I made this puzzle with box for my dad a few years ago. It turned out really well, after I spent a lot of time figuring out how to best make the pieces.
It’s a box with a drawer that opens to either side. The drawer is held in place with a magnet so that it doesn’t just slide open:
The drawer contains the puzzle pieces:
The pieces go together to form a cube:
The usual way to make pieces like this is to cut a bunch of half cubes (which is where the puzzle gets its name) and then glue them together. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted each piece to be solid without any glue. So the cuts were tricky. I made a table saw sled to make the cuts. Then I made a spreadsheet to help me keep track of which cuts needed the same setup, so I didn’t need to do setup for every single cut. This is what the setup looks like. The actual piece I’m cutting is hidden behind sacrificial wood, both to prevent tear out and to keep my fingers away from the blade.
The final trick was that I made each puzzle piece twice, and selected the best one for the final product. All the pieces:
