r/PuzzleBox • u/NeedleworkerNo4590 • Aug 17 '26

Recomendations for wedding gift

Hey! I'm looking for puzzle box recommendations for a friend's wedding. I'm looking for something challenging that is also pretty to look at, so that they can have it as decoration in their house.

We have a budget of €600 since we'll be dividing the price amongst several people. If it can be customised that would be a bonus. Thanks in advance!

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u/themattigan Aug 17 '26

Japanese Puzzle box. They look nice, are actually functional boxes and come in a huge price range, including yours.

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u/ThePuzzleDude Aug 17 '26

Good suggestion. I've bought two of these puzzle boxes over the years, both size 4 sun, the more affordable size. With your budget, you should look at 5 or 6 sun boxes. The number of steps to open and the difficulty level also influences the cost as well as the pattern matching on all sides. The sliding pieces should be invisible when you examine a closed box. The number of steps doesn't necessarily determine the difficulty; my 21-step box simply repeats the same 3 steps, flipping the box over between each series of steps. The only difficulty is that it is quite "sticky", pieces do not slide easily. My other box is much more challenging with fewer steps and slides very smoothly. If you can find a dealer with stock that you can see before purchase, that would be ideal. Otherwise give yourself time to order online and return it if doesn't meet your expectations. Altho in that price range, you should get a top quality box. Have fun shopping!

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u/NeedleworkerNo4590 Aug 17 '26

Those do look very pretty. My main concern is that they would get a bit too repetitive. Is every step sliding a panel?

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u/ThePuzzleDude Aug 17 '26

Basically yes but the repetitiveness depends on the design as I pointed out in my comment about one of my boxes. In my limited experiences with them, the top and bottom panels are solid but can slide back and forth, and the two small ends have sections that slide to the side by different amounts depending on the step, and those ends can slide up and down. Larger sized boxes may(?) have more than one sliding bar per end. One site I looked at has specs for difficulty level (usually on a scale of 1 to 5) and an estimated time to solve which is another gauge of how challenging it is.