Passion For Puzzles

Sorry but for the next coming days Passion for Puzzles will not be updated with puzzle news and games. From the 4th of October we will be back with more puzzle news, information and puzzle games. You can keep sending us your puzzle tips.
We will be back soon and happy puzzling!

Only an architect could dream up a puzzle like this one! From the makers of Oliblocks comes the 3D magnetic puzzle called Olizoid. Olizoid is a artful toy for children. Olizoid 3D puzzle uses magnetic connections to make the pieces come together. This is one problem that’s fun to solve, with cool, contemporary colors and a unique design that won’'t take up the whole table. Olizoid is available via Amazon for less than US$ 17.00

Tags: Olizoid | 3D Puzzle

Mariah Mundi in Manic Mundi is the title of a nice Flash Puzzle Game. You probably know the book Mariah Mundi written by GP Taylor (some people say this could genuinely be the book series that will replace Harry Potter at the top of every child's wish list).
Mariah Mundi lives in the Regency Hotel at the See Cliffs in the Town at the End of the line. Using his Patent Steam Elevator. Your have to help Mariah to turn off all the gas lamps in the Hotel. You can move the steam elevator to the first window you select, after that you can move the steam elevator only horizontally, vertically or diagonallly. There can also be a key and lock in the game, make sure you pass by the key first, before moving to the lock. To make it a bit more difficult also two enemies are added to the game (a joker and a doll), you can not pass both. The levels are not to difficult to solve, some of them can get tricky because you need to start in the correct spot. If you don’t solve it the first time, you can reset the level and try again. For each level solved a password is given so you can come back later and continue Manic Mundi.

Tags: Manic Mundi | Mariah Mundi | Flash Puzzle | GP Taylor

Four Color Problem is a new puzzler from the creators of Dice Wars. This Flash puzzle game involves grabbing as much land as possible in turns, though any adjacent areas captured should be of different colors.
A grid of hexagons is created for you, and the hexagons are divided into large chunks (similar to the layout for Dice Wars). Your objective is to color in as much space as you can, while the computer opponent tries to do the same. The catch is that no two adjacent areas can be filled with the same color. You'll have to have color the largest part of map with your colors (black and grey, the computer plays with green and orange). You alternate turns with your opponent, and alternate between colors (black, green, grey, orange, etc). Your score and the opponents score is shown at the bottom of the screen. Each round is won by gaining the most half of the hexagons, or if there is a draw (as in, a region can't be filled by either player because all four colors already border it), then the majority takes the cake. My record is just six rounds, can you beat it? Happy puzzling with The Four Color Problem!

Tags: Four Color Problem | Flash Puzzle

The Children’s Puzzle Table designed by Robin Joseph Dashnaw makes one of the simplest puzzle games called fifteen puzzle and turns it into an engaging furniture piece for your children. The mosaic-style puzzle table-top allows access to nine storage compartments. An easy slide mechanisms make it easy to see what’s in the table. Via Yankodesign

Tags: Puzzle | Furniture

Rocket Man is a promotional Flash Puzzle Game by Amanita Designs (like The Polyphonic Spree). This time it's a commercial for Nike. Also this point-and-click games has three levels so it will puzzle you for less than 5 minutes. Agian very nice made but without an end.

Tags: Rocket Man | Point and Click | Nike

The Polyphonic Spree - The Quest For The Rest is an animated point and click puzzle games with an overlying theme of overcoming obstacles. Amanita Designs designed this adventure for the US band The Polyphonic Spree. There are just three levels, very nice design, but nothing more or less.

Tags: The Polyphonic Spree | The Quest for The Rest | Point and Click

Today, September 19th, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day (TLAPD). Lot's of people celebrate this day and make puzzles especially for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Some tips:
- Log in to crucial.com, on the 19th, click on the parrot and get a chance to win a 2GB custom memory upgrade by solving a treasure puzzle. They're givin' away two in honor of TLAPD.
- Over at Puzzle Pirates, it's all pirates, all year long ... but Captain Country girly of the Devil's Crew on the Sage Ocean has special goin's on for TLAPD: "Normally you start out the game with just the rags on your back, but if your readers use this link they'll start the game with 500 poe! And find me in game and I'll be happy to help acclimate you to your new pirate world!"
- Beekeeper Crosswords offers up a pirate-themed puzzle for Talk Like A Pirate Day.

