Very hard puzzle, enjoy.

Factual Questions
1

This has been bugging me for weeks, I’ve had a good try at it, and shown it to almost everyone I know. Here is what I’ve been told about it:

  • It can be made in any size.

  • Both parts can be made from any solid material (including a pencil in place of the nut and bolt, there were others like this in the shop).

  • It takes 12 hours to make one.

  • What you see is what you get, there are no “tricks”, it is not bent, cut, glued, steamed, etc.

  • This is an “intellectual rather than physical” problem.

  • The wood is one solid piece of pine.

  • You can easily see everything you need to see.

  • The small, four sided dent in one end is there, and looks the same on all of the others in the shop.

  • The nut rolls freely freely up and down the bolt.

Take this information as you will, I can not guarantee that all of it is true, as I have been told some of it by the friend who give it to me (she was told by its maker). I have been given many explainations that “break these rules”, and have come up with many myself, but so far I cannot find an answer that fits this information.

The mesurements:

These show how far the bolt can be pushed, up, and to the side:


2

What’s the puzzle? Do you want to know what it’s for or how it’s made or something else?

3

I’ve heard of these things before, but the explanation I’ve encountered before is that the wood is subjected to steam until it softens enough to be pliable, and then the bolt is inserted by bending the wood. You claim that it’s not bent, but I think you may have misunderstood.

Daniel

4

What’s the actual puzzle? “How do they get the bolt in there without cutting the ends off?”

5

Yep, that’s pretty much it.

6

Maybe the bolt is placed on a tree so the wood grows around it? I can’t think of any other way if the wood isn’t steamed.

–FCOD

7

Yes, they are steamed. Thus the “12 hours to make one”.

8

From your middle link, it seems like you’d need minimal bending of the wood to achieve clearance over the top of the end tine (I’m referring to the part associated with D in the measurements picture). So what you’d do is bend the wood a little fore and aft until you could introduce the bolt through the first hole. At that point, you’d thread the nut over the bolt, and keep screwing it down as you pushed the bolt forward through the second hole.

At least, that’s how I’d do it, if I had a little free time.

9

I saw a nut and bolt puzzle similar to this that depended on the bolt coming apart somewhere.

10

And the grain structure is perfectly aligned to allow the leftmost tenon to be bent down enough to clear the bolt.

11

Not much fun if we’re assuming the given rules are breakable. Then all this steaming and bending make it easy, and not a puzzle at all.

Let’s go back and assume the block is solid steel (“any material”). Let’s think about how the holes would be formed in that case.

12

Can you move the nut along the bolt rotating it? If not I would suggest that there are two bolts that are srewed 1/2 way into the nut and then glued somehow.

13

Never mind I see from the OP you can move the nut.

14

Is there an optical illusion involved; are some of the objects not what (or where) they appear to be, or involving something like perspective or a mirror?

It looks like everything’s self-explanatory, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be questioned.

15

LHOD got it in one. You steam the wood, bend it in a vice, insert the bolt, and dry the wood.
Somewhere on the web is a how to page, with pictures. I’m not finding it tonight.

16

Look at the angle in the second picture (convienently blocked by he hand). Is it possible that there is just enough play to slide the bolt around the outer block?

17

This is what I like to hear! :smiley:

If the rules I have been given are breakable, I can give you at least four totally different answers, and I’m sure we could all come up with more if we thought about it some more. But that’s not the point!

18

No, it’s been sitting on my desk (and in my briefcase) for weeks and I still can’t work it out.

If you picked it up and played with it, you wouldn’t find any suprises.

19

Sorry, can’t see this. Please explain.

20

BTW, the nut bugs me. Not necessary; indeed, adds nothing. Smells like a red herring, to suggest then negate the two-half-bolts-screwed-into-the-nut hypothesis. That’s the sort of misdirection a magician would use. Which in turn gives credence to the possiblity you implicitly acknowledged from the beginning, that you’ve been hoaxed.