Eureka Wooden Puzzles

Sometimes the simplest looking things are the hardest to fathom. Witness Paul Danan, Roman Abramovich and Lembit Opik. The same goes for puzzles. Well it does when it comes to Eureka Wooden Puzzles. At first glance these gorgeously crafted brainteasers look easier than pulling down your pants. If only…

In fact, both puzzles are hideously infuriating, which also means they are hideously entertaining. Aargh! Ideal for shutting up annoying relatives, Eurekas are so engrossing puzzlers will be begging for the solution before you can say ‘pass the lump hammer’. It really is screamingly obvious when you know how. Mwa-ha-ha!

First up there’s Red Cross. Rated 4/5 in terms of difficulty, this deceptively tricky puzzle challenges you to remove and replace a wooden cross with a pair of chopsticks. Easy. Not! It’s actually got us wondering why some cultures persist in using these pesky utensils. After all, you don’t see farmers tilling the fields with snooker cues. We digress. The point is you’ll need the wisdom of Confucius to get the flippin’ thing out!

Next up, meet Maraca. Unlike the bean-filled doodahs favoured by Bez and similarly talentless bozos, this cylindrical noodle-knotter contains just one ball*. All you have to do is free it. It’s not quite as tooth-gnashingly annoying as its chopsticky sibling (1/5 on the difficulty scale) but it will still drive you nuttier than a nutty nut in Nutland.

Both Eureka puzzles are beautifully made so you’ll probably feel less inclined to smash them to smithereens after umpteen hours of head scratching. Indeed we’d love to tell you how to solve them but we can’t. No, really, we can’t. Because the truth is we’ve yet to solve them ourselves. Worse still, we’ve lost the bit of paper with the solution on it. Aargh!

*Childish Hitler joke removed following legal advice.