Go tamashido!

Sounds Japanese, doesn't it? Well guess what: it's French!

You're provided with a tray, some marbles, a tool and a booklet. The goal is to try to make the shapes shown in the booklet.

As you can notice at a first glance the tray has 2 sides (one triangular and one squared side) with holes inside, but not holes are the same. Some are "regular" holes and some are a bit bigger. And no it's not a default: it's made on purpose of course. One can ask why. Well, because do make the shapes with the marbles you will need to take out some marbles with the magnetic tool, and thus taking marbles from a regular hole can not be possible all the time...

So the challenges begin on which side of the board you want to make the sculptures and from which holes.

The magnetic tool is useful to take out some marbles. It's composed of a stick with a magnet that you can slide. I was sceptical at the beginning because I thought that it could attract all the marbles and make my solids crumble. But it's not the case. First because it's not a powerful magnet, and then because if you slide the magnet you can "cancel" the magnet attraction of the tool. You will need to get used to it, because it's practical. 

I think you can easily guess why the label is "dexterity". Well, not only dexterity but also patience and thinking. But still dexterity because you need to be careful when you take out some marbles with the tools, you need to take the correct marbles, and sometimes the tool becomes useless and you need to use....your hands!

About the difficulty, it's high: you need to think about how you can create the solids, which balls to take out, etc. And the frustration is when you've almost completed the solids but you make it crumble because of a small move....Better not to play outside when it's windy (even a small wind!).

To conclude: a nice game, available HERE. And for the price you're sure to make a good bargain!
My version is the "basic" version but you can have upgraded versions. Just look at the website what they have to offer.

8 star puzzle: the comparision between the prototype and the finished product

This nice-looking puzzle is a design from the Belgium designer Robrecht Louage. I have already reviewed some of his previous puzzles, checked it out!

You may remember the 4 steps puzzle, this is in the same concept but with 4 more steps.

The goal: you put the ball in the "in" hole and you need to free the ball, going through many traps.
Actually there are 8 steps, some of them are clearly visible and some of them are hidden either by black marks or hidden ways.

The first step is easy to go through: just a little bit of dexterity. Same thing for 2nd step but this time it's hidden. If you look well, 2 steps are identical and can be found in Roger D puzzles.

None of the steps can be considered as new principles, thus you will not have any novelty with this puzzle. However, the steps are implemented all the way on your "puzzle journey" and so there is not like "breaks" between them, they are a continuation of each other.

The difficult thing is the maze because even if there are some holes on the back of the puzzles, well you cannot see what you're really doing. You can only try to guess and believe me you should not make big moves, because the different ways are close to each other, with dead-ends and so on: so here it's dexterity in the dark.
Of course, you can unscrew the puzzle and see the maze if you gave up, and then try to navigate again in the maze.

Like usually with puzzles, there is first the prototype and after the finished product. I put below on the left the picture of the prototype and on the right the picture of the finished product, so that you can see the changes.

The front of the puzzle (ok I know the 2 puzzles are not orientated in the same way....my mistake)
For the prototype the plastic is absolutely transparent and a little bit opaque for the finished puzzle, but both have black marks.
I would have prefered that the finished product have a transparent plastic with opaque (and not black) marks, but opaque enough to hide the traps.
The black marks are positioned on the same traps.

The entry of the maze
Nothing different

The back of the puzzle
Again, sorry for the orientation of the puzzle, but I know my readers are clever guys, so you will notice no change, except the name of the puzzle with 2 stars, to make the product totally finished

The inside of the maze
Hummm, no spoiler. But the maze is globally the same but with some small changes, which make the maze of the finished product a bit more difficult, in my opinion.


Solvable and not solvable?
The prototype cannot totally be solved whereas the finished can be, that's normal right ;-)
But this is one of the last steps, so your puzzling experience will not be altered by this small faults. And a prototype is always a high collectible puzzle, isn't it?

To conclude: a very nice puzzle, not difficult but still very enjoyable. Perhaps next puzzle will be the "12 steps puzzle", who knows...

