Welcome to

Wire Puzzles

Committed to the Celebration of Curiosity and Concentration

and

Encouraging Exploration and Examination...

Sometimes in these Puzzling Times it helps to just FIDDL' WIDDIT. You might just be pleased with the outcome. Our lightweight classic or original entanglement brainteasers are all handmade, brazed and polished with pride in Sonoma County, CA, USA

     Entanglement puzzles date back to before the Christian Era, and may still be found in many parts of the world. Many of the best loved puzzles of this type have their origin in China and have been popular there for centuries. But they have also been popular in the New World since colonial days, having come here with the then new settlers from across the Atlantic. There was a flurry of inventive design with such puzzles at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries here as well as in Europe, and again in China. This was the period of greatest commercial interest in what had formerly been a product made exclusively by hand. Passionate interest remains alive among puzzle collectors worldwide, especially for handmade originals. Our specialty puzzle is our tweak of an old classic, basic level puzzle made from original strands of suspender cables from the nearby Golden Gate Bridge. Have you left YOUR heart somewhere?

     A lot of people here in Sonoma County, where we live, are proud to acknowledge the earlier residence here of Jack London, the adventure author of the early 2oth century. We got even more interested in him when we discovered that he loved wire puzzles, somewhat like we do. And he even wrote that fascination into one of his well-loved books, The Valley of the Moon, (the Sonoma Valley):

            "(God) passes out a puzzle to everybody, and they spend all their lives tryin' to work it out. They all get stuck. I can't work mine out. I don't know where to start. And look at the puzzle he passed Sarah. And she's part of Tom's puzzle, and she only makes his worse. And they all, an' everybody I know - you too - are part of my puzzle."  -- Jack London

    That's a pretty good description of our fascination with the world of puzzles. That's not to say that solving a puzzle will help you - or anyone - solve the puzzle of a life. But it just might open an eye or two to look at a life from a new angle like you need to look at puzzles from different angles to see what is really going on. And what if that just happened to be fun instead of the torture that some fear it might be? That is, after all, what puzzles are all about..."Problem solving for fun"!

      We currently make 21 models of FIDDL' WIDDITS. Here's our newest one: TWISTED ARROW. One previewer called it 'maybe your best ever'. (We liked that!) Earlier versions of our 'tweak' have gone by a variety of names, but our head-scratcher has one more twist than most. Even after you have mastered the steps to removing the small ring that begs to be free, TWISTED ARROW will leave you quivering, wondering what your very own hands have just done before your very own eyes. Ooh, it's good! Difficult...but good. The price is good too; only $14.