BONE NAPOLEONIC 15-PIECE "RATTLE" |
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French prisoners, during the Napoleonic Wars, made many different artifacts which they could sell locally. See Wikipedia article on Norman Cross. Particularly famous are their model ships and automata made from bone scraps. As a puzzle this is particularly tricky as all the bits are slightly inaccurate and so it will only stay locked together in a few of the many possible configurations. The design is fundamentally the same as "The Rattle Puzzle" which was manufactured in wood in the 1890s and described in Hoffmann's "Puzzle's Old and New".
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