Orient Elox

This wooden packing puzzle by Jean-Claude Constantin features brightly colored metal anodized beads and 9 elaborately decorated wooden pieces.  The object is to put all the pieces inside the frame.  You can quickly see however, that the colorful beads are preventing the wooden pieces from sliding completely underneath the acrylic lip that surrounds the edge of the puzzle.  The game or puzzle is to remove two beads of your choice (with the only exception of the two beads that are in the same corner) and then figure out how to fit the pieces into the frame.  The math:  Of the 9 pieces, seven of them have 5 units, one has 4 units and one has three units, for a total of 42 units.  The frame however, holds 4×8 units= 40 total units and that is why your job is to remove 2 beads in order to be able to solve the puzzle. A beautiful puzzle that has hundreds of possibilities to play, and can entertain over and over again. Jean-Claude Constantin lives in Germany, where he designs and manufactures many different laser-cut wood puzzles, as well as metal puzzles and magic tricks.