Stickman's "Snowflake" Puzzle Box

Description

Stickman (a.k.a, Robert Yarger) designs and builds exquisitely beautiful wood puzzle boxes and one of my favorites is his "Snowflake" puzzle. He has given me permission for the remake you see here.

The original is shown on Stickman's website: http://www.stickmanpuzzlebox.com/stickman-puzzle-gallery.html (it's "No.9 Puzzlebox"). As you can see from my pictures, I've added a criss-crossed lattice pattern that I think blends in well with the interlocking corner notches and helps hide the seams between the pieces. Also, the original design could be solved two ways, one of which was almost trivial compared to the other. So I made a small change that eliminates the easy solution. (You can read more about it on my blog here.)

The puzzle consists of six sliding panels (two of which are identical) and ordering this item gets you all six pieces held inside a cage. You will need to snip the cage open with a pair of wire-cutters. Also, there is some residual powder from the manufacturing process that keeps the parts from sliding  easily at first. You will probably want to slide each piece's slots through another piece's grooves until they all loosen up a bit before you try solving the puzzle.

Note that you will be getting the puzzle in an unassembled state so the challenge is to figure out how to put the pieces together. :)