1 November 2023 Sue Young

Brian’s Big Baffling Bolt (aka BBBB)

A celebration of 30 years of making puzzles.
Sequential Discovery puzzle designed and made by Brian Young

Total number of puzzles to sell : 340
Sold so far : 210

Awarded a Jury 1st Prize at IPP41 held in Houston, August 2024 

Update April 28th 2025

This puzzle project was started back in 2022 and it’s not yet finished!  Brian has been working on creating batches of puzzles in between other activities and with a recent burst of activity he is at last at the end of the wait-list.
There are some puzzles available for sale immediately.  So if you don’t have one yet and would like to buy please do email Sue at  [email protected] .

Details of the puzzle:

The goal is to find the 30th-anniversary plaque with its pearl.

Most bolt puzzles have just one or two moves but Brian wanted to make a full-blown sequential discovery puzzle out of a bolt. In the end, he had to hand-make the bolt too! To celebrate 30 years of puzzle making Brian included a few well-disguised hints of puzzles past. But don’t think that means you’ll solve this one easily.

This approach is a little unusual, Brian normally would like to put something radically new into every puzzle that he releases. But this one is actually more like a greatest hits of a lot of his designs to celebrate the last 30 years. 
Even so, you might not easily recognise some of the moves. The puzzle has been checked by some pretty good puzzle solvers around the world and some of them had a bit of trouble with different parts of the puzzle, probably because they’ve never seen the trick in the original puzzle made many years ago. 

Basic Rules:
You will NOT need to use any hitting, spinning, sudden movements, or jarring. Nothing is done up tight, and there is definitely no need for any force.

BBBB is made here at Mr Puzzle. There is no donor bolt.  Brian is machining it all himself from scratch, including the bolt, from hexagonal and round brass stock. There are pins and magnets inside. 
The wooden bases vary in wood type and even colour.  At the moment we have some made with more uniform PNG Ebony and others from Queensland Walnut.
– Overall most of the puzzles have a base made from Papua New Guinean Ebony.  These ebony puzzles vary from streaky (not so many available now), many have a mix of streaky and uniform pieces, and others are quite uniform colour all over.
– There are just 28 puzzles that will have a Queensland Walnut wood base.  The photo below is representative of most of them.  (Queensland Walnut was the wood used to make Whilemmina Wombat back in 2008; because Brian is retiring he’s using up some existing stock. It is not possible to purchase this wood anymore.)
– Some of the uniform coloured PNG Ebony look very similar to the walnut.

Size: Bolt – 65mm long Hex diameteer 30mm Base – 110mm x 50mm x 40mm

Solution:  As is the custom with many of Brian’s puzzles he wants to give people the best chance of puzzling before he publishes the solution. We’ll keep everyone who buys updated when it is available.

 

 

Sample Queensland Walnut

 

 

 

Tags bolt puzzle, mr puzzle, bolt, brian young, sequential discovery