Tortoise Protocol, 34th Auction Results

We will release our new sequential discovery puzzle, Tortoise Protocol, in one week. If you have already received our newsletter, you’ve probably had a chance to see what the puzzle looks like.

Since we can only produce a limited number, it may not reach everyone who wants one. However, we sincerely hope it will find its way into the hands of those who truly wanted it.

Our 34th auction received many bids. All four Tortoise Protocol puzzles listed as second grade sold for more than twice the regular product price. Combined with the four burr puzzles auctioned at the same time, the total winning bids amounted to AUD $12,330.

As always, half of the proceeds were donated to charity. This time, as with the same period last year, the donation was made to Backpack Bed for Homeless Australia. It is currently winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and this year has been colder than usual. We hope the donation will help those facing harsh conditions. We also want to thank the bidders who understood the purpose of our auction and generously placed their bids.

Happy Puzzling!

Gentle Interlock burr puzzle

We have released our new burr puzzle, Gentle Interlock. The name was chosen because it is relatively approachable even for beginners who are not yet familiar with burr puzzles.

When we manufacture a puzzle, we are usually left with offcuts of timber in various sizes. While the leftover pieces from making just one type of puzzle may be minimal, continuously producing many different puzzles leads to a significant accumulation of leftover timber, which begins to take up valuable workshop space. From time to time, Juno looks at these offcuts and wonders if there might be a puzzle he could design using them. Gentle Interlock was born from that very motivation, and it successfully made use of a large portion of the accumulated American Rock Maple stock.

Alongside the production of this puzzle, we have also been continuing work on an SD puzzle. It has been nearly two years since our last SD puzzle release, so thank you for your patience. We expect to be able to announce the release of a new SD puzzle in the not-too-distant future. If you subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of the page, you'll be among the first to receive updates on upcoming releases.

Happy puzzling!

Dark Matter Burr and 32nd Puzzle Auction Results

We have released our third puzzle of the year, the Dark Matter Burr. This puzzle was inspired by a visit to a timber yard where we were introduced to black wood. It is crafted from our original plywood, combining Koto, resulting in a visually striking product.

The total amount raised in our 32nd auction has set a new record. We would like to express our gratitude to everyone who participated and contributed to the excitement. The total winning bids for the seven puzzles amounted to AUD $16,231.01, of which approximately half, AUD $8,120, was donated to a homeless support organization. Australia, located in the Southern Hemisphere, is entering a period of increasingly harsh winter weather. We hope that our contribution will help those without stable housing to live more comfortably during this challenging time.

This year, we have fewer puzzle releases, but we are currently working on several new projects simultaneously. We will notify you through our newsletter as the release date for the next puzzle approaches, so please stay tuned and be patient.

Looking Back to 2023

 Looking Back to 2023

Hello, puzzle lovers!

It's time to look back at what puzzles released this year.

We Have released the following 8 kinds of new mechanical puzzles in 2023.

5th March - Grooved 6 Board Burr #7 and 6BB Oddly Extended Version #02

Grooved 6 Board Burr #7 is one of the most challenging puzzles to solve. It has a unique solution in a relatively small number of 91 assemblies. Many of them also had trouble disassembling the burr puzzles. Hence, this puzzle has the most requests to send the solution file generated by Burr Tools. If you would like to challenge it, we still have some stocks.

6BB OEV #02 has a unique level 28-9-3-1-2 solution, far beyond version #01, which was sold in 2021.

7th May - Strugg L

Strugg L is a puzzle where you take six pieces shaped like the L tetromino out of a box and then put them back in. It may look easy, but it takes 23 moves using only linear motions to remove the first piece from the state where all the pieces are in the box. Another feature of this puzzle is that there are grooves on the side of the box. These grooves make the puzzle difficult to solve.

18th June - Dial Case

Dial Case is the only sequential discovery puzzle we produced in 2023. It requires about 15 moves to open the box. The number of puzzles we produced was large considering our capacity, so we spent a considerable amount of time producing the puzzles.  That was one of the reasons why fewer new puzzles were released the last year.

