Puzzle Box

One of the simplest ways to keep something safe is to lock it in a sturdy box. This relatively simple mechanism is enough to keep your most nosy people from touching things they're not supposed to.

But a typical lock will take just minutes, if not seconds, to be picked by a skilled (or simply determined) lockpicker. Plus, a lock and key or a combination lock isn't exactly dramatic in this day and age. So if electronic security measures are beyond your means, why not do away with the key and make the lock a puzzle only you can solve?

Enter the Puzzle Box, which keeps something sealed behind a special puzzle instead of a traditional lock. While esoteric and often expensive to produce, a puzzle lock can offer flair and mystery to any treasure hunt. It forces characters to demonstrate their intelligence and/or ingenuity to open whatever puzzle is keeping something shut, while also allowing a writer to control the pacing of a story by having characters work on getting the box open. A Chekhov's Gun shown earlier in the story will almost certainly serve as a hint toward solving the puzzle.

Expect to see these kinds of puzzles keeping boxes and doors shut, but this trope also applies to devices that are activated by solving a puzzle. This is especially common with devices designed to contain dangerous entities (though that brings up the question of why the device is even designed to be opened again in the first place). Due to the nature of these mechanisms, puzzle boxes are often mistaken for toys, which can be an impetus for the plot when an unwitting protagonist solves one.

Puzzle boxes can also be used as a Secret Test of Character or an inanimate The Chooser of the One, ensuring that only a select few may access the contents behind the lock for the sake of choosing a worthy owner of whatever MacGuffin or magic artifact is inside. The "box" need not be a container, as special devices designed to do otherworldly things are often controlled via a puzzle.

This can be a more complex version of the Locked Door, especially if the "key" has to be cobbled together from different parts. Compare Solve the Soup Cans, when a sudden, arbitrary puzzle is used to impede the protagonist's progress. Contrast Cutting the Knot for when brute force is used to bypass the puzzle entirely.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In chapter 103, Lovable Sex Maniac Hakari is feeling extra frisky towards Chaste Hero Rentarou. One of her attempts to get at him includes tripping in such a way her hands grab his belt buckle, which she discovers Rentarou has replaced with a wire puzzle she can't solve before Rentarou gives her a kiss to help temporarily calm her.
• In My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission, Rody reminisces about the puzzles his father, an engineer who was famous for his work, used to make to entertain Rody. In the present, Rody recognizes a strange puzzle as his father's handiwork, allowing Rody to open the delicate puzzle to reveal the shutdown key for all of the Trigger Bombs that Humarise placed around the globe hidden inside.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, the Millennium Puzzle was a magical pendant that was shattered in ages past. It contains the soul of the heroic pharaoh Atem as well as promising to grant one wish of the person who solves it. It took eight years for Yugi to reassemble it, releasing Atem's soul and allowing Atem to share Yugi's body.

Comic Books

• In Superman (Phillip Kennedy Johnson), Koltari boxes are a type of children's toy that was considered a precious gift on Krypton. The boxes are specially constructed to never open the same way twice, challenging the child endlessly and forcing them to think creatively. This unique construction also makes them extremely difficult to manufacture. Jon reflects in hindsight that the one his dad made for him was likely the last in the universe until Clark made boxes for Otho-Ra and Osul-Ra, reflecting how much Clark cares for them to make such precious contraptions.

Film — Animated

• Treasure Planet: The dying Billy Bones bequeaths a golden orb about the size of a bocce ball to Jim Hawkins, with the caveat "Beware the cyborg." Later, in the study of astrophysicist Delbert Doppler, Jim starts idly fiddling with the orb, pressing nodes and rotating hemispheres, until it suddenly projects a 3-D map of the galaxy that fills the room. When Doppler touches their current location, the spaceport of Montressor, the map shifts its star charts until settling upon a planet with two biaxial rings. Jim recognizes it as the fabled Treasure Planet.

Film — Live-Action

• In Glass Onion, Miles Bron's invitation to his murder mystery party takes the form of elaborate-looking puzzle boxes with various layers, each being unlocked with every subsequent puzzle. Most of Bron's cohorts enjoy themselves solving it together, but Andi (or rather, her twin sister, Helen) opts to simply put on a pair of safety goggles and smash it to pieces with a hammer. Later on, the puzzle box is brought up again as an early hint of Bron's true character — while presenting as some kind of eccentric genius, not only is it not even his own work as he claims (it was commissioned), it's also not as clever as he or his fellow Disruptors think it to be (the puzzles are simple children's puzzles), and are in the end just an easily-deconstructable facade, much like how Bron himself is a thieving Know-Nothing Know-It-All.

