3D Assemble Puzzles
Count Puzzles
FOOL'S SPOOL
CYLINDER TEN
do do rings
MAGIC ROADS
SUDOKU 3DBALL No.18
made by www.3d-jp.com
SUDOKU 3DBALL No.13
made by www.3d-jp.com
no copyrights
made by EUREKA BVBA
Chest of Hundreds / 100er Kiste
9 pieces
designed by Georg Pfäffinger
made by Philos
IcoSoKu
Difficulty: easy - medium
Playing Time: 45 minutes
The name is a word combination of icosahedron and Sudoku. Icosahedron refers to the geometrical form of the puzzle.
The puzzle is also a number puzzle similar to Sudoku, hence its name.
The puzzle consists of a blue icosahedron with yellow corners, 12 yellow pegs and 20 triangular, white plates. The pegs are numbered from 1 to 12.
A peg can be inserted on each corner of the icosahedron. The white plates resemble dominoes, as they have a number between zero and three on each corner.
The white plates can be attached to the triangular sides of the Icosahedron.
The puzzle can be played in two ways:
In the easy mode, the yellow pegs and the white pegs can be placed as desired.
In the difficult variant, first the yellow pegs are distributed by chance on the Icosahedron. Then the white plates have to be placed.
There is only one rule to consider in both variants:
Each corner of a white plate points to a corner / yellow peg. Therefore, each yellow peg is surrounded by five white corners.
The sum of these five white corners has to equal the number on the peg.
The difficulty level of the puzzle is like a moderate or difficult Sudoku challenge. But compared to other puzzles, I would classify IcoSoKu as easy,
as it is not really necessary to develop own ideas to master the puzzle.
designed by Andrea Mainini
made by Recent Toys
Puzzles based on magnets
turnabout
made by TENSEGRITY SYSTEMS CORPORATION
CUBE OCTA
made by DESIGN SCIENCE TOYS
Zen Magnets
Complicated shapes can be built by simpler shapes.
The most useful and easiest shape
is in my point of view the ring.
The rings can be combined to linked or coupled cylinders.
In a two-part coupled chain,
the magnet spheres are right one below the other.
The polarity of the magnet spheres is in the respective chains opposed.
In a two-part linked chain,
the magnet spheres have the same polarity in the respective chains,
therefore the magnet spheres lay shifted.
By pressing a coupled cylinder, you obtain a two-layer cubic solid.
The most useful tool is for me a PVC Card.
I use it to disconnect a complicated shape at a particular position.
Moreover, it helps me to connect two shapes at the right place.
made by Zen Magnets
Ball of Whacks Six Color Edition
(US patent: US 7247075)
30 identical pieces
Difficulty: easy
Playing Time: < 15 minutes
Ball of Whacks was designed by Roger von Oech.
It consists of a set of 30 magnetic pyramid-shaped pieces,
which can be played with alone, as well as in combination
with the X-ball, Y-ball or Star-ball.
Roger von Oech had the idea for this puzzle when he examined
a rhombic triacontahedron, which looks like a ball.
What is a whack? A whack is a creativity term for something
that stimulates you to think differently.
The puzzle consists of 30 (whacks) rhombic pyramids.
Inside of the whack are strong earth magnets,
which enable you to construct different figures and shapes.
The puzzle can be played with in different ways.
designed by Roger von Oech
made by Creative Whack Company
Never-ending cord
designed by Georg Pfäffinger
made by Philos
Cubilus
made by HABA
Matching Puzzles
SCHLOSS EINSTEIN CUBE
made by BAVARIA SONOR
From
DODECA SPACE
designed by Lixy Yamada
made by HANAYAMA
The Great Pyramid
made by Eliot Inventions Ltd
Dodek Duo
Puzzle Design Competition 2009
designed by Jerry Langin-Hooper
made by Dodek Puzzle Company, LLC
SMARTS PYRAMID BASKETBALL
10 pieces
made by DaMert Company Berkeley, CA
SMARTS PYRAMID SOCCER
10 pieces
made by DaMert Company Berkeley, CA
CubeArt
Puzzle Design Competition 2011
Difficulty: easy
Playing Time: > 90 minutes
8 blocks
The blocks have different sizes,
for example there is a cube with 1 x 1 x 1
and another cube with 2 x 2 x 2 units.
Of the remaining six blocks
half have the size 2 x 1 x 1 and the other half 2 x 2 x 1.
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.
designed by Durandus Dijken
Packing Puzzles
8Pd
designed by Takeyuki Endo
made by Hiroshi Iwahara
TWIST L DAN
designed by Takeyuki Endo
made by Hiroshi Iwahara
6 piece + frame
designed by Takeyuki Endo
Octo 1
designed by Bill Darrah
made by Pelikan
Difficulty: easy
Playing Time: < 5 minutes
made by Jean Claude Constantin
Fernsehgerät
designed by Krejci Viteslav
made by Pelikan
5-Minute Puzzle That Might Take Longer
Puzzle Design Competition 2009
designed by Andy Turner
made by Eric Fuller
Red Planks
designed by Jos Bergmans
made by Eric Fuller
MC Squared Cube Puzzle
designed by Michael Armstrong
made by Eric Fuller
Yoshikatsu Hara's 21 Piece Packing Puzzle
designed by Yoshikatsu Hara
made by Tom Lensch
DBox
Difficulty: easy - very difficult
Playing Time: 1 minute to several hours
DBOX is a Construction set which was invented by Boaz Leicht.
