An impossible bottle is a type of mechanical puzzle. It is a bottle that has an object inside of it which doesn't appear like it could normally fit inside of a bottle. The "ship in a bottle" is probable the most well known type of impossible bottle but other common objects to find include matchboxes, decks of cards, tennis balls, racketballs, Rubik's cubes, padlocks, knots and scissors.
In nearly every impossible bottle, the object inside has been carefully disassembled and reassembled inside the bottle. For example, to get a deck of cards inside a bottle, you roll up the empty box and stick it in first, then insert each card one at a time. Using some long forceps and other tools you can get everything back together again and the result is something that looks impossible unless you know the secret. Template:Toys-stub