6th August - Scramb L

Scramb L consists of five pieces and a box, one less than Strugg L. The number of moves required to remove the first piece is 17, which is fewer than Strugg L, making it less challenging. However, this puzzle will surprise you with its bold movement of pieces.

After the release of the puzzle, Juno took about a month's vacation and visited Japan for the first time since 2011. While paddle boarding on a river near his hometown, his board capsized and he lost his glasses and mobile phone. It happened when he was about 12 kilometers down the river. Fortunately, it was near the end of his itinerary and his relatives were waiting to pick him up.

29th October - Neptune

Neptune is a relatively simple and easy burr puzzle, requiring only 6 moves to disassemble. At first glance, it may appear to be an ordinary 6-piece burr puzzle, but like many puzzles designed by Juno in the past, it has unique features that set it apart from typical burr puzzles. This puzzle was also reproduced by Cubicdissection and sold out immediately. It was the last puzzle product released by Cubicdissection. Their legend will continues in Ars Ænigmæ.

24th December - Gravitational Burr and Dual Meanders Box

Gravitational Burr may appear to be a regular 6-piece burr at first glance. A distinctive feature is the ball bearings inside. Because of the novelty of this puzzle, I (Yukari) personally thought it would attract more attention than the Dual Mendars Box.

Dual Meanders Box is an expanded version of the Meanders Box and is extremely challenging. In the Meanders Box, the top plate slid along with the four side pieces. In the Dual Meanders Box, not only does the top plate slide, but the bottom plate also slides. This puzzle was assembled and sold with the maximum number of moves, 506. As it takes a considerable amount of time to assemble, we made it possible to remove the pins (screws) that go back and forth between the maze-like grooves through holes drilled in the top and bottom plates.

Just after 24th December, a severe thunderstorm attacked our area, and the power was out for about one and a half days. Luckily, we could post the orders on 27th December. We would appreciate your understanding that the parcel might be delayed due to the damage caused by the thunderstorm.

A little information about our products in 2024

We plan to release something different from puzzles at the beginning of 2024. Sometimes, it's good to try something different.

A relatively big project is progressing in parallel. It will take lots of time to complete, so please wait patiently. Juno is still working together with our CNC routers on the last day of 2023 and New Year's Day 2024.

As in past years, we will also be releasing several puzzles. We often hear from our long-time customers that they have missed a puzzle release.  The best way to find out about upcoming releases is to subscribe to our newsletter, so please do so.

We have appreciated lots of puzzle lovers playing with our puzzles over the past year.

We hope 2024 brings you lots of love and joy.

Neptune and 29th Auction Puzzle Results

We have started the release of our new puzzle, Neptune. While it may appear to be a typical 6-piece burr at first glance, it comes with hidden and unique features. Those who get their hands on this puzzle will surely experience an "aha!" moment. Neptune sold out quicker than expected.

The 29th auction received numerous bids and was successfully concluded. The total winning bid amount was AUD $1,885. As promised, we have donated approximately half of this total amount, which is AUD $950, to The Salvation Army Australia.

 

This year, due in part to Juno taking a one-month vacation, we haven't released as many new puzzles. In fact, we have only released six puzzles, including Neptune. However, there is a chance that we might be able to release new puzzles around Christmas. If you're interested in our future plans, please subscribe to our newsletter for updates.

Happy Puzzling!

New Puzzles, 27th Auction Puzzle Results etc.

We have released new burr puzzles, Grooved 6 Board Burr #7 and 6BB Oddly Extended Version #02 along with small amount of 2nd grade 6BB Oddly Extended Version #01. Both new puzzles are extremely difficult, so you'll have plenty of time to have fun and struggle.

Our 27th puzzle auction event ended on 4th March. We put up the following ten puzzles.

The total sales amount was AUD $687. As promised, we donated half of the sales, AUD $350 to The Salvation Army Australia to support people who are in need. Here is the receipt for the donations.

We've been working on new SD puzzles for quite some time. All updates regarding the new SD puzzles will be released exclusively via the newsletter until the puzzle is ready for release, so if you are interested, please subscribe it via the right bottom of our shop page.

