Hachette began running it’s biweekly 3D wood puzzles magazine series about 2 years ago. Initially, they only had information on the first 18 volumes, and their website still hasn’t been updated to advertise the later boxes. The boxes are a bit taller and wider than a regular magazine, and can be 2 inches thick, depending on the puzzle inside. So, if you have 20-30 kits, they’re going to take up a huge amount of shelf space, and the bookstores hate carrying extra inventory because of this. By volume 10, all of the stores in Kagoshima (Maruzen, Junkudou and Kinokuniya) stopped carrying them. I could try getting them off Amazon, but I didn’t know that the series was still running past #18.

A couple weeks ago, I was at Kinokuniya, and I noticed that they’d started carrying the boxes again from vol. 40. I didn’t really have much interest in those specific puzzles, but the next one out, #48, the wine case, looked interesting enough, so I bought that the following week for 1,650 yen (about $15 USD).

Unfortunately, it’s just a kind of jewelry puzzle box that’s pretty easy to figure out. In fact, showing it open gives away the puzzle. It looks nice, though. Along with the box is the magazine, which has a short history of wine cases and chess tournaments, a couple pages of instructions for playing card solitaire games, and 2 pages of math, logic and kanji puzzles.

Nothing really spectacular, but not a complete waste of money. #49 is coming out in 2 weeks, and will feature a string and hoops brain teaser (shown on the cover of the magazine above, at the middle left). I’m not going to get that one, because I think I’ve got it figured out just by looking at the photo. But, I’m hoping to see something that I do want in the future.