THE SPHINX

Stewart Coffin has been the master designer of polyhedral puzzles since the 1970s and, until relatively recently, the only maker of them.

Based on the geometry of the rhombic tricontahedron he first made his Jupiter in 1971. It consisted of 12 identically shaped pieces each consisting of 5 triangular sticks glued together. Using exotic hardwoods he combined pattern matching problems into a beautiful interlocking shape.

In 1978 he produced Saturn in which there were 6 different shaped pieces (2 of each). This made the assembly much more complex.

In 2000 he created The Sphinx with 12 different pieces which have to be assembled in the correct order in unique positions. This makes it exceptionally difficult.