Happy Puzzling!

22nd Auction Results, new puzzles etc.

We held an eBay auction, and it successfully ended on 19th February. This time, we had put 2 kinds of puzzles in total 5 puzzles. The sales results are as follows:

The total sales amount was AUD $407.69, so we rounded it up and donated AUD $204.00 to Save The Bilby Fund.
Here is the receipt.

We have started selling our new puzzles, Splitted 12, and Puzzle Turbine on Saturday. Both puzzles are of a very high level, requiring many moves to remove the first piece from the assembled figure. Splitted 12 has unique level 17-22 solution and Puzzle Turbine has unique level 38 solution.

Recently I have heard the sad news that Koalas are listed as an endangered species on the Australian east coast. I wanted to help them and sowed several Eucalyptus seeds last month. Unfortunately, it seemed like I did something wrong, only one could germinate. This is a Eucalyptus tereticornis, commonly known as Blue Gum, one of Koala's favorite trees. Yes, the same as us, Koalas have their favorite tastes.

We know there is a type of puzzle that is the favorite of most puzzle lovers. We are producing new sequential discovery puzzles with great care now. It will still take some time to complete. So, please wait until we release our newsletter.

Yukari

Looking Back to 2021

Hello puzzle lovers!

There is only less than a month left this year.
We are working on new puzzles, but they are hard to be completed this year, so our next puzzles will be released in 2022. We will notify you when they are ready by sending a newsletter.

So, as usual, let's look back on what we released in 2021.
In total, we have produced 10 puzzles this year.

In March, we released these three puzzles. Most of our puzzles are difficult to solve, but I think Bumpy Pentominoes is the one that can be played easily and enjoyed by everyone for a challenge.

6BB Oddly Extended Version #01
Floating Framed Burr
Bumpy Pentominoes

In May, we released these two puzzles.

6 Board Burr 5x8 #02
Beauy Kruse

In July, we released a sequential discovery puzzle. This puzzle looks like an ordinary cube, but it contains some tools and some mechanism that trick you.

Sequential Discovery Cubed Box

In October, we released these four puzzles. Grooved 6 Board Burrs are a type of puzzle that Juno has been working on and this time, it finally reached No.5 and No.6. I am not sure whether he is going to make No.7. Probably, he is.

Grooved 6 Board Burr #5
Grooved 6 Board Burr #6
Bubinburr
Plumply 12

We will make enjoyable puzzles that can make puzzle lovers happy next year too.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season from Juno and Yukari.

SDCB release outcome and auction

We have released 140 Sequential Discovery Cubed Box puzzles on 18th July and the puzzle was sold out in a very short time. The image below is the screenshot of the admin page on our shop that is captured about 2 minutes after the release of the puzzle.

As you can see, 118 customers have already finished purchasing. 139 visitors are about to check out and 152 visitors put puzzle(s) in their cart. Many of them must have experienced that the puzzle they put in their cart disappeared because only person who finished the entire transaction process before stock ran out can purchase products. Maximum page views reached 1,215 and it was our site record.

The following table shows how many customers completed their orders using what payment methods every minute after the release.

Overall, PayPal was the preferred payment method, but those who used credit cards were able to complete their transactions more quickly. Of the ten fastest customers, all but one used a credit card. If the 140 puzzles had been released in two batches, one for 70 puzzles and one for 70 puzzles, those who could not complete the purchase procedure within two minutes might not have had a chance at all. I assume completing the purchase process in less than a minute requires a certain amount of IT skills and knowledge. Many of our fastest customers may have logged into our web shop beforehand and had their customers' details and payment details saved in their browser. Some of them may be using browser automation tools to reduce the time needed to make a purchase.

The following table shows the addresses of our customers, sorted by country.

Amazingly, more than 60% of the puzzles were purchased by customers who live in the United States. We once experimented a later release time in our time zone, but the portion of the US customers was rather increased at the time. Maybe we just have more customers in the US.

Among 140, 39 customers are new to our website, and we think that it is quite a large portion considering the high retail price of the puzzle.

