~225 Total pcs
~12″ diameter
5 Bolts
1997
(Solution not shown.)

Here is a very early version of one of Stave’s most famous puzzles. If you don’t know the whole backstory of the challenge when it was released, it is worth looking up. Stave claims there are 10,000 possible (wrong) solutions to this puzzle. We probably only found 2500 of them trying to get it solved. 🙂 It will get you thinking and is one that makes you really focus on the impact of one change creates a daisy chain of puzzle moves.

Excellent condition with just a little wear. 1 piece does have a small amount of the paper layer worn off (see pic) No personal pieces.
IMPORTANT: There is one mystery with this particular puzzle that we have 3 possible theories of what happened. If you look at the pictures labeled 1 and 2 you’ll see the same piece fits into both connecting pieces. (Don’t worry we aren’t revealing any big secret about the solution with the pics.) We have pictures of 2 other copies of Olivia and neither of them has the extra knob that is coming out of the green piece that you can see in the picture labeled 1. Additionally the “negative” knob you can see in both 1 and 2 that is part of the pink piece is not there in the other 2 copies either. As far as we can tell, it does not have any impact on the solution. We even checked with Stave and they weren’t sure either what is going on. I have 4 possible explanations: 1) There was a personal piece with a name or initials that attached to the green piece when it was cut and it’s no longer with the puzzle (we have seen this done on other Tricks before 2) Somehow a mistake was made and there was an extra knob cut, although that would be weird, except it doesn’t explain the extra pink knob 3) There were 2 little “cap pieces” that are missing, although that would be strange too as that’s not really common in our experience 4) We solved the puzzle wrong (which is not too likely either as the the main part with the octopus all fits together and looks like the other solutions we’ve seen, although each cutter may make slight changes to the design if it doesn’t impact the rest from what we’ve seen. So that’s the long version of this puzzle. Maybe you’ll have more insight and be able to solve the mystery. The take home is, it doesn’t impact the main part of the puzzle that is the core of the Trick. Feel free to ask questions if you want more info.