Baguenaudier

Baguenaudier (pronounced [baɡnodje]; French for "time-waster"), also known as the Chinese rings, Cardan's suspension, Cardano's rings, Devil's needle or five pillars puzzle, is a disentanglement puzzle featuring a loop which must be disentangled from a sequence of rings on interlinked pillars. The loop can be either string or a rigid structure.

The origins are obscure, and it is unknown whether the puzzle originated in East Asia or the West. The American ethnographer Stewart Culin related a tradition attributing the puzzle's invention to the 2nd/3rd century Chinese general Zhuge Liang but Culin was relying on an unknown informant; the earliest definitive East Asian reference is an early 16th century mention of a "nine linked rings" toy by Yang Shen in his Sheng an ji. Luca Pacioli's De Viribus Quantitatis of 1509 mentions the puzzle and may predate Yang Shen by a few years, but both authors treat the puzzle as something already well known.

The puzzle was used by French peasants as a locking mechanism.

Variations of this include the Devil's staircase, Devil's Halo and the impossible staircase. Another similar puzzle is the Giant's causeway which uses a separate pillar with an embedded ring.

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