We have cancelled a few orders because of the following reasons:

• Purchases made by the same household members.
• Purchases made using false identities.

We believe that it is not reasonable to sell more than one puzzle to people in the same household, as many visitors will miss out on the chance to buy, so we will stick to this policy whenever we release a puzzle that might attract strong attention. All cancelled puzzles were already allocated to customers who missed their chance.

As we have mentioned on our newsletter before, two second grade Sequential Discovery Cubed Box puzzles were put up on auction. A half of the sales of the auction puzzles will be donated to a volunteer organization that is relatively close to our location to help people who are in need. Bidding on the auctions by the customers who already purchased the regular version of the puzzle is also welcome since our intention this time is to raise some money for charity.

Juno

19th Auction Results and coming new puzzles

We held an eBay auction and it ended on 13th March.
This time, we had put 2 kinds, a total of puzzles of 5 puzzles.

6BB Oddly Extended Version #01 (2nd grade) x3
6BB Oddly Extended Version #01 (Pine test version) x1
Floating Framed Burr (2nd grade) x1
Total sold amount: AUD $322.24
Donated amount: AUD $165.00

The total sales amount was AUD $322.24 and as we promised, we donated about half of the total sales amount AUD $165.00 to BirdLife Australia on Sunday.
Here is the receipt (right bottom).

The product version of 6BB OEV #01 was sold out in a day which means there are no stock of our original plywood puzzles. Well, don't worry. Juno thought something like this might happen, he has made lots of original plywood. He has already started making the next burr puzzles.

If you are a sequential discovery puzzle lover, probably you would like to know when you will be able to get the next one. We are still working on it and cannot tell when they will be available. We will send our newsletter as soon as they are ready for sale. If you haven't registered for our newsletter, please join!

Yukari

eBay Auction, shipping notice, new SD puzzle

It has been a long time since I last updated this blog. I hope you and your family are doing well during this difficult time.

We have received emails from puzzle lovers asking whether we have been doing well. Thank you very much for caring about us, we are pretty fine.

If you are registered to our newsletter, you may already know that we have started an eBay auction of Coin Case. If you have not yet registered to our newsletter, please follow the link below and complete the subscription.

Pluredro Newsletter
https://blog.pluredro.com/2017/11/pluredro-newsletter.html

About the eBay auction
We have put three of the 2nd grade Coin Cases up on eBay auction. Coin Case is the simplest puzzle box Juno has ever designed and the number of steps is small. If you are used to playing with puzzles, you can solve it within a minute. However, if you cannot find out the trick, it can take a lot longer to solve. There is one thing that I want to remind you of, Coin Case is NOT a sequential discovery puzzle. There are no tools contained to solve it.

The retail price of Coin Case is AUD $88.00. After finishing the auction, we are starting to sell product versions of Coin Case on Sunday 19th July 07:00 Brisbane time.

Parcel service impacts due to COVID-19
We have found a new notice at Australia Post updated on 2nd July. It says that we cannot ship parcels to some specific countries from Australia due to COVID-19 effect.

https://auspost.com.au/about-us/news-media/important-updates/coronavirus/coronavirus-international-updates

Please note that if we received an order from countries where we cannot dispatch a parcel now, we will keep the order until we are able to send it out. In that case, and then, we will notify you by email. Please do not hesitate to place an order as usual if you would like to purchase our puzzle products.

New SD puzzle
We are sometimes asked when we are going to release a new sequential discovery puzzle. I can only say that it will take a long time to be completed because the puzzle consists of lots of small parts and intensive, time consuming CNC machining is required. Juno does not want to say much about uncompleted projects so, please be patient and wait for the updates notified by the newsletter.

The new SD puzzle does really have lots of tricks and steps. Some of the steps are very uncommon and unusual. It is going to be the puzzle that has the most number of tools used among our sequential discovery puzzles, full of fun and amazement.

Yukari

Temporary Shop Closure

Hi puzzle lovers, how have you been?
Juno and I are good as always.

