If you have any questions or suggestions, you can contact me at puzzlecollector@hotmail.com.From rekubus (http://rekubus.eu/)
rekubus is an interlocking puzzle in the shape of a hollow cube that was invented by Mike Klotzki. You immediately notice the rather unusual shape of the pieces. rekubus consists of three different pieces:
8 corner pieces, 12 edge pieces and 6 side parts. Additionally, there are 12 rails which serve to hold the pieces in place.
To solve the puzzle, it is advisable to build first one side and then the rails which are only connected by the corner pieces.
and are also hold in position by these two parallel rails. The edge pieces are respectively pulled over two parallel rails and stay attached like a clip.
The charm of this puzzle is to find out how to attach the rails. The puzzle has a size of 6.5 cm and lies comfortably in the hand. Moreover, it is very robust so that it can also bear strong loads. At first glance, it does not seem to be very difficult to put the puzzle together, as the position of the pieces can be easily recognized. Nevertheless, logical and three-dimensional intellectual power is needed to attach the trails and to build the cube bit by bit. In my point of view, the puzzle is well suited for older kids as well as for adults. The three-dimensional complexity of the assembly trains logical and analytical thinking through playing and is at the same time not to difficult to be overwhelmed by the problem. The speciality and the next challenge of recubus cubes is that any desired number of these cubes can be linked with each other and put together to three-dimensional figures. Thereby all parts of the cubes are used. recubus cubes are available in different difficulty levels, whereby the building principle always is the same. You can choose between different colouring cubes or six printed cubes whereby the task of the colouring cubes is to rebuilt the design of the cube. The printed cubes have the further challenge to find the solution for the correct order of the pieces. In my point of view rekubus is ideal for children from the age of 10 years on as well as for adults. It is interesting that the cube is hollow. Therefore, it can also be regarded as an interlocking box. rekubus Devil's Cube shall have 3 x 3 magical squares on all 6 sides. This means that the sum on each cube side is always the same in the vertical, horizontal and diagonal direction. The combination of the possible numbers is quite high and seems to be difficult on first glance. If you look closer at a magical square of the 3 x 3 size, then you see that the sum along a row/column or diagonal always equals the three time value of the number in the center.
As the six different side parts have different numbers, each magical square has also a different sum per row:
My solution strategy was simply to find a magical square for one side so that the sum of the numbers on the side edges correspond to the sums of other magical squares. Under this condition, only two to three magical squares stay in consideration. As all numbers on the remaining four neighboured sides are known, the non-suited magical squares can be easily excluded. I would recommend to purchase the rekubus Devil's Cube, as therewith you get two good puzzles at the same time because of the combination of two tasks: an interlocking puzzle and a magical square. Concerning the age, I would suggest a lower age limit of 12 years, as from this age on children are familiar with algebra and thus can solve the puzzle. Nevertheless, the both more difficult number cubes Devil's Cube and Champion are also interesting for grown-ups. From Fourier Idea Inc. (http://fourieridea.com/)
From W.G.H. Strijbos
From www.puzzle-shop.de (http://puzzle-shop.de/)
From Hans van der Zon (http://www.laserexact.nl)
From MO MATH MUSEUM OF MATHEMATICS (http://momath.org/shop/) or Artifacture (http://store.artifacturestudios.com/)
Frabjous, designed by George W. Hart, is a highly symmetrical geometric sculpture and interlocking puzzle. The name Frabjous is borrowed from Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll: “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” The puzzle has a perfect regularly form, as the corners form a (pentagon) dodecahedron, although they are not connected. The thirty identical S-shaped pieces interfere with each other in the inside without touching each other.
Three S-shaped pieces always build a corner.
In order to get a short imagination which corners connect the S-shaped piece, you should look at two pentagons which share an edge. The two corners which are farthest away are connected with each other by the S-shaped piece.
The symmetry corresponds to a (pentagon) dodecahedron. In addition, Frabjous has a chirality. How to solve the puzzle: At the beginning, you should assemble three pieces to a three-cycle corner.
Two further s-shaped pieces have to be joined on each free end in order to make a three-cycle corner. It gets more difficult to connect further corners with a S-shaped part after having 12 pieces together. The reason is that the pieces are in the way when the next part is inserted. On each intersection, you have to decide to weave over or under the piece. It facilitates the decision to look closer at the symmetry. Solving the puzzle takes about two to four hours. I was astonished by Frabjous. The puzzle is completely different to other interlocking puzzles. It has neither complicated notches, nor are there any pieces meeting in the center. Instead Frabjous possess an elegant inner structure which is achieved by assembling simple pieces. It is fascinating how the apparance of the puzzle changes by taking another point of view.
Viewed along the threefold rotation axis, it has a completely different appearance. Frabjous is available in two different versions: blue acryl and Acrylite Radiant Acrylic. I would recommend the puzzle in Radiant Acrylic, as it glistens in different rainbow colours according to its angle. In my point of view, it is a mental challenge as well as a beautiful art object. From Sonic Games (http://sonicgames-uk.com/)
Iball3 remembers of a traditional electronical puzzle from the eighties. It has the shape of a small blue transparent ball. On the ball are six buttons and a one-digit LED display.
A button will flash as soon as it is pressed in one of the possible colours red, blue or green. If it is pressed another time, then it will flash in a different colour. The following rule applies: If a button is pushed and the colour is identical to the colour before, then the lights will stay switched on, otherwise all lights will switch off. The task is to press the buttons in the right order in a short time intervall (90 sec) so that all six buttons have the same colour. The puzzle has two levels. In the first level, there are only three colours (red, blue, green), whereas in the second level there is additionally purple as colour. The game is completely different compared to other electronical gadget games. Traditional electronic gadget games are similiar to Simon or Lights out. Simon's challenge is to repeat a given sequence which keeps on getting longer. Lights out has lights which switch on or of if a button is pressed. The rules which controll the lights are known. Iball3 is different, as the colour which will flash is unknown. I try empirically by try and error to get an overview. I will explain this principle with two examples: If I press two buttons, let's say A and B, so the buttons will always flash in different colours. Is there a certain pattern? Does the frequence repeat itself or does it happen by chance? I press A and B 12 times in succession:
You can see that the sequence repeats itself after three moves. Does the order of pressing the buttons matter? Does the colour combination differ, if A is pressed first and then B or if B is pressed first and A second? I press A -> B three times in a row:
I press B -> A three times in a row:
=> The order does not matter. Although this puzzle looks simple, it is a mental challenge and has an addictive character, so that you don't like to put it away. It is therefore ideal for people who like to crack a code such as scientists and computer freaks. Nevertheless, other people will also enjoy its easy handling and fun factor. Many thanks for the two gifts Ivan!!
MIRRORKAL / ESCHER The Escher puzzle is a variation of the picture cube puzzle. Many people know such a puzzle from their childhood. Nine different cubes with picture fragments on each side have to be put together to form six different pictures.
The idea behind this puzzle is relatively simple: The puzzle consists of a frame and nine cubes. The frame has the same height as the cubes. On each side of the frame are three picture fragments visible.
Each of the cube has a mirror which passes from the upper edge to the opposite bottom edge (along the diagonals) and divides the cube into two parts. All nine cubes are transparent on two neighbouring sides. The other four sides are with picture fragments. If a side with a picture fragment is next to a transparent side, then you can see the picture from above. The reason is that the picture got reflected by the mirror.
