We’re Craighill. We design and manufacture enduring objects that spark a sense of wonder. To preorder the Tetra Puzzle and bring it to life, click Back This Project. Or scroll on for more details. 

What makes the Tetra Puzzle special? It’s a captivating and mysterious challenge to understand and unlock. It activates your spatial reasoning and manual dexterity skills in a way that’s immersive and deeply engaging — some people call this a flow state, we call it Puzzle Time™. 

On first glance the Tetra Puzzle might seem fairly straightforward; in reality it’s anything but intuitive. Solving it requires focus, attention, and an exploratory mindset that’s innately gratifying. It pushes your boundaries — if only a little bit — and invites you to learn something new.

The Tetra Puzzle is a joy to keep coming back to. The weight of the object is satisfying, and the simultaneous movement of all four pieces remains enchanting even after you’ve mastered it. Stuck on a call? You’ll reach for the Tetra.

Beyond its allure as a meditative object, it’s incredible to watch friends discover the magic for themselves. Whether or not you provide hints is up to you.

The Tetra Puzzle is a little sculpture. When it’s not in your hands, it’s a beautiful object to display on a desk, shelf, or coffee table. 

The pyramidal form evokes ancient architectural wonders, and the trisected faces of each side feel at once familiar and otherworldly. What is it? How does it work? What is it made from? Why does it exist? 

Composed of four identical pieces of stainless steel, the Tetra Puzzle’s components fit together to form a four-sided pyramid (or tetrahedron) with sculpted edges and contours.

It’s surprisingly hefty for its small frame, weighing 1.5 lbs and measuring 2.9″ W x 2.7″ L x 2.5″ H.

The Tetra Puzzle is available in two different finishes: Stainless Steel or Vapor Black. The Stainless is classic, reflective, and showcases the metal in its natural state. ‘

The Vapor Black is a coating that is applied to the stainless steel called physical vapor deposition (or PVD). It’s super-durable, matte in texture, and a sleek and beautiful alternative for those drawn to the dark side.

After you’ve fully gotten the hang of it, you can progress to spinning it atop your finger. (No just kidding, this is an animated GIF created in post-production. Please don’t try this at home.)

The Tetra Puzzle is the culmination of five years of designing and developing mechanical puzzles. We’re confident it’s our most engaging, shareable puzzle yet, and we’re very excited for you to experience it firsthand.

Design and Manufacturing Process

The story of the Tetra Puzzle starts with our friends Nate and Damein at Revision. In January of 2020 they sent us a 3D printed prototype of a new puzzle they had been working on, and we were immediately blown away.

We have been designing and manufacturing these types of puzzles for years now, but this one was unlike anything we had ever experienced. It was challenging, mystifying, and beautiful. We immediately asked if they would consider working with us to release it as a Craighill product, and they agreed.

Similar to our Venn Puzzle, the Tetra is a simultaneous movement puzzle—all four pieces have to open and close at the same time in order for it to budge at all. The process of designing the Tetra Puzzle started with a hunch: If a tetrahedron has four corners and four faces, couldn’t it be broken up into four identical pieces?

Next came a process of dividing the solid form into four identical parts. There are many ways to tackle this problem, but not many of them lead to pieces that interlock and interact in a way that creates a puzzle. Even at this stage, you can arrive at a printed puzzle only to discover it’s no challenge at all. Or it interlocks in some way, but it’s not very fun. It’s strangely unpredictable.

Upon landing on the final design, it was immediately obvious that the Tetra Puzzle possessed that certain bit of magic that makes great mechanical puzzles so amusing and fascinating.

When it came to manufacturing, we were excited to harness our years of experience to execute such a special design with beautiful, high-quality materials and precise fit and finish. We opted for a shell-casting process with one of our most trusted manufacturers. After the casting is complete, each individual piece undergoes further hand-finishing to ensure quality.

Craighill Puzzles

The Tetra Puzzle is the newest addition to our family of puzzles. It is most closely related to the Venn Puzzle, but in many ways it is the continuation of our experience designing and manufacturing all three predecessors: Jack, Venn, and Tycho.

Backers of the Tetra Puzzle campaign will be able to get the full four-puzzle set for a very special price. In manufacturing all of our puzzles, we’ve chosen to merge captivating design with high-end materials to create objects unlike anything you’ve seen before.

Rewards

Timeline

About Craighill 

We are a product design and manufacturing brand that harnesses the power of machines to create enduring objects and bring a sense of wonder into people’s lives. Founded by designer Hunter Craighill in 2015, we develop all of our products in our Brooklyn studio and partner with leading factories around the world to bring the designs to life.

We work towards nurturing a culture of curiosity through the exploration of new processes, new materials, and new product types—and by sharing what we discover with our community.

We believe that by understanding how a product is made—and the thinking that goes into its design—we can increase appreciation for the objects in our lives and discourage a culture of consumption and waste. By fostering consciousness of the built world, we can help shape a brighter future.