Probably, some people may have already noticed that we are temporarily closing our online shop and our eBay shop. It's just a temporary closing due to the diminution of international/domestic flights. For example, Qantas has decided to cut 90% of international flights. We still can ship parcels, but it might cause some issues like a delay or a missing parcel which we want to avoid. Therefore, we have decided to close our shop for a while. We will open our shop as soon as possible when the logistics return to normal.

Having said that, we are at home and are making puzzles as usual (a bit slower pace though), so, please feel free to contact us if you have any inquiry.

We have been making three kinds of puzzles, a small puzzle box, a burr puzzle and a big sequential discovery puzzle. While this situation is going on, we are making puzzles at home and preparing for the day of selling puzzles. When there is news from us, we will notify you sending our newsletter or write about it on this blog and our website. If you have not yet registered to our newsletter, please join it.

We hope you all have healthy days and keep yourselves safe.

Pluredro Newsletter: https://blog.pluredro.com/2017/11/pluredro-newsletter.html

13th Auction Result and puzzle release timing

The auction we held ended on 21st September successfully.
The sales results are as follows:

SDBBB (Pine, test version): $405.00
Juno's Checker Pentominoes (American Black Walnut): $107.50
Juno's Checker Pentominoes (Jarrah): $112.50
Juno's Checker Pentominoes (Utile): $102.50
Total: $727.50

The total sales amount was AUD $727.50. It was the highest sales amount ever! The donation amount was AUD $365.00. We used to donate half of the sales to animal shelters, but this time we headed to a wildlife park with AUD $365.00 cash in hand. The park we chose was David Fleay Wildlife Park.

Here is the receipt.

It was a nice opportunity to say hello to Aussie animals, so we walked around the park. Australia has a variety of animals, some of them are very pretty and some of them are very dangerous.

Here is a representative of a dangerous creature; crocodile.

Here is an iconic cute animal; Koala.

This time, SDBBB was sold out very quickly. Honestly, we didn't expect them to be out of stock three hours after we started selling.
We feel sorry for people who live in Europe. For them, the release time was too early in the morning. Therefore, what we thought is, for example setting the release time of popular puzzles like sequential discovery puzzles or puzzle boxes at 7 am on Sunday morning in Brisbane, Australia time. If we started selling at 7 am, the time of other places would be as follows:

California: 14:00 Sat
New York: 17:00 Sat
London: 22:00 Sat
Frankfurt: 23:00 Sat
Paris: 23:00 Sat
Athens: 24:00 Sat

The time I indicated above might change depending on the season, so please make sure.

I think this is the best option to give a fair opportunity for most people. We will announce you the day and roughly the time of starting to sell puzzles by the newsletter and on our website. (Sorry, we don't use Facebook)

We are now making the next puzzle. I am very excited because the next one is my favorite type of puzzle. Please wait and see what is coming next.

Yukari

Slammed Car won the Jury Grand Prize

It was good news to hear that one of our puzzle products, Slammed Car, won the Jury Grand Prize at the 2019 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition. We received lots of congratulatory messages and we thank all of you who supported us.

Although we run a niche business producing wooden mechanical puzzles, the name of the designer is not Juniche but Junichi. When Juno was a small kid, he complained to his mother asking why his Japanese name looked simpler compared to two of his elder brothers. His mother told Juno that all the Japanese names of her three sons have the same number of spelling strokes and your name means No. 1 hoping to be No. 1. Juno's mind was not so twisted as today at the time and he was convinced and thought that "OK, I have to be No. 1." Anyways, Juno likes to be spelled as Juniche and he captured the image of the competition website before the committee fixed the mistyping.

We have produced nearly 100 Slammed Cars and thanks to your support, the cars are almost gone.

Now, it is a good opportunity to inform our customers who have already bought the car. We expected that some of the small parts of the puzzle can be lost or damaged, so we produced extra parts. We heard the car displayed at the competition was also damaged and we think positively it meant many people played with the puzzle. There are especially decent numbers of spare parts of wing mirror sets and the spanner. One of our customers told us the front rego plate was chewed by his dog.

You know, the world is complex, and we don't know what will happen; chewed by a dog, traffic accident and so on. Please contact us if you need these spare parts. We can send replacement parts (if available) by non-trackable letter or if you buy another puzzle at Pluredro Shop, we can enclose the replacement part in the package.

We have already been working on our next sequential discovery puzzle product, but it is impossible to tell at the moment when the puzzle will be available. Please understand that we also can't reserve our puzzle products because if everybody starts asking us for a reservation, we just cannot handle it, and it is also important for fairness to let the early birds catch the worm. The first announcement of our new products is always notified by Pluredro Newsletter and if you are not subscribed, please register.

Yukari

Puzzle auction and coming new puzzles

We have put three puzzles up for auction on eBay! Every puzzle starts from $1.00 AUD! As we have always done, we are going to donate half of the sales of this auction to the Animal Welfare League Queensland (AWLQ).

Please note that the puzzles we have put up for the auctions are all test version. Compared with the products we are selling at our shop, the material, durability, finishing and precision look to be at a disadvantage. When you bid, please make sure of the quality by looking at the picture on eBay.

Juno usually makes prototype or test version puzzles when or before we produce our regular products.
The test version of Grooved 6 Board Burr #2 was kept after we released its regular products because we didn't have many puzzles up for auction.
Its only but big difference to the regular one is the material. The test version is made of PNG Rosewood and is not durable compared to our original plywood that is used for the regular ones.

Juno has also made two test versions of Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 using solid timber of PNG Rosewood and Jarrah. Unlike our regular products, several grooves on the puzzle pieces were milled out manually by a small milling machine.

Well, as mentioned above, we have a new design of our Grooved 6 Board Burr series and its production is almost completed. The regular version of Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 is made of our original plywood of New Guinea Walnut and European Beech. Our new CNC router was used to produce the puzzle and the machine did very intensive work.

We are planning to release Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 and a sequential discovery puzzle box Slammed Car around mid-June.

The latter puzzle requires lots of steps, around 15 to 20 depending on how it is counted to access the internal cavity. Several hours of CNC work was necessary for each puzzle and it took a long time to produce the puzzle even though we have two CNC routers, and both were occasionally used at the same time.

We will notify our newsletter subscribers by email when the two new puzzles are available.

If you have not registered to our newsletter, please take a look at the following blog entry.

Pluredro Newsletter

Yukari

Our new toy

Most of our customers will know that we have been using a Chinese CNC router for our puzzle production. The machine is very reliable, does accurate work, and is a mandatory tool in our workshop. Many of our products could not have been made without the CNC router in a realistic working time frame.

Despite that, we had an inconvenience because the machine had a relatively smaller work area of 400 mm x 300 mm. In many cases, while we were producing a particular part, we didn't have enough area to cut the other parts in the remaining space of the working table.

Here we go, let's buy another larger machine!
We made up our mind last October and the new larger machine was delivered to our house at the end of last year. Although Juno had made sure that the machine was intact and it could be operated from one of his laptops on the day of delivery, there were many things that had to be done before the machine was used for puzzle production.

A CNC router requires a dedicated computer and it has to be set close to the CNC machine itself. The problem is the place sometimes becomes full of sawdust especially when Juno does rip saw cuts using a table saw. So, he decided to hide the dedicated computer in the cabinet of the CNC router, and then hooked up a computer monitor and a keyboard that comes with a pointing device. When these are not in use, the keyboard is folded down and is wrapped up with the special cover that I made.

The dust boot had to be made because Juno didn't like the size and the functions of commercially sold dust boots. Plumbing work for the duct collection was also necessary.

As you can see on the upper image, we have been producing cars although all the car manufacturing industries in Australia were closed down in 2017. The car is going to be one of our next puzzle products. Juno also has an idea of Grooved 6 Board Burr #3 and the puzzle is already in the production process. We sometimes have been using two of the CNC machines at the same time, worrying about the next electricity bill. Even with these efficient machines, the production takes time, so please wait patiently until we introduce the availability of the puzzles by our Pluredro newsletter.

Yukari