 

So don't wait too much and buy the puzzle!

If you're lost in the puzzle, look at the solution!!

Bottle coke #4

This bottle puzzle is another puzzle from the Dutch designer Wil Strijbos. This one is composed of a lock attached to a metal chain. Keys are provided but it's difficult to use them as you can see from the pictures below. The funny thing is that this puzzle looks like an impossible bottle, but I assure you that it is solvable..with tears, blood and sweat of course...

You need to find out how to take the lock out of the bottle and the small metal piece above the lock.

Again, it's hard...

Even if external tool are officialy not useful, they are more than welcome because the official solution is very very fetched and you will likely not use it (I did not) either because you did "wrong" things or because it would have never happened in your mind to use it.

But you and me don't know what's happening in the mind of puzzle designers when they're designing their puzzles :-)

So I used an external tool to open it, it is much easier. But it seems that you can open it just using all what is provided to you. So keep everything that comes with the bottle when it arrives if you want to use the official solution...

For this puzzle you will need quite an amount of dexterity and even more when you will reassemble the puzzle (for this, don't be a fool, come on, use external tools^^!!).

Finally solved!!!

An unusual bottle puzzle that will fit well in your collection I think.

But this is not my favourite bottle puzzle and I was a bit disappointed by the "official" solution that I don't really like!

And you, what do you think about it? Leave your comments :-)

Xmatrix: Keanu Reeves 's puzzle

This puzzle called "Cubus" is a labyrinth made of acrylic where you have to move a marble from the gold frame into the silver frame and back again, by moving upside down, and from left to right your cube.

It is available in 2 colors (gold or blue labyrinth), that does not change the difficulty of the maze. I chose the blue labyrinth because I thought this colour contrasted better with the colors of the frame.

And those colors make this puzzles appealing, it directly catches your attention!

Two models are in sales, this one I am reviewing, and a bigger one called the "Quadrus" (available in the same 2 colors as the Cubus). I chose the Cubus because I like beginning with an easier version to go for a more difficult one after if I manage to solve it. Both belong to the XMATRIX labyrinths designed by Jeremy Goode. The Quadrus cube entered at the 31st International Puzzle Party (in 2011).

So what about the labyrinth itself?

Well it is tricky because even if it is blue, it is a transparent blue and thus it's somewhat difficult to see the dead-ends and your way. 

So prepare to be trapped at many times!

Sometimes you cannot move from right to left, thus going up by turning the cube upside down may be the solution to your problems.

The labyrinth has precise cuts and when you look inside the cube, you can see that it is very good work. The good thing to be able to see the labyrinth is that you will not be blocked forever!!

Confusing, isn't it?

One thing I wish I could do is to be able to open the cube to "reset" the marble. Indeed, it would have been good (it's just my opinion...) to be able to take the labyrinth out of the cube. First, to understand it better (if you have some difficulties) and then to be able to start from the beginning, because the marble could have moved during the delivery (and thus you may not have your marble at the beginning of the labyrinth...). Perhaps a system to block the marble would have been also good.

To conclude a fun puzzle to play with and with appealing colours!

This puzzle is for you if you like mazes and want to buy an affordable puzzle.

If you are interested, go HERE to buy yours!

Prepare for war: BQTTLE is coming soon !!

War for your nerves because this puzzle will challenge a lot your dexterity !!

This puzzle called BQTTLE was made by Sandor Bozoki (he also makes some impossible bottles with matches inside) and presented during last IPP in London (2014). It is composed of a metal chain, a rubber O-ring and a small glass bottle. 

The good thing with this puzzle is that you cannot damage the bottle with what is inside!

The goal is to free the O-ring. It is not difficult to understand how to do that but really much more difficult to do it. Indeed, it requires a lot of dexterity to solve it, and even using dexterity, this is not an easy task...Reassembling the puzzle is more difficult than solving it. So if you have some difficulties to solve it, good luck then :-)

The puzzle comes with the solution and a tool to take the O-ring out of the bottle in case the chain is too much knoted (you can unscrew the cap of the bottle), which is a good idea.

