Two unusual twisty puzzles from Brainwright: TEZZE and the Bananacus

In this video I show off two unusual and bargain-priced puzzles from Brainwright: the TEZZE by David Pitcher, and the Bananacus by Oskar van Deventer. The TEZZE is a 2D twisty puzzle that looks gorgeous, almost dainty, but hides a tremendous challenge underneath that prim exterior. The Bananacus is a twisty moving-bead puzzle inspired by the Astrolabacus, wherein you twist the puzzle to change the connectivity between channels of coloured beads, and use that to scramble up the beads and then solve them back to an ordered state.

Both can be readily purchased from Amazon for less than $10 and are well worth it for any twisty puzzle collector. For the novice the Bananacus is an excellent brain-teaser that won't require huge amounts of twisty puzzle knowledge to solve. The TEZZE is more appropriate for hardcore solvers, but fortunately it looks great either scrambled or solved, so even if you get stuck it's a nice display piece :)

[walterfristoe]

Iron Butterfly had a member named Doug Ingle, who was the founder of the group and played the organ. He composed the song Inna-Godda-Da-Vida. I don't suppose it's the same guy, huh?

[walterfristoe]

I have a puzzle that's similar to the Bananacus, except that it's a sphere.

[cubedragon]

Have you scrambled the Tezze? Man, I love that one. I managed to solve it last night. No spoilers, but I wanted to let you know that there is another way that doesn't involve 40 move algorithms.