Solving The IMPOSSIBLE TITAN Puzzle!

What’s up guys and welcome back! This little guy, as you can tell by the intro, very pleasing, aesthetically pleasing puzzle, this is known as the titan puzzle by Felix York. Felix sent me this puzzle a couple weeks ago. This was before it was released and I had a chance to play with it. I actually sat down and filmed about an hour and a half of footage of me trying to get it apart with no luck.

As you can see now, it’s pretty tarnished which you’ll see in the video that’ll come up. I tried everything. You might be wondering what happened to that footage. Before I went to Vegas, I formatted my cards and unfortunately that was part of it, so we’re basically starting over. I have a few reference points now and I’ll explain where I’m at with this puzzle but we’re going to give it another go today and hopefully we can solve it.

Without any further ado, let’s get into trying to solve this impossible Titan puzzle. As I said in the intro, I’ve been playing with this thing for about a week last time. Last time I actually sat down for a good, I think hour-and-a-half. You see by the shape of this thing and how it’s just beaten up and tarnished, not as shiny as in the intro, that’s because I’ve been playing with it. No luck, no real progress.

I’ll show you where I’m at right now with this. There’s like a heavy side and you got a light side. The heavy side doesn’t spin as much and the light side spins like crazy and when you spin it, eventually it gets stuck so I’ve been noting down the points to where it gets stuck but not only does it get stuck on this side. So it’s stuck about there, if I rotated the other side, and now it’s just not, there we go, and now it’s about there. So weird enough, it doesn’t get stuck at the same spot.

It goes over, I would guess like 400 and something degrees. It goes past it, right? I also can hear bearings, at least one or two bearings in there. I also found out that there’s another spot where this stops and that’s about all I’ve gotten so far. I’ve tried forcing it.

I tried spinning it. That doesn’t seem to work so I do think that there are magnets involved here somewhere that are grabbing a hold of these balls and then they drop into what seems to be like a hole. I’ll put the timer up just for good old times, good old times sake but just know that this is not accurate and I’ve been on this literally, I don’t know, at least a half day in total. If we go here and we spin it around, it brings us back to there. Now I’m thinking maybe, see if I turn that side, you kind of hear drop.

I don’t know why that is and I’m going to keep turning and you hear it drop again. This kind of where I’ve been at and just playing with that sound because you’re kind of going into this blindly like a lot of these difficult puzzles. You’ve got a weird, weird intricate design on the inside. It’s quite frustrating. I’ve banged this, I’ve done so much to it and I’m still kind of at a loss.

I’ll kind of draw out for you what I think is going on on the inside. By the way, I know some of you will probably comment ‘Mr. Puzzle solved this puzzle’. I have not watched his video yet. I don’t know how he solved it and I kind of want to figure it out on my own.

I have written to Felix for a hint. He hasn’t gotten back to me yet. I do think after a week, I want to get this done. I want a little hint to help me out along the way but he hasn’t sent that to me yet. On the inside, this is a top angle view, I’m thinking there is some type of hole here where the bearing gets lodged into and so kind of travels around here and then gets lodged into a bearing. I don’t know what that bearing is.

So, from the side, let’s say this is the hemisphere here and this is the tube and then you have the other hemisphere. So, I’m thinking there’s a bearing somewhere that goes into a hole but once it goes into that hole, I don’t know whether or not you have to travel through that to get it out. I don’t know if, because it’s kind of hard to know what the heck is going on inside, so again, on the inner ring I do believe there is this little place for that ball to fall into and once it’s in there, it stops because it protrudes but then again it stops here again and it protrudes so I don’t know why that is I don’t know the physics of that. It’s really really hard to imagine what’s going on in here so again I’m just going to get it to that, you kind of spin it around randomly like this and eventually it just kind of lodges itself in. I’ve got to say, this puzzle is very heavy and it’s hard to grip so it’s like a test on your dexterity as well because I’m constantly holding it.

I don’t want to hold both hemispheres. I kind of want to hold this one but then it slips out of your hand so it’s quite difficult to manipulate. Spin it like this and eventually I will find that spot, there it is. So if I mark this spot here which would be about here I can then go this way. Bam.

And now it’s over here. Sorry, let me mark that here. I’ll mark that on the larger hemisphere. So, there, and then I go this way and it goes all the way around, right? And then it stops there.

Why? I don’t know. So it goes past that and then here and then it goes past that and then here. And then it goes past that and then here. No idea why.

And there’s no sound. So what I’m going to try to do is take the heavy part and then try to move the heavy part and see if I can hear anything. I think I just heard something but let me try again. Let me get this closer to the camera so you can hear. Right there.

So I feel like the ball dropped into a hole and now it went back out. Do you hear it? And I have no clue what the hell’s going on. I even thought that because the puzzles are called Titan, I’ve looked up Titan as a moon, I think from Mercury I believe, I don’t remember, I was looking it up. I was looking at how many moons there were, the degree of the moon, maybe that had to do with the degree that you’re holding this thing.

I mean I delved pretty deep in trying to discover anything I could about this thing, even the name Titian, does that mean to tighten the puzzle? I tried that and it obviously didn’t work. Everything short of, literally, you know, trying to smash it open, with like, uh, (puzzle clicking) a crowbar, which I’m not ruling out, by the way. I’m just going to try to get back that round spot where it just halts for some reason. I don’t even know why.