It has a special charme to solve this puzzle: At the beginning you only search for mirror-inverted picture fragments. Some of the picture fragments are very similar to each other, as Escher's drawings were used as motives. After finding all nine picture fragments, the cubes have to be put back into the frame. This is not very easy, as the mirror-inverted picture gets reflected. Thus, for each picture side, there are two to four possibilities. Nevertheless each of the five tasks can be solved by analytical thinking. The pictures have different difficulty levels. Drawing Hands and Print Gallery are easiest to solve, Sky and Water 1 is most difficult. Mirrorkal Escher is a bit similar to Mirrorkal Mona Lisa, but differs clearly from it. The Mirrorkal Mona Lisa reveals through each sliding new picture fragments and lets others disappear. To solve the Mirrorkal Escher, I search for mirror-inverted picture fragments and think about the place and the direction of the cubes. Moscovich succeeded in transforming a simple picture cube puzzle into a difficult puzzle. I like especially the combination of picture search and logical conclusions. Eschers motives match very well to this puzzle. The puzzle is not only a mental challenge, but also an artistic pleasure. It is a combination of puzzle and art. MIRRORKAL / YOU AND Mona Lisa There are very few puzzles which make me think of nice memomories from my past. This puzzle reminds me of two things: When I was small, I played with a picture cube puzzle and assembled different pictures. It remembers me also of my first simple sliding puzzle with which I played during my schooltime. There are various developments of the 3 x 3 sliding puzzle by well-known puzzle designers. But almost all ideas focus on the restriction of the movement of the pieces. Moscovich accomplished a feat with this puzzle. He combined a picture search, whereby new pictures appear and different pictures vanish, with a sliding puzzle.
The sliding principle of the puzzle corresponds to the principle of an ordinary Nine Sliding Piece Puzzle: The puzzle consists of a frame and 9 cubes which lie in a 3 x 3 grid and an additional field. Eight of the nine cubes can be slided everywhere in the 3 x 3 grid. The ninth cube can only be slided between the extra field and the neighbouring field in the grid. The ninth cube serves rather as closure so that all fields in the grid can be placed with a cube.
The mechanics of the cubes is tricky. Each of the cube has a mirror which passes from the upper edge to the opposite bottom edge (along the diagonals) and divides the cube into two parts. To each of the four sliding directions (up, right, down and left), there are at least two cubes of which the mirros have the same direction. All nine cubes are transparent from above, the bottom side does not matter. Three of the remaining four sides have pictures on the outside and the other one is transparent. There are also pictures on the sides of the frame in the size of a cube side. If a side with a picture is next to a transparent side, then you can see the side with the picture from above. That is because the side with the picture was reflected by the mirror. If you slide a cube, then the pictures of the neighbouring cubes or the picture of the cube which was moved may change. There are two tasks: The aim of the warmup challenge is to make the small Mona Lisa visible in the center and the remaining eight cubes shall work as mirrors. No single cube picture other then the Mona Lisa shall be recognizable. The problem is relatively easy to solve. The first step is to find the small Mona Lisa which is depicted at one side of a cube. Then you have to think how the mirrors of two cubes have to be arranged. Moscovich succeeded in designing a puzzle which is a lot of fun for young and old. Pictures disappear and reappear in a magical way. It is one of the few puzzles which enchant from the beginning. From Quadratum Cubicum (http://qucub.com/)
Quadratum Cubicum is a dissection puzzle. A geometric dissection means that one or more figures are cut into parts so that the pieces can be used to build other figures. Thereby the emphasis is to use as few pieces as possible. The two most famous dissection puzzles you should already know are: * the Tangram:
two squares have to be rearranged to form one bigger square * The Five Square Puzzle:
five squares of the same size have to be rearranged to build one big square. The Quadratum Cubicum dealt extensively with square trisection: thereby a square has to be cut into pieces in such a way that they can be rearranged to form three identical squares. One of the trisection used in the Quadratum Cubicum is well known in geometry, because it has been used to illustrate the Pythagorean theorem, more than one thousand years ago.
