Review: Circus Train -- Full Series

This review will be my omnibus review of all of the puzzles in the circus train family of puzzles.

In our community, Bryan had posted some reviews: one review [having trouble finding links to all of them but search around :D] and goaded me into ordering the whole set.

There are a total of eight (8) puzzles in the series: seven (7) trick puzzles rates 1 to 4 bolts and one traditional puzzle (a caboose) that Stave will send you if you buy the other 7. Piece count for the puzzles varies from around 30 to 65. Each trick puzzle features a different "style" of trick. All of the artwork is by the inimitable Candy Thun and quite well done with vivid colors and distinctive themes. I chose to order all of my puzzles simultaneously and to have them shipped in a single large box for an extra puzzling challenge. My review will go in order of difficulty as perceived by me, your mileage may vary.

Further accomplishing all of these tricks is a bit like sampling the primary trick styles Stave offers without too many red-herrings to allow you to focus on understanding how a trick puzzle works and be able to solve it in other contexts. For each puzzle I will put some spoilers in upside down white-on-white text about the trick style.

The other neat thing about this set is you can have Stave hand-letter family member's names on the train cars. If you've never seen their hand-lettering it is AMAZING. It looks like it is part of the art. That was an amazing and pleasant surprise about these puzzles for me since I had each car done with the name of an immediate family member.

First a Summary

Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
Easiest	Circus Train: Lion Show
Easy	Circus Train: Dancing Dolphins
Moderate	Circus Train: Elephant Show
Moderate	Circus Train: Seaquarium
Moderate-to-Hard	Circus Train: Amazing Seal
Hard	Circus Train: Circus Engine
Crazy Hard	Circus Train: Roo Romp
N/A	Circus Train: Caboose	Traditional

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Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
Easiest	Circus Train: Lion Show

Lion Show is the outright easiest trick puzzle in this set IMHO despite it's 2-bolt rating. (See also this forum post). That said, it is a nice example of a certain style of trick and simple enough that you can appreciate the trick mechanic nicely in this context without too much distraction.

I really love the intense colors of the art on this train car and this is a nice starting point.

(Spoiler is upside down and white-on-white note this uses unicode upside down characters courtesy, http://swizzy.frih.net/tools/49/flip)

˙sdɐʍs ǝɯos ɥʇıʍ ǝʞıl ɹǝsɐǝʇ ʇıq ɐ ǝʌɐɥǝq uǝɥʇ ɥɔıɥʍ suoıl ǝɥʇ ɹoɟ ǝɔɐds ƃuıuǝdo snɥʇ sɹoop uǝdo ǝʞıl ʞool oʇ sʞunɥɔ ǝƃɹɐl oʍʇ uı dɐʍs uɐɔ ɹɐɔ uıɐɹʇ ǝɥʇ ɟo "ɹǝpısuı" ǝɥʇ ʇɐɥʇ sı ǝɹǝɥ ʞɔıɹʇ ʎɹɐɯıɹd ǝɥʇ

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Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
Easy	Circus Train: Dancing Dolphins

Dancing Dolphins is next up in difficulty for me. This puzzle challenges you to get four of the dolphins to form a circle around a fifth free-standing dolphin. To me the art on this and Seaquarium are the weakest of the set--perhaps because water/waves are just not that vibrant; however, it is well done and the dolphins have a lot of character and despite all pieces coming to me in a jumble, the Seaquarium and Dancing Dolphin pieces were quite distinct.

(Spoiler is upside down and white-on-white note this uses unicode upside down characters courtesy, http://swizzy.frih.net/tools/49/flip)

˙sǝɔǝıd pǝddɐʍs ǝɥʇ uǝǝʍʇǝq ʎʇıʌıʇɔɐɹǝʇuı puɐ ʎʇǝlʇqns ǝɹoɯ sı ǝɹǝɥʇ 'ɹǝʌǝʍoɥ ؛ʍoɥs uoıl sɐ ʞɔıɹʇ ǝɯɐs ǝɥʇ ʎllɐɔısɐq ǝɯ oʇ sı sıɥʇ

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Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
Moderate	Circus Train: Elephant Show

Next up to review is the colorful Elephant Show and one that had tantalized me for ages. The problem of how to get the ball into the hoop when the two elephants are facing the wrong way reminds me of other wooden puzzles with string and metal and wood where you are trying to solve a topology problem. The colors are quite vivid and remind me nicely of the stuff I love(d) about Riding High.

Now perhaps because I had stared at this in the catalogs for about 5-or-so years this was the first puzzle to fall to me in the group of 8, it definitely was NOT the easiest though and even though I had long since figured out what needed to be done, solving it was not immediate.

Spoiler:
˙ʞɔıɹʇ ʇno ɯǝɥʇ uǝʌǝ oʇ ɹǝɥʇouɐ oʇ uɯnloɔ-ǝuo ɯoɹɟ sǝɔǝıd ǝʌoɯ ǝɥʇ sı sıɥʇ

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Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
Moderate	Circus Train: Seaquarium

In terms of basic assembly, Seaquarium took me the longest and because the wave-pattern is somewhat confusing. This is quite clever and I really cannot name any other trick puzzles that had this basic approach though the Limited Edition Time Traveler has elements of it. The problem of making space for the fish is quite tough initially. I found it easier because during initial assembly I had gotten things slightly wrong and so stumbled into part of the solution.

Art wise this was the weakest for me, though it is quite playful, blue-green-waves are just that and they dominate this one.

Spoiler:
ʎǝʞ ǝɥʇ sı ʎɹʇǝɯɯʎs

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Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
Moderate-to-Hard	Circus Train: Amazing Seal

These colorful balls at first seem like they will be easy like the Elephants to fix, but they are not quite so easy. Lots of swapping awaits you if you plan to successfully solve this challenge. This was the first puzzle in this series to cause me serious pause in my solving abilities and it was very satisfying to put together. I particularly enjoyed the uses of vibrant color and the playfulness of different types of balls.

This was very much a Goldilocks puzzle for me, not too easy, not too hard, just right. And for the piece count it was harder than I expected when I started it thinking oh, this will be easy-peasy. Serves me right.

Spoiler:
˙sdɐʍs ƃuıpuıɟ dǝǝʞ ʇsnɾ 'ƃuıƃuɐɹɹɐ-ǝɹ puɐ sdɐʍs ɟo sʇol

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Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
Hard	Circus Train: Circus Engine

The Engine of the train is moving solidly into hard territory and what Bryan likes to call "tile" puzzles. Islands of grid-ish shaped pieces have swap-after-swap and lots of possible positions. To me the tile puzzles are the natural predecessor to the Troublemaker puzzles in terms of the basic problem.

There is plenty of geometry as well as making sure you find all of the swaps here. This took me about an hour to go from initial "wrong" configuration to solved. I also definitely missed a number of the swaps that were possible at first.

Very fun!

Spoiler:
˙ƃuıƃuɐɹɹɐ puɐ ƃuıddɐʍs ɟo sʇol ʎq pǝʍolloɟ ǝɔuɐɹɐǝddɐ puoɔǝs ɐ sǝʞɐɯ ʞɔıɹʇ s,ʍoɥs uoıl

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Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
Crazy Hard	Circus Train: Roo Romp

Roo Romp is a 35 piece puzzle that shows off the Crazy Claw technique. To me, it was insanely hard and too much brute force. Now you might say, "Hey, Erik assembling all puzzles is about brute force." And I cannot deny that entirely, but there are cues and clues intentional and unintentional left for us by the designers and cutters.

Crazy claws eviscerate those clues.

To give you a sense there are a total of 7 Roos you can form at any one time most of which have 3 crazy claws and those 7 Roos can be swapped to form a total of about 13 different Roos. Or 13! (13 factorial = 6 billion something) possibilities, which is just insane.

Further, the other puzzles had more cues and more "smarts" to me about why certain things had to happen. For example, take the easiest of the bunch, Lion Show. To solve the problem of putting the lions in the car, it's obvious you need to move pieces out of the way. How you do that is as they say "an exercise for the reader" but WHAT you need to do and the BASIC parameters are clear.

For me that wasn't the case w/ Roo Romp.

That said, a hint from the Stave gang did help me on my way so I cannot grouse too much.

(well actually I can :D)

Would welcome thoughts from Bryan or others who completed this one on how they found it or other puzzles with the crazy claws.

Spoiler:
ǝuɐsuı ʇsnɾ sı sıɥʇ

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Erik's Rating	Puzzle	Bolt Rating	Catalog Pict
N/A	Circus Train: Caboose	Traditional

Last up is the coda, a small traditional puzzle of the caboose to end the train. This was a nice touch and helped close off the last "hook" on the car with a colorful caboose. Toot toot, you've put together about 300-400 pieces of trick puzzles, learned a lot about trick puzzling and can be quite proud of yourself.