I was wondering why putting a metal chain that may create knots, but I think it's because it's better than rope for the gravity.

To conclude: a cheap puzzle that you should buy if you like bottle puzzles, but much more important if you like dexterity puzzles! Otherwise, perhaps not the puzzle you should have...

Inside Ze Cube

Hi cube lovers, this is ZE puzzle you should have!! 

Let me explain you a little bit this puzzle.

The name of this puzzle is a pun: "ze" is the French pronunciation of "the" in English. So from the name of the puzzle, you know that you will have to discover what is inside of the cubes and solve them, of course.

These puzzles are mazes but with the plans written on both side of the cube. The goal is to navigate through 7 levels from the beginning to the end. Once arrived at the end, other plans are written so that you can "easily" go back to the beginning by following the maps. There are dead ends, traps, sometimes you need to make the marble go to an uper level, so you need to turn upside down the cubes...Everything is done to trouble your mind.

These puzzles have been designed by French guys who created their firm thanks to crowdfunding, and they succeeded in obtaining all the funds (and even more) on time.

As this is quite new for them, so there may have been some small issues on puzzles which I pointed out to those guys. For example, you need to "push" quite strongly to make the marble leave its receptable for some cubes. For other the marble can leave its receptacle too easily. It was their 1^st batch of cubes, so they will improve them for next batches.

And you know at the begginning no puzzle is perfect...

The pictures I took come from cubes with their first packaging (the packaging has changed).

It looks easy the way it works. Well always easier showing than doing...

 

Take a closer look, and you will see that the packaging provides the marble from leaving its receptacle during the shipping. Good point!

The cubes are in sturdy plastic and are ranked from easy to very difficult. There are 2 "easy" cubes (one transparent and one blue). The other cubes are "regular", "mean", "awful", "vicious" and "mortal".

The names are Easy0, Mean0.....Mortal0. So you may understand that for the next batch of cubes the names will be Easy1, Mean1...and so on.

What's good with the cubes is that you can open them, so that you can analyze the levels and if you are lost you can easily restart the puzzles. The levels are numbered so that you cannot be wrong when you put them in the box, and there is like a "safeguard" on each level so that you know in which position you have to put them. Everything is done to avoid errors. Good job !!

Difficult to see, but each level is numbered

However, you cannot do this for all the cubes. Here is one difficulty: for the vicious you can't open the cube, and for the mortal you can't open the cube and no plans are written. So when you're lost, good luck :-)

Another difficulty is how to read the maps. Believe me it's hard! First because you need to understand them. Second, you need to understand where the marble will go from one hole of one level to the other level(s) (sometimes it can fall from many levels at the same time...!).

Then you have to move the cube in the correct directions. As for me, I have difficulties to have a 3D representation of the maze in my mind, so it is all the more difficult...

7 levels are written. Read them from left to right

Here is the link to order your cubes. Sometimes they make reduced prices for some events, you need to check.

http://www.insidezecube.com/?post_type=product&lang=en

Hurry up, you need THE cube ;-)

When you have many cubes you can have fun and try to mix some levels from one cube with the levels of some other cubes to create a new cube. Well it can work...or not...

Here is the link of a brilliant French guy who developed like a software that allows you to see if your cube is solvable if you mix some levels (you need to get at least 100%, otherwise your cube won't be solvable), and it also allows you to help you navigate through the maze if you're lost:

https://restimel.github.io/insideWeCube/

As a conclusion, good puzzles to have, (very) hard to solve (even for the easiest one since you need to understand well how it works).

If you don't intend to buy all of them (but you may want to collect all of them), I strongly advise you (even if you're the best puzzle solver in the world...) to buy the cristal one (easy level) and another a little bit more difficult.

I started with the mean cube, and it was too difficult to start, so I bought the cristal easy one to better understand the maps...

Time your speed and try to beat the best challengers

Have cubing fun !!