Mathematicians continue to search for new solutions nowadays. Christian Blanvillain and Janos Pach found one dissection in 2010 using only 6 = 2 * (3 different) parts. It is worth mentioning that each part has the same area. The Quadratum Cubicum provides a set of the nine historical most important solutions founded for square trisection problem. The puzzle consist to check that those solution are correct, thus to assemble three small squares in a bigger one! This Quadratum Cubicum has one rare feature: it can be played at different level. That makes this puzzle affordable for young children, and also be be really challenging for puzzle guy. If you merge all the pieces of the nine puzzle, then you have a really challenging 68 pieces puzzle to solve! With all the pieces you can create a huge 42cm square, that can be divided in three medium 24.2cm squares, that can be again divided in three 14cm squares, that can finally be divided in three small 8.1cm squares! The advantage is that every body in the house can play with this puzzle. The three 24.2cm square and the twenty seven 8.1cm squares are easy to find. The big 42cm square is really tricky and the nine 14cm squares have very different levels of difficulty : Easy (for children): Henry Perigal - 6 pieces - 1891 Abu Bakr Al-Khalil - 8 pieces - 14th Christian Blanvillain - 6 pieces - 2010 Medium (for every body): Greg N. Frederickson - 7 pieces - 2002 Colonel De Coatpont - 7 pieces - 1877 Abu Bakr Al-Khalil - 9 pieces - 14th Abul Wafa - 9 pieces - 10th Difficult (for puzzle guy): Nobuyuki Yoshigahara - 9 pieces - 2004 Edouard Lucas - 7 pieces - 1883
I chose a mini QuCub with Christian Blanvillain trisection. The puzzle looks very elegant and is relatively big (14 cm). From one side the puzzle is shining a bit. This effect is due to satined plexiglas. I like the composition which is related to the logo very much. You can recognize on first glance that a bigger square shall be arranged. As already mentioned, the puzzle from Christian Blanvillain is easy and can be solved quickly (‹ 5 minutes). For a puzzler who only wants to have only one puzzle in his collection, I would recommend the more difficult puzzle by Edouard Lucas. The online shop (see http://qucub.com) offers the puzzles in different sets. Thus it is possible to purchase all nine puzzles, a set consisting of three puzzles or only a single puzzle. To conclude, Quadratum Cubicum is well suited for adults as well as for children. The problem is easy enough for children so that they can enhance their analytical skills. But the puzzle is also a challenge for adults, especially if trying to build a big square of 68 single parts. From Eric Fuller (http://cubicdissection.com/)
From Karakuri Club (www.karakuri.gr.jp/creation/)
From TAQUINZE (http://taquinze.nl/) Many thanks for the gifts Hans!!
From Amazon (http://www.amazon.com)
From CULICA (http://culica.com/)
Culica was invented by James Eadon. You can play a variety of different games and puzzles with Culica. This is very unusual, as most puzzles have only a limited number of problems. With Culica you can play many types of puzzle, including matching puzzles, assemble puzzles and different sequential movement puzzles. Culica consists of a black, hollow cube which has 3 x 3 Slots on each face. In addition to the cube, there are coloured pegs (28 yellow pegs, 28 red pegs, 14 blue pegs and 14 green pegs). The pegs are pushed into the slots on the Culica cube while playing. Different coloured pegs can be recognized very easily, even in the dark. Moreover they are big and can be well taken into the hand by children and grown-ups. The pegs are delivered in a bag. Additionally there are four instruction cards with which you can play five different games and puzzles. The website is very pretty. Thus there is a forum, a blog and a FAQ. There is a page with further rules for puzzles and games. The rules are ordered according to difficulty levels. Currently, there are 16 puzzles and 17 games on the site, which will be added to with more rules in the future. The game rules are well illustrated with many pictures. A few puzzles are based on classical problems, but most of them are new. Contrary to traditional puzzles, where a problem is to be solved, Eadon often uses a score-based system. This motivates the user for continual improvement. As there are so many puzzles, I will introduce only two examples: CuFrog: The aim is to fill the whole Culica with pegs. Thereby the colour of the pegs does not matter. The pegs are put with a Cube Hop, which means that each peg which is newly placed has to leave a space or a peg in relation to the last peg which was placed. Cube Hops are only straight, not diagonal. The CuFrog is relatively easy to play and I managed at first trial to fill all slots except two with pegs. It takes about 15 minutes to play the puzzle. CuRing: The constraint of CuRing is that pegs of the same colour have to keep a minimum separation distance of four. This means that no two pegs of the same colour can be closer than four spaces in straight lines, however the spaces on the diagonal axis don't matter. I managed to fill the CuRing up to 14 open slots. Here is my solution:
It shall be possible to place 48 pegs on the Cube so that only 6 slots stay open. This means that 12 pegs of each colour have to be placed. This problem is already interesting as I did not manage to place more than 10 pegs of the same colour. The game lasts about 45 minutes. I was surprised that it is possible to play so many games and puzzles with a cube and some pegs. With this puzzle kids can learn logical and analytical abilities by playing. In my point of view Culica is ideal for school breaks - the games are short and you can play alone or together with several pupils. For adults, especially the harder puzzles such as CuRing are interesting. (As well as competitive games like CuCombat). From Mefferts.com
From BALL.B (http://ballb.pl/)
BALL.B is invented by Andrzej Burkiet. He registered his invention for a patent(A63F9 / 08 P 383002) in 2006 which he got in the following year. It is one of the few puzzles which were invented in Poland.
