practical shipping method for us. Next, we must address the tariffs that the seller is required to collect and pay.

The tariff imposed by the United States on Australia is 10 percent. There is only one third party company that handles the payment of these tariffs on our behalf. When the service fees charged by this company are included, we found that products sold to the United States must be priced about 12 percent higher than before to cover the associated costs. Many other companies have chosen to increase the list price of their products uniformly, but if we did that, customers outside the United States would end up paying the tariff as part of the increased price. This would be unfair, so the tariff for the United States must be borne by the American purchasers.

Shopify, which we use, has a setting called Taxes and Duties. However, this setting only covers state and local taxes in the United States, and it is not appropriate to use the funds collected through this setting to pay tariffs. Tariffs must be collected as tariffs, or the total price must explicitly include the tariff.

We tested about ten highly rated Shopify apps that claim to handle tariffs. All of them either did not work with our shop or allowed customers to bypass the tariff through their own actions. Since our current Shopify plan does not allow custom payment methods on the checkout page, this may be unavoidable. We could switch to a plan that costs about AUD $42,000 per year, which would allow us to modify the checkout page, but it is obvious that this is not a realistic option for a business that sells only a few hundred products per year.

After various trials and adjustments, we set up the Shopify admin page to add the United States as a new market, applying the 12 percent additional cost only when the shipping destination is specified as the United States. So far, this setting seems to work without issues, and we hope that no new problems will arise with this release.

Happy Puzzling!

Con Way Puzzle, 35th Auction Results

We have released a rather unusual Con Way Puzzle. Although the puzzle pieces have unusual shapes, each one is a six-faced solid and appears simple, which might make you think it will be easy to assemble. However, once you try it, you'll find it's surprisingly tricky.

The 35th charity auction, held in advance of our new puzzle release, was once again a great success. We offered one Tortoise Protocol and five Propeller Burr puzzles, and the total winning bids for the six puzzles came to AUD $8,703.44.

As always, half of the total winning bids will be donated to charity. Recently, we have often donated to organizations that accept online contributions, but this time we are thinking of visiting a group active in our local community in person. Once the donation is made and we have received the receipt, we will upload proof of the donation and update this blog.

18/08/2025 Update:

We have donated the funds to Defenders for Hope, a charity organization in our town that helps people in need for various reasons. We are grateful that the money collected from those who participated in the auction is being used to support people who truly need help.

Happy Puzzling!

Tortoise Protocol 2nd Chance Winners

The results are in for the game to determine the 2nd chance recipients for the Tortoise Protocol purchase.

The game involved calculating the average of all 8-digit numbers submitted by participants. The two winners were chosen based on who submitted numbers closest to 71% and 119% of that average.

After tallying, the average came out to 52952569.2, making 71% = 37596324.1 and 119% = 63013557.4. The two closest numbers submitted were 37414183 and 62742360, and these participants are the winners of the 2nd chance.

There were 73 total entries, of which 4 did not meet the entry requirements, leaving 69 valid entries used for the calculation. In addition, several people sent donations without submitting a number - thank you! These donations will be happily used for coffee.

One person submitted a number starting with 0. This entry was deemed invalid. Even if it had been included, the outcome would not have changed, so there's no issue this time. However, for future events of this kind, we'll either clarify the expected range (e.g., 10000000–99999999) or use a dedicated form that restricts input to valid values.

----

Let us explain why we decided to determine the puzzle purchase rights through this kind of process.

For us, the least burdensome way to sell puzzles is to release all available stock at once without prior notice of the launch date or any purchase limits per person. This approach makes administrative processing easier, inventory management simpler, and reduces the risk of overselling due to errors. It can also be considered a fair method. However, such a method may lower the satisfaction of customers who have supported us over the long term. Therefore, we are exploring sales methods that maintain a certain level of fairness while improving the experience for our existing customers.

In the past, when it took months for puzzles to sell out, there was no need to hold back a portion of the stock just in case. But as puzzles began selling out almost immediately after release, we found it necessary to reserve some inventory. When we released Tortoise Protocol, a significant number of shipments ended up being sent in completely wrong directions. Fortunately, despite delays, most packages reached customers safely. However, in similar past situations, we've experienced multiple cases of lost or damaged items.

After Tortoise Protocol sold out, we received many requests for a second chance to purchase. Several people even offered to pay several times the list price. We could have chosen to quietly sell to such individuals, and that would have been much easier and more profitable than collecting $5.00 participation fees and conducting a manual tally. But we don't believe such a method would be supported by most of our customers.

A simple lottery presents the risk of cheating and may cause doubts about whether it was conducted fairly. To address these concerns, we incorporated game elements into the process. We have no plans to conduct simple lotteries in our shop in the future.

We excluded those who already purchased the regular version of Tortoise Protocol from participating in the game, as we believed that would be more acceptable to the majority of participants.

Those without a previous purchase history were also excluded in order to prioritize existing customers. When the regular version was released, a large number of new accounts were registered in our shop, and a fair portion of the puzzles ended up in the hands of those new customers. While everyone starts out as a new customer, for us, the satisfaction of our long-term supporters is more important. We also constantly receive requests to prevent puzzles from falling into the hands of resellers, and this measure serves as part of that response.

We made the $5.00 donation a requirement to participate in the game to clearly identify participants and avoid issues such as missed entries or undelivered emails. When a customer makes a purchase in our shop, the details are recorded on our admin page. Also, participants can confirm the number they submitted by checking the My Account page. Since we also have access to their purchase history, we can verify eligibility. If we had accepted entries by email alone, we would have faced numerous issues such as undelivered emails, inconsistent formatting, and submissions from ineligible individuals.

Juno's original idea was to select the two entries closest to the average as winners. However, this would cause most entries to cluster around the average, which would be boring. To create more diversity in the submitted numbers and reduce the likelihood of multiple people winning, we selected the multipliers 71% and 119%, which result in values with longer decimal points when applied.

Entries with duplicate numbers were disqualified to prevent cheating. For example, if many people submitted 99999999, they could artificially raise the average. We wanted to avoid a situation where multiple people win by submitting the same number. Intuitively, we also felt it was risky to allow duplicate submissions, as they could exploit potential loopholes we hadn't foreseen.

That was quite a long explanation, but in the end, we believe the result turned out to be quite interesting. Both the final average and the winning entries were close to what you might expect from a large set of randomly chosen 8-digit numbers. Whether we try this kind of experiment again remains uncertain, but the whole process has been a valuable learning experience for us.

Happy Puzzling!