I assume there’s like a hole where the ball goes into and you’ve got to just knock it in there. There’s no way of telling when it’s in other than when it stops. Oh, it’s on this side, sorry. I mean the creator Felix is not a known puzzle maker. He’s made two puzzles, I think, or something like that, not many, so this is a good start for him.

Definitely look forward to more of his puzzles. Hopefully I can get somewhere a little quicker with those other ones. Okay, we’re locked here. I’m going to spend this time around, waiting for the noise. There it is.

Okay, I’m going to go this way. That’s weird. It just kind of locked and then it unlocked. (sphere pops) See, we’re on another point now. Which means that this way, right here.

Here and here. Now we’ve got points on either side that are pretty much parallel. Why? Dunno! They’re not even lined up anymore.

I’m just letting you know there is absolutely no method to what I’m doing right now, I’m just kind of feeling and listening. I’ve also tried to look on the inside to see if I can see anything and there doesn’t seem to be any apparent point or line or anything to draw my eye. It’s kind of hard to see inside. Maybe the camera, this is a macro lens, maybe the camera might be able to pick it up better than my eye could. Ugh, if it would just focus.

That’s kind of what I’m seeing and you can see it’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on in there. It’s super frustrating. How it randomly stops as well is a mystery to me. I think I figured it out but the inner ring, there is a slot here. The ball falls halfway within the slot which then jams this from going around but why does it jam there?

Maybe there’s something, the thing is it goes all the way around and it goes here then it jams again. I don’t know how it’s possible. I can’t wrap my mind around it but you can hear it. Okay, now it completely fell down. There’s a whole lot of clinking clanking going on in there and I don’t know what’s up.

Sorry for not talking, I’m in deep concentrated thought. I’m just trying to figure out how this does one and a half revolutions. It still kind of boggles my mind here. I still can’t see anything on the inside. No point of reference other than the marks that I’ve made. I don’t even know if those will help me.

Let’s go! Oh! Look at that, one hour. Actually not accurate, probably close at 10. Oh my god.

What am I dealing with here? Okay this looks a lot simpler than I thought it would. So here’s the thing, I knew that there were two ball bearings. I could feel the two ball bearings and I knew I had to place them in certain positions. I didn’t know where.

Now I see there’s a pin here. You see this pin? Oh this is exciting. There’s a pin there. Let me see how this works here.

I actually don’t want to close it right now because I want to understand it first. This ball goes in here which allows it to open. Okay, so when these two balls in it allow you to open it but to get those two balls in there is very difficult. My guess is you need, right, you need the pin to help lock that, correct? Hold on.

So, now it won’t open because the ball is not in the groove. I suspect when just one of them, when the ball goes into one of the grooves here. This should be able to open. Right! So, that groove is on top.

Or did I just ruin it because I have no point of reference? Is this harder to solve with one ball in it because that ball is on the bottom now? I can smack it against that pin. For some, okay, so when one ball got lodged, the other one would come around and get knocked by the pin, which gave me a point of reference which let me know that one of the balls was in. Now I have no way of knowing that because I only put one ball in there so how do I get that out?

What’s the heavy side? The heavy side is the one with the tube. Hold on. Okay, so that pin, basically what happened there is the pin is on this side and you can hear it clanging against the ball right there so I’m just going to use that pen, contact the ball and listen for it to drop into the hole. There it goes.

Wait. There it goes. So in order to get both balls in, you have to have it angled in a way that this ball doesn’t drop out so the angle has to be actually higher here when you’re turning. You use this pin here to maneuver the other to the ball into the other place where it then falls in and you can open it. Bam!

So difficult though because just with the rattling and in this one move that allowed you to go one more spin over. That is really confusing to me. It still kind of is so I guess this would get stuck there cuz the pin would try to push it in so then you go around. Oh, but then the pin would move over that ball. It would move over that ball until it came all the way around and push the ball back on and that explains that extra turn.

Wow. Genius puzzle. Very happy. There you have it, the Titan Puzzle solved. In a nutshell, this is the solution.

This is basically, that’s the rod that allows you to push one ball in obviously if you go past there it’s going to stop that ball from going past there and if you go around here is going to stop it from going around there so the trick here is the kind of get it on a perpendicular angle obviously this ball would be down here because of gravity. You want to push that one in and then you want to take that bar and push it in without that one falling out so it’s kind of like a gravity thing but that essentially, this simple little diagram, explains this very complex puzzle. Well, there you have it ladies and gentleman, the Titian Puzzle, solved. Quick note, I just went to take a look at Mr. Puzzles’ video of him solving it.

I highly recommend you go check it out if you’re interested in seeing exactly the inner mechanics. I try my best to explain using a picture, a drawing and even showing you guys the inside of it but he actually modeled a 3D printed, basically a see through half of this hemisphere and so you can see exactly how it works. I thought that was genius, great move, I left the link below to the video so you can go check him out. Mr. Puzzle has some great content.

Unfortunately he beat me to this but I did solve it so I am quite happy. I’m very, very happy that we got to solve this. I’m still, it’s still a bit of a mystery because it’s still very difficult to open even though you know the solution because any tip of the angle, gravity affects it, the ball falls out and you’ve kind of got to play it by ear, literally. Regardless, a lot of fun to do. This puzzle is actually warm right now in my hands because I’ve been playing with it for so long.

It’s pretty dull. I think I’m going to get it shined up and put it up on the shelf but guys if you did enjoy this video go ahead like this video and subscribe if you’re new here and we’ll see you on the next video.