The Cone, from the German manufacturer Philos, is a very nice wooden puzzle, designed by Andrew Snowie, which will show you that appearances can be deceiving. At first, it doesn’t look like it’s difficult at all, because the pieces all have distinct shapes, but as you start to disassemble it you’ll soon discover that it may be harder than you were expecting it to be.

The concept behind the Cone is quite original, but I guess they ran out of originality when it came to name the puzzle as simply Cone. They could have used some puns with [Read More...]

The smart kind people at ThinkFun sent me a promo code to play Chocolate Fix.  Like many of their puzzle games, there are easy, medium, hard & expert levels.

You are given clues about the arrangement of the chocolates: brown, pink, white combined with circle, square, triangle.

These puzzles have to be solved with a little trial and error.

So far, I’ve done all 100 medium levels. That was to get my feet wet on this concept.  I’ve done 12 of the hard levels and 10 of the expert levels, including. For good measure, I did the last 5 of [Read More...]

The Cast Cricket is Hanayama’s own version of a puzzle, which first appeared back in 1898. This new version released ten years ago, in April 2002, by the hand of puzzle collector James Dalgety, hopefully stays true to its origins. James also designed another puzzle for Hanayama, the Cast Medal.

The puzzle is an homage to the game of the same name, played since the 16th century. It depicts two of most known elements in the game, the bat and the wicket, which are entangled. Your task is to separate them and then, put them back to [Read More...]

Connect! is a topology type puzzle app. The object is to connect a path from A to the furthest level. Your path may go horizontally, vertically, diagonally. You will probably have to zigzag.

The first 40 levels are free. And they’re easy. But the next 120 levels are harder and cost $1.99.

Right now I’ve solved all 160 levels.  The puzzles are not very difficuly. But they’re fun and perfect to play when ‘watching’ tv news shows.

Look for more puzzle apps to consume your life: http://gottasolveit.blogspot.com/

P and A is yet another brilliant design by German craftsman Jean Claude Constantin – I’m yet to find one of his puzzles that I don’t like. P and A is a simple name for a puzzle, but I guarantee you that solving it is anything but simple.

One thing that immediately captures your attention is the shape of the pieces, which are based on the letters p and a, and it’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before in a puzzle. This is one of the reasons I like Constantin’s puzzles so much. He has this genius ability [Read More...]

Magnets Puzzle Free is the name of this free puzzle app game from Wiseguy Sharp LLC.

The object is to place magnets into the slots and orient them correctly. A + can never be next to a +. Also, the numbers on the sides indicate how many +’s and -’s exist in that row or column.

Tricky: some rectangular tiles will have no magnets at all.

I’ve played this game only on the easy level to get the hang of it. It’s interesting.

I’m not sure, but this type of puzzle may have been originally published in Japan.

Hey, it’s [Read More...]

The Blue Knight is made in Canada by PuzzleMaster, which offers a wide range of wire puzzles from easy to extremely hard. The puzzle has the shape of the letter K and attached is a handle with a golden ring. Your task is to “simply” remove the ring.

As always, PuzzleMaster’s wire puzzles are made with a beautiful nickel-plated finish, giving a very pleasant appearance and smoother manipulation, not to mention that it doesn’t leave any metal smells in your hands, which is a big plus.

The Blue Knight is rated as a 9/10 puzzle (Gruelling), [Read More...]