Literature

• In The Apothecary Diaries, a famous blacksmith leaves his three sons a set of items before his passing: a fishbowl, a dresser, and a shed. But the dresser won't open with the key provided to it and is nailed to the floor, preventing anyone from moving it. The inheritance seems useless until Maomao figures out its secret: when the fishbowl is filled with water and placed on a windowsill in the shed, the light is refracted onto the lock. The resulting heat causes the lock to expand, allowing the key to open it and access the three metals inside. This doubles as a Secret Test of Character, as Maomao realizes that the blacksmith only planned to bequeath his secret techniques to the son who managed to figure out the puzzle and deduce his methods from the contents of the dresser.
• The Da Vinci Code: Cryptologist Robert Langdon comes into possession of a brass cryptex with five dials. Each dial has the complete English alphabet, making almost 11.9 million combinations. The one clue to the correct combination reads "In London lies a knight a Pope interred. His labor's fruit a Holy wrath incurred. You seek the orb that ought be on his tomb. It speaks of rosy flesh and seeded womb." Despite being at gunpoint, Langdon deduces the correct sequence: (a-p-p-l-e), which unlocks the crytpex.
• There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: Delta puts a very simple tile puzzle on her front entrance, easy for any adult to solve in a few minutes, and even easier once you know the solution, but enough to keep out wild animals and small children.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of The Big Bang Theory Sheldon hides the flash drive with his presentation on it in a novelty puzzle box. When he forgets to take it with him he asks Penny to get it and starts giving complicated instructions on how to open the box before she cuts him off and asks if the puzzle box is at all important to him. When he answers "no" she breaks it open with her foot.
• House of Anubis: In season 3, Sibuna comes across an odd capsule with moving parts, each depicting a different image. They figure out that they need to solve some sort of combination, but have no idea how... until Fabian suddenly discovers that Robert Frobisher-Smythe, who built this capsule, has synesthesia; a condition he passed down to his great granddaughter, KT. They open it by having her dull her other senses until she can make out the colors of the rainbow, which allows her to solve the combination and open the capsule.
• In Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure, Weilan and Ondina try to enchant a Chinese puzzle box to trap the water dragon. Unfortunately, Poseidon, a teacher, and a cat all get sucked into it, forcing Weilan to open the box. They then decide that the box is too dangerous and destroy it to prevent another mishap.
• The Mentalist: In "Panama Red," Jane spends the episode playing with a puzzle box made by the Victim of the Week. At the end, he uses it to hide Lisbon's keys, thinking she'll be stuck in the office until she solves it. Instead, she simply pulls a hammer out of her desk and smashes the box open.
  Lisbon: [pulls out keys] Oh, here they are. Silly me.
  Jane: [incredulous] ...You keep a hammer in your desk?
  Lisbon: You only think you know everything about me.
• Star Trek: Picard introduces a Romulan puzzle box called a tan zhekran that can only be opened by carefully sliding its panels into place while listening for and feeling out the mechanisms. Narek enjoys fiddling with his to understand how it works, while his sister Narissa would rather smash the thing open.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons adventure G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. A group of ogre-magi has a trick box set with 18 plates each of gold, silver and platinum. The plates must be slid in a specific pattern to open the box.

