Google Website Translator Gadget  Friday, 7 October 2011
Houdini's Torture Cell (Brian Young)  Here's another puzzle that
arrived from the Netherlands along with the Cast Donuts courtesy
of Wil Strijbos.  It is called 'Houdini's Torture Cell' and it
was designed and manufactured by Brian Young of Mr. Puzzle in
Australia. This puzzle was also used as Brian Young's exchange
puzzle at this year's IPP in Berlin (IPP31) where it proved to
be a big hit, so much so that Brian is now selling them on his
site.  It's a nice looking puzzle made of wood, steel and
acrylic, and as you can see from the picture on the right it is
actually quite small, standing at only 9.5cm tall. For some
reason I expected it to be somewhat larger than it really is.
What you see here is a metal ball bearing (Houdini) trapped
within the confines of it's wood and acrylic torture cell. The
ball rattles around inside the acrylic tube which is capped with
wooden end pieces. The wooden end pieces are also screwed to the
acrylic tube and all of t