As a lifelong lover of puzzles; I would like to suggest who would like Fabulous Fun With Puzzles book.  Generally, it is a basic puzzle book giving a brief selection of popular types of puzzles. Anyone who has spent time with puzzles, will be familiar with many of the 400 puzzles in this book; as many of them have appeared in many books.  I had never come across the two books by Leeming, even though I have somewhere around 600 “puzzle books”; nor have I even come across his name. Maybe they [Read More...]

If you go into an antique shop or store that sells figurines or glassware; the first thing you’ll see is a sign, IF YOU BREAK IT, CONSIDER IT SOLD. Maybe there should be a similar sign in your puzzle store, in front of this puzzle saying, WHEN YOU SEE THIS, CONSIDER IT SOLD. Is there really anyone who has not seen the Rubik’s Cube,? They may have even seen variations to the “cube”,as there is now a plethora of puzzles that go by the name of “Twisty Puzzles”. They all consist of many pieces, connected together with diabolical and ingenious mechanisms [Read More...]

Cast Box is one of the most recent Hanayama puzzles, released at the end of 2012. This is Yuta Akira’s first contribution to the Cast Series, and I might add a great addition. The puzzle made its first appearance at the 2011 IPP Design Competition, then known as “Simple Solid Ring Maze” and also with a wooden frame. Understandably, Hanayama later changed its name to a simpler version, the Cast Box.

I must confess, the first time I saw this puzzle I immediately thought of Oskar van Deventer and his Cast O’Gear. The concepts of [Read More...]

Oball is a point scoring puzzle app from Vlifect. Their webpage is down or defunct. However, the puzzle game is quite good.

The object is to get 4 balls of the same color into a cluster of 4 or more. When that happens, they disappear and you score points.

Gameplay: tap on 2 balls and if they can trade places via an open path (no diagonals), they will swap.

You score more points by getting a cluster of 5 or 6. But that’s not necessarily an optimal strategy.

Right now, my score is about 17,000. That’s from playing 30 minutes [Read More...]

If you are looking for a puzzle or game that will appeal to all ages and one that can be learned to play in seconds; Hoppers fits the bill. This is basically a Solitaire Peg game and based on a game,”The Great Thirteen”,and comparable to many “peg” or “checker-board” games that have amused a wide range of people over the years. This particular version by Thinkfun is very similar to one by Binary Arts. Thinkfun is the same company that used to go by the name of Binary Arts. Both versions look almost identical. My Binary Arts version has 12 [Read More...]

This is a standard jumping maze (see Jumping Mazes). The number on each cell tells you how far you can jump horizontally or vertically from that cell.

Start on the 4 in the top left corner, and find the shortest series of jumps that will take you to the finish in the bottom right corner.

Designed by Luke Johnson-Davies. Solution

Click here to display the solution to the Chain Reaction maze after a one-minute delay:

Show solution.

The Parallel Dimensions has a bit of everything. Its got 3 large rings, 1 piece with a closed loop at each end, 2 “U” shaped pieces, with closed loops at each end, a wooden ball, a fairly large wooden cube, and a cord which passes through the ball and the cube as well as entwined around the two “U” shaped pieces and one of the rings. The object is to remove that ring. It looks a little intimidating, and for good reason; it is not simple and has a Difficulty of 10 out of 10. As with other [Read More...]