The complete list of activities can be found at the TLAPD 2007 page. Happy Pirate Puzzling !

The puzzle of the pirate picture shown can be found via Little Folks Puzzle Company

Tags: Pirates | Puzzle

Egypt is a fun puzzle game in Flash where you have to connect blocks of the same colors and clear the game board. Unravel the mysteries of ancient hieroglyphs that will help you restore the glorious pyramids. The magic glyphs are in the game field. Click with your left mouse button on a matching brick to slide them to the middle. Form matches of three or more blocks to unlock the secret. Unlock all the secrets and remove all glyphs.

Tags: Egypt | Flash Puzzle

One of the latest Grow Game is Grow Island. Theme of Grow island is technology. There are only eight buttons at the bottom of the screen with some icons. Object is finding the right order. After each try you will get some clues of each level reached per button. Enjoy Grow Island, it takes a while until the complete Flash is loaded.

Tags: Grow Game | Grow Island

It takes a while before you can celebrate Halloween, but to get you already in the mood you can play Halloween Smash via Ultimate Arcade. The object of Halloween Smash is to quickly align three or more Halloween objects horizontally or vertically by simply clicking with your mouse on the two Halloween objects you want to swap. You have five minutes to collect as many points as you can. Think fast and enjoy puzzling.

BTW if you still need to make a Halloween costume and you want to keep it in puzzle style maybe this Rubik's Cube Halloween Costume is something for you.

Tags: Halloween Smash | Flash Puzzle

In car manufacturer Citroën commercial for the C1 the traffic at a crossing is handled by a large Rubik's Cube. This virtual Rubik's cube consists of 6 x 3 cars (one car length is two times the car width). The commercial created by No Brain is really nice to look at. At daily motion you can watch the C1 - Le Cube commercial already including a making of Citroën Le Cube commercial. Enjoy watching the great commercial. [via Su.doku.es]

Tags: Citroën | C1 | Rubik's Cube

Via Abodeee.nl (Dutch website) I found a nice magnetic puzzle picture frame. You can create your own picture frame with four magnetic photo frames. Each set consists of two black an two white magnetic photo frames which you can put together in several ways. There are sets with square and rectangle photo frames available. The metal frame e is 9x4 cm (approx. 3.5"x1.6") and the photo frames are 65x65mm (2.5"x2.5") or 65x50mm (2.5"x2"). These photo frames are available in The Netherlands and Belgium and via Dutch and Belgium web stores.

Tags: Photo Frame | Puzzle

Sudoku X is a variant of the original Sudoku. The rules of Sudoku X are simple, just enter the numbers 1 - 9 once in each row, column and 3 x 3 square within the sudoku X puzzle grid. In addition to standard sudoku, the numbers must only occur once in each side of the 'X' that is marked on the grid in dark green. Use logic alone to deduce where each of these numbers must be placed in every cell of a puzzle. You can solve more than 200 Sudoku X puzzle, for each difficulty level (easy, moderate, difficult, very hard) there are 50 Sudoku X puzzle available.

Tags: Sudoku X

GemStrike (by Clash Flash) is another Gem puzzle game but not like Bejeweled. This time it's more like Connect Four. The main objective of GemStrike is to get the required amount of the same color of gems in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonal).
The grid can be set from 10x10 to 16x16. Also you can set the winning row length of gems, the number of players (2-4) and the difficulty level per player. Sometimes it's confusing how to set the parameters for the options and the game setup in GemStrike (more gems is not always more difficult or the other way around). Just play with them and find out. Happy Puzzling.

Tags: GemStrike | Flash Puzzle | Connect Four

For as long as the offer last you can buy a Sudoku Handheld for less than US$ 3 at Surplus Computers. The Sudoku LJ-681 Handheld Game (White) features: Maintain a high level of concentration and intellect. With up to 1 million random games you’ll be entertained or frustrated for hours. Simply add two AAA batteries and let the games begin

Tags: Sudoku

The Doors is a nice designed point and click adventure puzzle game. You must find your way out of the house, but you do not know where you are and you do not understand why you are there.
Just like other point and click games, click with your mouse to open doors, get closer to objects, move through rooms and pick up objects. The objects will allow you to advance further and open new doors. Some objects can be pulled towards the stage. The Doors is very nice designed and looks great. Enjoy puzzling !

