Of all of the puzzles we have assembled over the years from Stave, Par, Pastime, Madmar and others, nothing compares to a Stave Teaser Puzzle. One of the first teasers we “put” together (I’ll explain why this is in quotes later) was Tropical Punch. For those unfamiliar with Tropical Punch it is a relatively easy Teaser as they go. However, having never put one together before, we weren’t really sure what we were doing or what to expect. We carefully took the pieces out of the box, marveled at the fine craftsmanship of the wood cutting and the way the edges are sanded so well. Finally, it it was time to start. With no picture, and not a real understanding of how these worked we struggled for quite some time. The “frame” was not too bad as we had done quite a few Stave traditional puzzles by then and had an idea how they fit together. But when we started to place the fish inside we were at our wits end trying to grasp what this puzzle was doing.
We had seen some teasers on the Stave website before, but didn’t realize that they weren’t showing the completed puzzle. So on top of the fact that we were having trouble assembling it, we assumed some of the pieces were designed to be placed outside the frame that we had created. It didn’t seem right but we couldn’t see how some of these pieces fit together. Finally, after a lot of frustration and time we realized that all the pieces needed to be placed within the frame and fit nicely together. These complex wooden puzzles are now second nature to us. Over time, after putting together dozens of them, we have become very good at them. Some of them are pretty complicated, and really make you think, but if you enjoy puzzling you can’t beat a good Stave teaser puzzle and a few hours of deep puzzle solving.