Many of Pavel's puzzles can be customized to promote your
business, celebrate a milestone, or commemorate a special
occasion. With enough notice, we might even be able to create
a brand-new, custom puzzle design, just for you!
Contact us
to discuss your needs.
Let us customize a puzzle for you!
Pavel Curtis is perhaps best known as the creator of the online world
LambdaMOO,
but he's been collecting mechanical puzzles for as long as he can remember, and has
been designing new ones since 1999. Many of the designs on sale here have been
featured over the years at the exclusive International Puzzle Party.
As a day job, Pavel works as a software architect at Microsoft.
Other Puzzle Sellers
Puzzle Resources
Some Serious Collectors
Online Puzzles
Got a puzzle site and want to trade links? Write me!
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It's just a jigsaw puzzle, right? With only a couple dozen pieces, how
hard could it be? Pavel's latest multi-stage solving experience will
take you to the edge: can you guess the secret word he's thinking of?
Can you get a word ... in Edgewise?
Conceived by world-renowned computer scientist and mathematician
Donald Knuth, and brought to fruition by Pavel, this is an elegant set
of five progressively more complex and difficult challenges, each
using the same pieces and each with a unique solution.
Brrr! This big, frigid beauty recalls the shockingly blue ice of an Alaskan
glacier, but assembling its complex interlocking pieces won't leave you
cold. A striking attention getter in any room, begging to be taken apart.
Do you dare to brave the elements and challenge this icy jumble?
This investigator's magnifying glass has been broken!
Repair the glass in two different ways to reveal clues
to an old mystery. Can you put the pieces together
to uncover the hidden meanings and solve this
puzzling enigma, not just once, but twice?
The word “EIGHT” seems so innocent, so harmless, so
devoid of either mystery or malice, doesn't it? Don't
you believe it! Your job is to pack those five letters
into each side of the tray, one supposedly “easy” and
the other admittedly “hard.” Watch out, they're tricky!
Just four simple-seeming pieces to fit into each side
of the tray, but they're much trickier than you'd think
to get your head around, and there's only one solution
per side! This award-winning puzzle design is
available again for the first time in many years!
Originally copyrighted in 1932 by the son of Thomas Edison,
this puzzle has been unavailable for over half a century.
Can you assemble the 12 blocks into a single, solid rectangle?
Just how easy a puzzle do you think an Edison would design?
Anansi, the trickster spider god of African and Caribbean lore, has created
a tricky maze with no walls, no paths to follow,
not even any dead ends! Can you see through all of
Anansi's tricks and find the secret he's left for you at
the center of his maze? Pavel's series of multi-stage
solving experiences continues in a very satisfying way!
Twelve stars with a deep or shallow notch on
each arm. Can you match deep with shallow
at every intersection to assemble this beautiful
crystaline sphere? It's a tough challenge with
a truly satisfying result.
A mysterious disassembled octahedron with an equally
mysterious engraved tablet: what can it all mean?
The third in our series of multi-stage puzzles!
Eight slim plastic triangles with tabs and slots on the edges,
some strange etchings on the surfaces, and a whole lotta
holes! A new multi-stage solving experience!
Six flat pieces, each with two little tabs hanging off one edge, come
together in just one way to make this handsome figure. An elegant
and intriguing addition to any executive's desk.
A new concept in mechanical puzzles, the Ooo Tray is a multi-level solving experience
with each level's solution leading you on to the next. The final answer is a single word;
can you find it?
Twelve pieces exhibit all the ways that two slightly "off" squares can be joined.
In the first of four challenges, you "simply" fit them all into the tray. The final
challenge has only three solutions; can you absorb enough Easter Island
culture to complete it?
Pavel found twelve ways to choose a group of three tiles from a lovely
Arts and Crafts-style floor and then fitted them nicely into this tray.
Can you find both possible packings?
There are just four pieces to fit into a tray that's clearly way oversized for them.
How hard could that possibly be? It pays to keep this puzzle's name in mind...
Each of the seven sticks has one dovetail tab attached along its length,
and one dovetail notch cut across it. Your goal is to assemble the
pieces with every tab fitted into a notch. Two of the four solutions will
balance nicely on the end of one stick.
Enter the strange world of non-periodic tiling! Can you fit these mind-boggling pieces into the
turbaned head of the Grand Vizier? Once you do, there's a second challenge on the back!
Can you recreate the simple symmetry of the Japanese flag from these twelve
two-sided dominoes? Careful, the pieces aren't the same on their backs!
This version of the Japanese flag puzzle is made from stiff card stock instead
of Lucite and comes without a tray. A portable brain twister at a bargain price.
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(November 26, 2011)
A Holiday Discount Puzzle Solve this puzzle for 10% off any order! I had so much fun with last year's holiday-discount-puzzle promotion that I've decided to do it again! Who knows, maybe it'll turn into an annual tradition around here... Just like last year, in honor of the holiday season, I've created a puzzle that you can solve to earn a discount on any order here at Pavel's Puzzles. Simply cut out the fourteen strips...
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