Tags: The Doors | Flash Puzzle | Point-and-Click

Gemsweeper is an awardwinning puzzle game by Lobstersoft. Gemsweeper combines fun puzzles, brilliant graphics and an engaging story into one unique, highly addictive game.

As most gem puzzle games like bejeweled the rules of the game are not really that difficult to understand. The game board consists of cursed tiles and gems which are all faced down. A player needs to uncover the pattern made of gems and break the cursed tiles. There is always a numerical hint along the side and top for each row and column showing how many gems are in the line and you must find out where they are using this info.

The game starts with a grid of 5x5 tiles, later 5x7, 10x10 and then more and more.
The goal of the game is to help Topex (a mythical statue) reconstruct the temples of his hometown of El Dorado. And you travel from one lost city to another somewhere deep in jungle earning score points and treasure hunting ranks. One thing which definitely should be mentioned is Professor McGuffog (see picture) who helps you with the hints and rules and sometimes making jokes. Also he can repair a smashed gem with the Magic glue for you. Gemsweeper offers more than 200 unique puzzles to solve. You can download a free trail version of Gemsweeper of buy the full version of Gemsweeper for less than US$ 20.

Tags: Gemsweeper | Puzzle Game

At PuzzlePicnic.com you can find all kinds of puzzles (Archipelago, Sudoku, Slitherlink, Kakuro, Tents and Trees and much more)which you can solve online.

According to their statistics is Archipelago to most played online puzzle.
In the Archipelago diagram a number of islands are situated that must be connected to each other with a minimum of straight bridges. There is only one solution possible to connect all islands such that every piece of bridge drawn is functional. Bridges do not cross and are only horizontal or vertical.

Game play is easy, just click with your left mouse button on the space between two islands to create a bridge, click again to rotate the bridge 90 degrees. Click on your right mouse button to indicate no bridge is needed/possible. You can build bridges as long as needed. More information about the Archipelago Puzzle can be found at PuzzlePicnic.com.

Tags: Puzzle Game

Nintendo isn't alone in its bold attempt at creating every single permutation of block-based puzzle games. The latest such puzzler for the DS comes from Square Enix and has the curious Japanese name of Yosumin DS.

Yosumin DS is a puzzle game that Square Enix originally released as a free flash-based game on the internet. The goal of the game is to make colored blocks disappear from a board full of them. You do so by forming squares whose vertexes are the same color and block type. All blocks within the sides of the square that you've formed disappear, with new blocks coming in to take their place. The larger you make your squares, the more points you earn.

Sample the game for yourself through @nifty. To begin, click on the yellow button to the right of the screen shot. Keep in mind that you only need to touch two diagonally opposite vertexes from your desired square, and the game will take care of the rest.

The DS version of Yosumin features the same basic rules as the web version, but adds new options. You'll find new block types, including one type that can be slid around the screen to change the board layout. The game also adds a two player competitive mode that's playable via a single cart.

Yosumin hits the Japanese DS on November 8th 2007, carrying the budget price of 2,800 yen. A US version has yet to be announced. [Via DS.IGN.com]

Tags: Square Enix | DS | Puzzle Game

Travel Blokus is the compact, two-player edition of the of award-winning strategy game Blokus.

Travel Blokus is known in Europe as Blokus Duo. The travel version of Blokus is the perfect on-the-go strategy game for two!

The simple rules take less than a minute to learn, yet the game has the depth to challenge both beginners and experts alike. Set Travel Blokus set includes game-board with 196 recessed squares (14x14), 42 game pieces in vibrant, translucent purple and orange in a storage tray, and guide.

The pieces are identical to the original Blokus game for four players, except there are only two sets, the board is also smaller (original is 20x20). Travel Blokus is perfect to take with you when you are traveling, but it's also ideal to play at home when there are only two of you.

Travel Blokus is just like Blokus Classics Game available via Amazon.com available via Amazon.com. Happy Puzzling

Tags: Blokus | Travel | Game

At HypeGames.com you can find a small but nice Flash Puzzle Game called Nodes. Your objective is to get the laser beam through all the blue circles so the color changes into red. Use your mouse to click and drag laser nodes and move them wherever you think you need them. There are some Nodes that cannot be moved (darker red). Once you connect all circles with the laser beam you can go to the next level by clicking the Proceed button. One note: there are just 20 levels.

Tags: Nodes | Flash Puzzle

This is not a puzzle, but puzzle related. At dumpr.net you can upload your own picture or select a picture from Flickr. After a view seconds you will see a 3D picture of a Rubik's Cube with your picture shown at the three sides of the Rubik's cube in 3D. Enjoy.

