We’re Craighill and Art of Play. Two curious companies, one shared obsession: creating beautiful objects that evoke wonder. To preorder the Jack in the Box Puzzle and bring it to life, scroll on for more details.

Imagine a puzzle with a touch of magic, where the answer isn’t just unexpected—it’s positively astonishing. Meet the “Jack in the Box”, designed by Rod Bogart.

At first glance, you’ll see eight solid metal pieces that form a perfect cube when packed inside the box.

Yet, there is a second puzzle hiding in plain sight. Every element, from the aluminum cuboids to the acrylic casing, holds a clue to the riddle.

What makes this puzzle so mysterious? The name provides a big hint: “Jack in the Box.”

The elegant metal stand, which gracefully displays the cube, is affectionately named the ‘jack.’

The secret is how to fit the three-dimensional star inside the box along with all eight pieces of the cube. Math may provide an explanation, but experiencing the enigma firsthand? It seems impossible.

Jack in the Box is our most astonishing puzzle yet. The only thing more satisfying that solving it, is sharing the magic with a friend.

Our goal was to take Rod Bogart’s design and elevate the production quality from a 3D-printed puzzle to a mystifying art object that could stand the test of time.

Each of the physical elements was carefully considered and refined throughout the production process. A dimpled texture was added to the cuboids to make the difficulty level of the solution more accessible. To further enhance the visual and magical allure of the set, the jack/stand is coated in a contrasting color and one corner of the acrylic box has been flattened to allow for diagonal display.

Please note: the production version of the acrylic shell (not pictured) has been injection molded to eliminate all construction seams. It looks great but wasn’t ready in time for the photo shoot.

“My designs always come from exploration and mathematical play, and this magical discovery was found in the space between some rotated cubes. When I realized the Jack piece could be used as a stand for the whole puzzle, I knew I wanted Art Of Play and Craighill to produce a premium version.” – Rod Bogart, Designer

In order to make the Jack in the Box Puzzle a display-worthy, heirloom object, we knew we had to produce it with premium, high-precision materials.

After exploring some different processes, we committed to die-cast aluminum for the main cuboids and jack, and injection-molded acrylic for the shell.

The cost to create the tooling for these two processes came close to $20,000 — the largest upfront expense we’ve ever undertaken in developing a product. Despite that, we knew the investment would give us the consistency and detailing that the design demanded.

Upon visiting our manufacturer this summer to inspect the tooling and review the first samples, we were blown away by the build quality.

We also realized that a high-grip coating was needed for the cuboids so that the angled blocks could remain stacked on top of one other.

After testing a variety of different options, we determined that an emery coating gave us the friction we needed while maintaining the details of the design.

Craighill is a design and manufacturing brand rooted in curiosity, ingenuity, and pleasure.

Art of Play is a modern wonder emporium, a place to discover magic.

We joined forces out of a mutual love of extremely cool, fun, challenging, beautiful puzzles. 

For Craighill, this is our fourth Kickstarter campaign in five years. We launch products here because it allows us to develop the types of designs we’re passionate about, even if they don’t fit neatly into conventional categories.

The success we’ve found with this community has encouraged us to continue to experiment and take risks. And so we keep moving forward on our strange, wonderful path, confident that there are other curious, like-minded people out there — people with a similar passion for beautiful, intriguing, well-made things.

We’ve been so lucky to build our business the way we want. We don’t have to answer to investors or make uncomfortable compromises. We’re accountable only to ourselves, each other, and our amazing customers (that’s you).

Thank you for allowing this journey to continue. We hope you have as much fun experiencing these objects as we do creating them.