Monday 6 June 2016

Sandfield's Secret Folding Hankie

This "puzzle" is one of the more unusual and unique (as well as pretty) Exchange Puzzles from my haul during IPP35 last year in Ottawa, Canada. The other which I thought also deserving of mention being Straight Up, reviewed a while back. 



Robert Sandfield's Secret Folding Hankie is parked under Slocum Classification 9; a "folding puzzle", and aptly so. The goal is to fold the handkerchief to reveal a secret image and a hidden message. The design of the Hankie is a joint effort by Robert, Perry McDaniel and Cindy Liang.

The handkerchief itself is printed on a square cloth of approximately 41cm x 41cm and the pattern includes the Canadian Maple leaf and squiggly scrawly lines along the edges, with swaths of red filling up the spaces in between.

As I played with the hankie, I was reminded of Mad Magazine's Fold-In on the inside back cover of each issue featuring those quirky, satirical and often humorous illustrations which dealt with current hot topics of the day. And this is exactly what I tried to do with Sandfield's Hankie...but of course to no avail. I tried various other ways of folding the Hankie in all directions including diagonally but somehow could not come up with the hidden message. 

Thankfully Robert included the solution instructions and I finally saw the words and images I needed to see. For the folded hankie solution click here - password - hankie.

A great and interesting puzzle concept and I hope there would be more of these in the future. For more information on secret folding handkerchiefs, Robert has also kindly provided the link to a reference site http://handkerchiefheroes.com/secret-love/. Another link which discusses vintage valentine puzzle handkerchiefs is here.

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