Each package consists of 16 yellow and 16 blue cubes.
The cubes are available in two different versions.
Eight (4 yellow + 4 blue) cubes (receptor units) have a hole on each side.
The other 24 (12 yellow +12 blue) cubes have only a hole on five sides.
The sixth side has a pin instead of a hole (connector units).
The pin can be attached to another cube on each side with a hole.
Then both cubes can be attached with each other by a quarter turn.
The connection is very stable as it is not plugged together.
The receptor units serve a simple purpose:
They hide all pins at an assembled piece.
All puzzles which consist of cube units can be easily built by this technique.
designed by Boaz Leicht
made by DBOX Puzzle, LLC
CANDY POT PUZZLE
made by HANAYAMA
made by TOYO GLASS
Cheese Puzzle
Difficulty: easy
Playing Time: < 45 minutes
made by Beverly Enterprises Inc.
made by TOYO GLASS
SHOT YOU
made by TOYO GLASS
made by TOYO GLASS
Sushi Puzzle
Difficulty: easy
Playing Time: < 30 minutes
designed by Kohfuh Satoh
made by Beverly Enterprises Inc.
made by Jean Claude Constantin
6 Block Pazzle
designed by Hidekuni Tamura
made by Jean Claude Constantin
made by BITS & PIECES
Andrew Snowie
Football Puzzle
8 pieces
designed by Andrew Snowie
made by Philos
Cylinder Puzzle
12 pieces
designed by Andrew Snowie
made by Philos
Cone Puzzle
13 pieces
designed by Andrew Snowie
made by Philos
Gizeh Puzzle
12 pieces
designed by Andrew Snowie
made by Philos
Sphere Puzzle
12 pieces
designed by Andrew Snowie
made by Philos
Markus Götz
Brunnen-Puzzle
designed by Markus Götz
made by Philos
Prisgon
8 pieces + frame
designed by Markus Götz
made by Philos
Goldtruhe von Malaga /
THE GOLDEN TREASURE CHEST OF MALAGA
7 pieces + frame
designed by Markus Götz
made by Philos
Tetralott
7 pieces
designed by Markus Götz
made by Philos
Ivan Moscovich
MIRRORKAL / ESCHER (Pat. US4898560)
comes with 5 problems
Difficulty: easy / medium
Playing Time: < 35 minutes for each problem
The Escher puzzle is a variation of the picture cube puzzle.
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.
designed by Ivan Moscovich
made by Recent Toys International
Teddy Sakamoto
Gari Garikun Puzzle / Not So Easy
Puzzle Design Competition 2010
designed by Teddy Sakamoto
made by HANAYAMA
Gari Garikun Puzzle / Not So Easy
Puzzle Design Competition 2010
designed by Teddy Sakamoto
made by HANAYAMA
Colour Cube
9 pieces
designed by Georg Pfäffinger
made by Philos
IcosaTriad
designed by Dabid Hutchings
made by Kadon Enterprises
Dragon's Eggs Puzzle
designed by T. H. O'Beirne
3 Balls + 4 pieces + frame
made by Pentangle
Plus-Puzzle
designed by David Goodman
4 pieces
made by Philos
Blockhead
4 pieces + frame
1986 Hikimi Wooden Puzzle Competition (Grand Prize)
designed by Bill Cutler
made by Jean Claude Constantin
Square in the Bag
Puzzle Design Competition 2012
IPP 33 Exchange / Narita, Japan
designed by Hirokazu Iwasawa (Iwahiro)
Square in the Bag
Puzzle Design Competition 2012
IPP 33 Exchange / Narita, Japan
designed by Hirokazu Iwasawa (Iwahiro)
Culica
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.
As there are so many puzzles, I will introduce only two examples:
CuFrog:
Playing Time: 15 minutes
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.
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.
designed by James Eadon
made by Culica Limited
Literature
Serhiy Grabarchuk PUZZLE DIMENSIONS
Kevin Holmes / Rig van Grol A Compendium of Cube-Assembly Puzzles using Polycube Shapes
Shops
Creative Whack Company http://www.creativewhack.com/
CubeArt http://cube-art.com/
CULICA http://culica.com/
DBOX http://www.dboxpuzzle.com/
Geduldspiele.CH http://geduldspiele.ch
RECENTTOYS INTERNATIONAL http://www.recenttoys.com/
rekubus http://rekubus.eu/
ZenMagnets.com http://zenmagnets.com/