Robot Claw

I purchased the above model kit in Japan for about $6. It’s as much a puzzle as a plastic model since it doesn’t contain any instructions and acknowledges its own difficulty. Here’s what’s inside:

Three parts for the shrimp, and two runners containing 364 identical pieces of rice:

The rice grains are translucent and very convincing. Here they are off the runners:

The challenge is to make a piece of shrimp nigiri. With no instructions you’re free to assemble the rice as you see fit, which obviously requires plastic cement.

This was indeed a challenge. My glue is very fluid so I used a paintbrush to apply it and applied the rice grains individually with tweezers. It was difficult to get them to adhere and form a blob naturally, and the fumes from the glue quickly became overpowering.

I did this for an hour, applying exactly 177 grains before deciding I was done. It was an accursed procedure, akin to making a monochrome jigsaw puzzle. The translucency of the rice made it difficult to see individual grains once applied, and my eyes were in agony when I stopped. Here’s what I had created:

And here it is turned correct-side-up:

An imperfect shrimp sushi perhaps, but undeniably recognizable.

What do you think? Did I pass this challenge?

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 7th, 2024 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Crafts, Food, Models, Puzzles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.