Puzzled.

So, I spent some time tonight looking up various puzzles on Wikipedia. Fascinating stuff they have there; just fascinating. I was particularly taken by a puzzle invented by a guy during a physics lecture being given by Heisenberg. I like that sort of thing. Here's this bored physics student, listening to some boring physics professor drone on about physics, and to kind of keep himself awake, he invents a three-dimensional puzzle.

All I did in law school was write song lyrics, none of which should ever have been recorded (even in print.) Anyway, turns out the guy who made the puzzle was also a poet. Good for him!

After I got done on Wikipedia (motto: We know everything you know, you know?), I hopped over to Amazon to see if I could get an actual puzzle of this type to play with. I found a book that teaches you to build your own, instead. That looked pretty interesting, so I previewed some pages and saw the tools needed to build these wooden mind-games. Page 1: Clamps, straightedges, a square or two, a power drill, some bits, etc. No big deal. I could pick those up pretty cheap. Page 2: A miter saw, a table saw, drill press... These things are not as easily gotten. Where's the book for the guy with a saw, a hammer, and a lot of good intentions? These puzzles aren't supposed to be much larger than a Rubik's Cube; why do we need to break out the heavy artillery? I think that, if I go over to someone's house and see that book on their shelf, I will know I am dealing with a person who doesn't understand the meaning of the word "overkill". I will then back slowly out of their house and run screaming down the street, awakening neighbors, alerting police, and detonating the bomb I left discreetly under my chair before I ran away.

What, can't I be one of those people too?