Some people just don’t like to sit down and think.
They need to do something, always.
Move, dance, build or do sports.
Well, if these people were mechanical puzzles, they were dexterity puzzles.
Solving a dexterity puzzle will require:
Motorics;
Tons of tries;
Spatial orientation;
Concentration;
A calm mind.
Dexterity puzzles are awesome for Wanderers, as they’re not too hard to understand and are lower on the budget scale.
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I Like to Move It
There’s no better puzzle type for people who like moving stuff around.
By nature, they’re really close to maze puzzles, and you’ll shortly understand why.
Oh please do set up high expectations. Here’s what you’re likely to experience:
Gravity – dexterity puzzles require tons of gravity. In fact, if gravity stopped working for some reason, you won’t be able to solve most of them.
Ball Bearings – Yet again the ball bearings come to haunt us. Move them around using gravity.
Sleight of Hand – Without your special spatial touch, we’re all doomed. Precise movements are of most importance here.
Training – most of us aren’t born as natural dexterity puzzle solvers. Even if you know the solution, you’ll probably need to try it more than one time to succeed.
Hybrids – puzzles from other types often use dexterity as part of the solution. This is why some people don’t consider this a puzzle type (hint – I completely disagree).
In the picture (took by Bar Aharon), you can see a small transparent cube with ball bearings inside. Your job is to fit all ball bearings into holes using gravity.
It’s part of a series called Chadwick Mind Teaser Games – a series of 12 dexterity cubes with various objectives.
All Kinds of Dexterity
Lots of puzzles may require dexterity as a part of the solution, but here you’ll see puzzles that require mainly dexterity.
I mean, you will need to sometimes think, but mainly – you’ll need that touch to solve them. Just being a smart person won’t help you too much.
Balance
Did you ever consider that balancing something could be a puzzle?
Neither could I.
Turns out there’s an entire sub-type of balance puzzles, where your job is, as you could’ve probably guessed, balance a certain object.
Want a classic example? Balance nails, where you need to balance 6 nails on top of 1 nails. Sounds funny right? Yeah well, good luck.
Something more modern is the Unstable Eggs set, by Jared of CoreMods. It’s a super cool design that I’m waiting to grab a copy of, where you need to balance eggs.
It’s funny too? Well, it is said these eggs have something mysterious moving inside…
Trick Motion
Approachable puzzles but may be hard to solve correctly.
Wiggling them around won’t do.
The 12 cubes set is exactly this – you need find and then execute the correct motion perfectly to solve them.
Among all dexterity puzzles, this sub-type requires larger amounts of strategy, and contains some very cool party tricks.
Obstacle Courses
One may argue that this is the purest dexterity puzzle sub-type.
A long array of challenges awaits you in these.
Training and several tens, hundreds or even thousands of tries will be needed for full completion.
Most if not all of you will know this one. I know it’s called a labyrinth, but well – it’s a dexterity puzzle – an obstacle course one!
But yeah, obstacle courses may be maze-y as well.
Like the Perplexus.
Perplexus is really cool. You need to navigate a ball bearing inside a winding path, with all kinds of interesting obstacles along the way.
It might not look like it, but the Perplexus is extremely hard to complete from beginning to end. You’ll need to try it many times to master it.
Bottles
I talked about impossible bottles in the Impossible Objects post, and well, I’m talking about them now too.
Sometimes, there will sometimes be overlap in categories, so I try my best to organize and explain them as simply as I can.
Dexterity bottles are impossible bottles that have a solution.
They have some kind of object inside them that you need to remove, and removing the object will not be possible without a feat of dexterity.
Tricky? Challenging? Yeah, for sure they are.
For some reason, most puzzlers seem to have a love-hate relationship with dexterity puzzles…
Verdict
Dexterity puzzles are dynamic, challenging, and cheap.
They are best for those who like moving stuff around and don’t like to think too much on one puzzle.
Awesome for non-puzzlers as well.
And don’t forget – dexterity is everywhere. You will tackle dexterity elements in many puzzles to come.