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A puzzle consisting out of 7 pens which all have to be pressed to solve the puzzle and open the box.
This puzzle consists of a hinged box, of which the lid is a frame containing 7 ballpoint pens. The buttons of those pens keep the lid locked in place, but if they were all pressed in the box would open. The buttons can only be pushed by using a key that is provided. The key can be inserted into the frame, pushing in some of the pen buttons, and so switching those pens on or off. There are 8 ways of inserting the key, each affecting a different set of pens. The aim is to open the box by switching all the pens on.
The puzzle has 128 permutations and is one of the few puzzles which form an abelian group. That means the order of moves is not important => ABC equals ACB equals BCA etc.
Oskar conceived the idea in 1990 and built a first prototype with 5 pens in 2002. Recettoys started to mass produce the 7-pen-version in 2007 and Oskar used this version as exchange gift at IPP 2007 in Australia.
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