Hourglass - the hardest puzzle by Hanayama.

I had to hold it and move it and play with it for hours. After a while, the brain adjusts and accepts. I began to see the why for all the indents and cutouts. Then I started to move each piece around to orient it. But one comment below is dead on if you have the piece in the wrong direction -- FRUSTRATION. Putting it back together with the final turn into an almost square looked so wrong. Mine is together and I may never take it apart!! The puzzle is so well made. Excellent fun and many hours of relaxation (almost therapeutic) and frustration.

I let someone else try it and had to figure out how to get it back to the original assembled position. Took me hours just to make a couple of moves. After all of that, I could not figure it out so I came here. I also watched 2 other videos, but this one explains it better and shows the steps better. Now all I gotta do is practice it. It's a really really cool puzzle! Thank you for sharing the solution, and for putting the spoiler alert in just the right place!

An important thing about this puzzle is that it's very particular about how the pieces are oriented. If they're facing or pointing the wrong way, you can't make the move at all. So, if you're following along with the solution, make sure that your puzzle looks EXACTLY like PG's does before you proceed with each step. Pause and go frame-by-frame, if you have to.

Mr. Puzzle Guy many thanks to yr demo; managed to solve it after several days of extreme patient experiment. Initially I started with some other tutorial vids, but my repeated solution attempts were in vain until I applied your methodology which is easier to follow. One constructive suggestion: the instruction quality would be appreciably enhanced if you would slow down momentarily at various critical stages to offer the learner a closeup view of the transiting form of hourglass puzzle.

Genius! That was awesome watching you solve the hour glass puzzle. Much respect indeed!

I noted that on the last move you had the two Hanayama parts face to face rather than flat to flat. Once i figured out they need to be flat to flat it worked well.

Very challenging, and as NarlepoaxIII stated, orientation got me, once I figured that out I was able to complete the assembly. Excellent video!

Hats off to anyone who can solve this puzzle. You definitely have my utmost respect!

Great explanation, but WOW, I never would have figured this out on my own. This is a beautiful puzzle, and so well designed. It's a work of art! But too difficult for me. I like it much better, though, than Quartet or Equa, both of which were so tight, it required brute force to make it work. This puzzle is very gentle. My favorite puzzles were Chain and Enigma, which, although also Level 6, were much much much easier to figure out!

out of randomness, this ended up being my first hanayama puzzle... managed to get it apart after more time than I'd like to admit...putting it back together can be quite frustrating due to orientations. .... good puzzle.

I have the level 4 möbius. I figured out the pattern within a few hours, its still pretty fun tho, great video btw!

I ended up breaking it before I figured it out. Currently trying to jam the pieces back so I can fix it...

Thanks for the great video! Does this puzzle has dead ends or is it more of a unidirectional solving process? :)

Hey, if you see this, I need help! I was fiddling with this puzzle before watching this video and I’ve somehow got my puzzle to the stage at 3:50, however both openings are facing up on the hahahaha pieces, is there anyway to fix this?

This puzzle is awesome! I managed to solve it last week. Definitely deserves the level six rating, this overtook the Vortex for hardest puzzle I've done (in my opinion).

You must have read my mind! I found out about this new puzzle a few days ago and was going to post in your previous video to try it out. :) I really like the look of it, very very difficult. But the harder the better!

Very nice intro! This one is so tough. Going from the square position to back in line is by far the hardest move in my opinion. I saw you uploaded the UFO a few days ago, I've not managed to get one yet :(

I messed up and bought this thinking it was a 6 out of 10 difficulty. (I hadn't done a puzzle like this sense i was a kid) so I wanted something difficult but not to bad. I got it apart in a couple of hours but putting it back together i messed something up came back to it later and somehow lucked out on getting back into its original shape 😂 so I will probably not be taking it apart again. I absolutely loved this puzzle and surprised myself. Definitely going to buy more

This channel has so much potential.

this puzzle is orders of magnitude tougher than anything else i have tried by Hanayama.,., the only other one i couldn't reassemble afterwards was the Vortex, but that is now easy, but this one,.,., I can't imagine ever getting to where i can do this one in one hand!