BALL.B is a twisty puzzle, to be more precise a Megaminx, in the shape of a sphere. Ball.B belongs to the group of Dodecahedral puzzles, i.e. it has 12 axes. Neighbouring rotary axes have the same angle. The puzzle has on the surface 12 rotary discs, whereby each rotary disc intersects with five others. The rotary disc can be moved five times around in order to reach the initial point. This means that each axis can be turned by 72 degrees. Each rotary disc has a different colour.
To summarize the aim of this puzzle in very easy words, you turn its discs until you restore the initial state. BALL.B is available in different versions, whereby each version has a different difficulty level. Nevertheless the mechanism is always the same. One of the easier versions is BALL.B kropki. BALL.B kropki has only the connection lines to the axes marked. The puzzle can be solved straight forward within one hour without thinking a lot. My approach was to solve first a rotary disc completely. Afterwards I solved the neighbouring rotary discs. BALL.B reminded me immediately of a basket ball due to its colour and shape. The surface is covered with pentagons and the both different plastic colours make the puzzle look optically interesting. The surface is rough which gives a nice grip. The puzzle is relatively big (98mm) and has a weight of approximately 250 gramm. Therefore it is well suited for men's hands. I was a bit disappointed that the points are only printed instead of using different coloured plastic parts. But I was surprised that the points are scratch resistant. I am fond of the sphere form, as contrary to Megaminx it enables different difficulty levels. I like especially the smooth turning, which I did not know from other sphere Puzzles. It is well suited for children as well for adults. From Jolie Spellen.nl (http://www.jolie-spellen.nl/) or CubeArt (http://cube-art.com/)
Cube Art is invented and designed by Durandus Dijken, who lives in Eindhoven (Netherlands). I was surprised a bit by the name CubeArt, as this is a term from the art. Cube Art refers to pixel like pictures which are created by piling up many rubik's cubes. Nevertheless this design is inspired by the work of the Dutch painter Piet Mondriaan. Piet Mondriaan is one of the founders of abstract painting and famous for its black grids which are filled with black rectangular spaces in basic colours. CubeArt is delivered in a plastic hard case box. Inside are 8 cubic magnetic blocks and a thin magnetic board. The eight black rectangular blocks have stickers on the sides and are hollow inside. The blocks have different sizes, for example there is a cube with 1x1x1 and another cube with 2 x 2 x 2 units. Of the remaining six cubes half have the size 2x1x1 and the other half 2x2x1. The stickers have the colours: green, yellow, red, blue, orange and white. The goal is to order the cube in such a way that each face has the same four-colour-combination. There are altogether four solutions for the puzzle. The puzzle is a classical 3-dimensional pattern puzzle in the shape of a cube. Popular examples of this kind are Instant Insanity or Kolor Kraze. Puzzles of this style are not very difficult, as you can find the solution by a systematical search. To find a solution for CubeArt, I started with the biggest cube. The combination is very high although there are only a few cubes to order. Thus I needed about 3 to 4 hours to find a solution. The magnetic board shows for three solutions the according colour combination. If you use this hint and consider that the magnetic board is a border in the middle which limits the combination possibilities, then the puzzle can be solved within 90 minutes. While playing the puzzle, I was fascinated by the clicking sounds created by the magnets and its design. Thus the puzzle is not only a mental challenge, but also an audible and visual pleasure. It is a combination of puzzle, art and magnets. It is well suited for all age classes. |