Video Games

• Banjo-Kazooie: The series' Plot Coupon is the Jiggy, a golden puzzle piece that can unlock new worlds when enough of them are collected.
• Betrayal at Krondor has treasure chests that are locked with riddles. The riddle is written on the lock, and the solution is the combination to the chest. For extra difficulty, both riddle and combination are written in the moredhel language, so if your party doesn't include someone who can read moredhel, you have no chance of solving the riddle.
• In Bloody Spell, Larger treasure chests will be locked shut by a 15 Puzzle that Ye-Jin needs to complete to open. Interestingly, nearby enemies will actually wait for him to finish the puzzle!
• In the Borderlands 2 story Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, there is a puzzle cube that is opened by activating the magical pedestals in the order reversed from when the box appeared to solve it like a Rubik's Cube. It may also be opened by punching it.
• Conquests of the Longbow: The first time Robin infiltrates the Abbey, he discovers that the Abbott has obtained a special puzzle box that he is trying to open. Robin steals the puzzle box and opens it, revealing a magic ring that he can use to protect himself from fire — which comes in handy when the Abbott captures Maid Marian and tries to burn her at the stake.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: The very first mission of the main quest tasks you with retrieving a special Dwemer puzzle box from the local ruin Arkngthand for an informant in exchange for information. If you revisit the informant later, he will have solved the puzzle box which can now be used as a key to access deeper parts of Arkngthand, which contain better loot and stronger enemies.
  • These are all over the place in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
    • Many Nordic crypts have at least one Puzzle Gate. The only way to open these gates is to turn several nearby pillars to the correct orientation (indicated by a combination of animal engravings). Some also require you to throw a lever or pull a chain. Get the wrong combination on the pillars and you might wake up a high-level draugr, or get showered with poison darts, or...
    • Several Nordic crypts, including the plot-critical Bleak Falls Barrow, contain "Dragon Claw doors" that require you to both solve a simple combination lock and have a dragon-claw-shaped key. The combination is found on the Dragon Claws matching said doors.
    • In the College of Winterhold questline, finding the location of the Staff of Magnus involves operating a Dwemer apparatus that splits sunlight into several beams and rotating rings like a combination lock so that the beams match mirrors on the rings.
• Fallout 4: The clandestine organisation the Railroad have a puzzle lock protecting the entrance to their headquarters — a giant wheel with the letters of the alphabet around its edge, which must be rotated to spell the word "RAILROAD". If the Player Character decides to join the Railroad, they can ask Desdemona, the Railroad's leader, why they chose such an obvious password — she responds that illiteracy is common amongst the citizens of the post-apocalypse Comonwealth, so anyone who can solve it has at least some traits that makes them valuable to recruit.
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The Boss Rooms in the dungeons can only be accessed when Link opens the associated boss doors with uniquely shaped artifacts that have to be correctly placed into the keyholes. Doing this will require maneuvering the artifacts and finding the exact position for them to fit in.
• Professor Layton: Given the series' proclivity for puzzles, it should come as no surprise that several doors, gates, and boxes are sealed by them.
  • In Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, the titular box must be opened by arranging the figures on its cover according to the words, "The sun rises when you and I meet, and when the wind blows, you will know my heart." The figures must be rotated so that they're facing each other, and the sun raised to the top by blowing into the DS' microphone.
  • In Professor Layton and the Last Specter, Puzzle 047: The Terrace Door, consists of a combination lock solved through a password given through a set of equations. But the equations involve a series of variables represented by symbols that each represent a unique single-digit number. The star symbol represents 3 and the club 9. This means the diamond and spade are 2 and 7 respectively. By process of elimination, this leaves the final 3 symbols having numbers equal to either 1, 4, 5, 6, or 8. With a little process of elimination, the final equation comes out to 7 times 8 = 56. This means the final number is 86.
• Return to Krondor has a plot-critical box with a jigsaw puzzle as the combination. For added difficulty, if you don't try moving at least one piece every five seconds or so, the completed part will start to fade. Wait more than ten seconds and everything you've managed so far will be lost.
• The Room (Mobile Game) series has multiple puzzle boxes throughout the games. Some rooms have multiple of these and each contains items that help you progress through the games.
• Stellaris has a dead captain of a derelict starship holding a small metallic cube with each size a different color and split into nine equal rotatable squares. Perhaps when the cube is rotated into the correct position, it will open to reveal a hidden treasure — but when it's cut open, it turns out to be empty.
• Submachine 1: The Basement: Tile D at the bottom right of the basement is locked inside a block whose opening is only revealed upon finishing a Tile Flipping Puzzle.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All an important letter is kept in a novelty puzzle box that looks like a teddy bear.

Western Animation

• In Huntik: Secrets & Seekers, Lok acquires a Titan named Springer by solving a square puzzle akin to a Rubik's Cube. The solved puzzle then shatters to reveal the Titan's amulet. Fittingly, Springer is itself a master of locks and puzzles.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: The Pan'Ku Box is an artifact that was used to imprison demon lords in the netherworld. It is marked with 8 trigrams that each correspond to a demonic portal, and becomes capable of re-opening that portal if its components are rotated in a sequence corresponding to that trigram.
• Xiaolin Showdown: The Evil Sorceress Wuya was sealed inside a magic puzzle box for thousands of years by the heroic Dashi. She was finally freed when Jack Spicer (who was given the box as a gift from his parents) unlocked the box.

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