Tags: Rubik's Cube

If you like sudoku, you'll love kakuro!

For Sudoku fans looking for a new puzzle to challenge and delight, Will Shortz, crossword editor of The New York Times since 1993 and America's puzzlemaster, presents kakuro. You will probably know Will Shortz from the hit documentary Wordplay in which he starred.

If you've never tried these deceptively simple-looking puzzles, get set: Millions of puzzlers around the globe are already hooked. Pick up your pencil and get ready to see if you can kakuro! Kakuro Presented by Will Shortz has 100 addictive Logic Puzzles and is available via Amazon.com. Personally I am waiting for Will Shortz to release Slitherlink puzzles.

Tags: Sudoku | Will Shortz

Coball is another clone of the world famous puzzle game Collapse. In this version you have to link three or more balls of the same color to make them disappear. The next color of the ball released is shown on the left side. You can move the dispenser above the right column with your mouse. Only the colors available at the grid be available in the dispenser at the top so clear as fast as you can a color from the grid. Simple game but nice to play for a while. Happy Puzzling.

Tags: Coball | Flash Puzzle

If you like solving problems than you will love these mini IQ puzzle erasers. Each puzzle in the set of three is different and comes in its own small box. The puzzles are made of different sized and shaped erasers. It looks fairly simple, but you will find it fun and challenging to take apart and reassemble each cube. A great desk accessory, these cube puzzles will not only erase stray pencil marks, but will entertain you while you sit in your own cube. Color varies with difficulty level: white (easy), red (average), black (difficult). Sold as a set of 3 erasers for US$ 20 via Uncommon Goods.

Tags: Eraser | Puzzle

Vivendi Games, announced it is bringing the classic brain teaser The Incredible Machine(TM) to mobile subscribers worldwide. The mobile version of the game is based on Sierra Entertainment's original PC title and is now available for phones in North America and Europe.
"The Incredible Machine is a perfect example of a fun, yet challenging casual game that appeals to consumers of all ages and demographics," said Paul Maglione, president of Vivendi Games Mobile. "The game's retro charm is a great fit with our latest video campaign starring the new fictional super mom, Farah McDaring. Fans of famous female superheroes like Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman are sure to enjoy the adventures of Farah, as well as the ultimate test of mind over matter, in this brain-bending puzzle, The Incredible Machine."
More information can be found on the IncredibleMachinePresents.com website where you can be redirect to the following mobile operators (AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile and Alltel) to download this puzzle game for your mobile. [Via Vivendi Games Mobile]

Tags: The Incredible Machine | Mobile game

In Scientific American from 1956 to 1986, Martin Gardner had a column where he introduced hundreds of thousands of readers with the delights of mathematics, puzzles and problem solving techniques. He enlivened classic geometry and number theory and introduced readers to new areas such as combinatorics and graph theory.
At amazon.com you can now buy a CD which contains the following fifteen books of Martin Gardner:
1. Hexaflexagons and Other Mathematical Diversions
2. The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions
3. New Mathematical Diversions
4. The Unexpected Hanging and Other Mathematical Diversions
5. Martin Gardner's 6th Book of Mathematical Diversions from Scientific American
6. Mathematical Carnival
7. Mathematical Magic Show
8. Mathematical Circus
9. The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix
10. Wheels, Life, and Other Mathematical Amusements
11. Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainers
12. Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments
13. Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers
14. Fractal Music, Hypercards, and more Mathematical Recreations from Scientific American
15. The Last Recreations: Hydras, Eggs, and Other Mathematical Mystifications.
... And also a profile and interview with Martin Gardner is included in this collection.

Best think about the CD is that you search through all books at once to find your favorite puzzle. Gardner, who turns 91 this year, continues to write on a variety of topics.
Buy Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games book at amazon.com for less than US$ 60.

Tags: Martin Gardner | Mathematical Games

Flash pipes is a flash puzzle game based upon the puzzle game Pipe Dream (known as Pipe Mania in Europe) which was originally designed for the Atari. Each level of this abstract puzzler challenges you to set up a network of pipes to allow an unspecified substance known as 'flooz' to flow through as many of those as possible. Flash Pipes has in total 20 levels of increasing difficulty. Happy puzzling.

Tags: Flash Pipes | Flash Puzzle