A page-turner

Once I started working on the DIY Breakout boxes I couldn't stop! Every day I have thinking of new puzzles and locks that the Grade 4s (my target audience) would enjoy. After visiting many dollar stores I realized the following: hinges and hasps are readily available with prices from $0.50 to $3.00 each. However, locks are more difficult in their higher price and lower variety.

So off to eBay and Aliexpress I went. I ordered a variety of number padlocks ($1.25 each), UV flashlights and markers ($0.85 each), paper red/cyan 3D glasses for revealing hidden codes ($0.33 each). Word locks are a bit more elusive; I have definitely seen them for $4 or cheaper at Dollarama but of course inventory is alway hit or miss; unfortunately these days it's more miss.

An alternative I found was 3D printing. I was specifically interested in the idea of a cryptex, or a container that had a self-contained locking mechanism that used a word as it's key (ala Da Vinci Code). I used a couple of designs and printed off some prototypes and they seemed sturdy and variable enough for children to use and reset. This one and this one were the main inspirations. I adapted them to include letters, but since each dial could only show 10 possible digits at a time I Googled the most frequent letters and took sets of 20. I used Tinkercad to replace the numerical digits with alpha. I am quite happy with the results; the tolerances were forgiving enough to make spinning the dials easy and the whole thing prints easily in a few hours: