Scorpion

5 

I bought this exact puzzle from a gadget store in Toronto in late October/early November 2000, while visiting Ontario for 10 days from Britain. I could never, um, puzzle it out, and eventually put it away and forgot about it for years at a time. This evening, in mid-December 2022, I just rediscovered it in a box of random 'fun stuff' while searching out my Christmas decorations. Intrigued all over again, I spent a little while sitting at my desk with it with no more success than I managed decades ago. Stopped for dinner, watched some TV, and came back to it again a few hours later and tried to apply some logic to it involving looping the string around the metal somehow... and then after only about 10 minutes stunned myself (as in, genuine mouth-drops-open disbelief) when I suddenly found the string was hanging between the 'claws' and the ring now had nothing to stop it just being slid off the end of the metal shaft. At last, after 22 years (I was only 21 1/2 when I bought it!!), I'd solved it. Trouble is, I'm not really sure exactly what I did. So after another, longer spell trying to get the ring back ON the rope, I realised it was going to be exactly as hard to return everything to its starting arrangement – and so eventually, after some internal debate, bit the bullet and shamefacedly decided to Google the puzzle. I still remembered after all this time that it was called Scorpion, but it still took some creative searching, a couple of dead ends and ultimately a reverse image search and clicking through to the "More results" pages before I finally stumbled upon this Puzzle Master website – and was delighted to find that (1) I'd recalled the name correctly across two decades, (2) that it's still being made and sold, and (3) that the difficulty rating was actually rather high! Alas there's no hints to the solution (or, rather, the un-solution) here, of course. So I'll either have to succumb to requesting it from Puzzle Master, as offered here... or just have to spend another 22 years puzzling it out backwards :)

5 

I had my eye on this one for a very long time! I decided to order it finally for Christmas with 2 other puzzles. It came pretty fast. I think I managed to find a solution within one day, only because I've already solved another level 10 puzzle from Puzzle Master, which had something similar to this one in its solution. The solution is very quick and easy once you find it. However, despite my knowledge, I was still lucky to find the solution. This puzzle is a must for every puzzler! There are several basic puzzles one must know how to solve. "Cowboy's Hobble", "Heart Breaker", "Handcuffs", "Beetle Bug" and this one from Puzzle Master Wire puzzles are some of those. Extremely fun to solve and a must-buy, must-have, must-do, must-know! :)