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Every page of this book is a complex mechanical puzzle you must solve

Luke Dormehl
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We love a good puzzle game here at Digital Trends, but we’ve not seen one like Codex Silenda before. An immensely intricate wooden puzzle book, Codex Silenda features five unique mechanical puzzles spread across five pages. The objective is to solve each puzzle so you can unlock the next “chapter” and continue on through the brain-teasing tome.

“The whole project started off as a senior thesis research project where [the] objective was to go and find a problem in the real world, research that problem and the current market around it — then solve the problem by designing a product or system that does just that,” creator Brady Whitney told Digital Trends.

“Since my passion lies in the realm of toys and games, I decided to focus on puzzles and through my research I found that most tend to fall into one of two categories. [There are] those that are cheap and simple, that once you’ve solved them they lose their mystery and you never play with them again. Or you have those that are made by master puzzle makers [who] only produce them in limited numbers due to their handcrafted quality. It was my solution to address this huge gap by designing a puzzle that could combine the best of both categories.”

From the looks of things, Whitney has certainly done that. After filling a notebook with sketches of possible puzzles, he narrowed the list down and then set about making the best ones a reality.

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“[Next] I began to work through CAD modeling programs to figure out how each page would work, testing the mechanics out and seeing what could work and what couldn’t,” he continued. “After about two months of this, I stepped into the prototyping phase where I had to test, test, test every element of the puzzle mechanics — tweaking them here and nudging there until I finally had a mostly functioning prototype. [At that point] I was dealing with far inferior wood and laser cutters and could not finalize my testing as the semester was drawing to a close.”

Fortunately it all seems to have been worth it. When Codex Silenda launched on Kickstarter recently, it surpassed its modest $30,000 goal within just six hours — and then beat its stretch goals in 2.5 days. Right now, it’s got more than 2,000 backers, a fund of $174,850 pledged, and still 19 days remaining on the clock.

Unfortunately, demand is currently outweighing supply — so if you want to get your hands on a copy you’ll have to sign up to Whitney’s mailing list. As it turns out, for the time being getting hold of a Codex Silenda could prove the toughest (but most rewarding) puzzle of all!

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Luke Dormehl
Luke Dormehl
Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
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