37 hours left to back up this project !!!

You have less than 2 days to back up this awesome puzzle project in Ulule !!

The money is raised by Doug aka Inside Cube. Goals are to re-release an old puzzle and a new one. And with some added bonus along the way.

Doug would like to raise 15 000 euros to reach a new goal !

So hurry up and help them to raise the money :)

 

This is the link of the project !

 

Some Siebenstein-Spiele

Don't even try to pronounce "Siebenstein-Spiele", you better just solve the puzzles :)

Siebenstein-Spiele is famous for puzzles that usually combines wood and plexi and many have also some coins to free as goals. Many are mazes, but not all. So in this post, there will be one maze and one that is definitely not a maze!

Euro-Falle 03 is a cute puzzle that belongs to a pretty big series of euro coins from the same designer. 

It's composed of 4 screws and I notices that 3 of them were a bit loose. So I unscrewed them. Of course, if I tell you that, then you should immediately see this not as a spoiler (because it's not the solution). And... puzzle solved!!

So I realized that was not the solution (and if it was, then it would have been super disapointing) and I managed to see the mechanism and the way it should have normally worked. Nothing really new about the mechanism, so don't expect something amazing. There is one step that I don't like and a nice step as well. I keep secret the number of step.

I recommend the puzzle if you have the other in the collection or if you like coin puzzles. If you're lookingfor a serious challenge, that may not the puzzle that suits your taste. I don't mean this is an easy puzzle though.

As for the other puzzle, the maze one, it's called "safe". I have to say that the name of the puzzle is pretty well found because the coin to release is safe as it's a challenging puzzle. It's a 2 layer maze (one wooden layer and one in plexi) that you will have to rotate while moving the 2 pins. 

 

It's for sure a challenging puzzle!

At some point you will solve it, it's mostly try, try again and try one more time. I'm not even sure we can apply a reliable logic when solving a maze puzzle....

For sure it's well made, and if you're looking for a serious challenge, go for it! You will rewarded with a real coin, so actually you can replace the coin with a fake one, resulting in a cheaper puzzle :)

Both can be found on Puzzle Master webshop !

New Ulule Campaign for DouG Factory (inside cube)

Quick promotion post for their new campaign

 

Sounds really exciting with come devilish puzzles. I trust they will keep on making top-quality puzzle. 

So what are you waiting for? Go and bid :-)

Nice little puzzles

Here is a quick post with a selection of puzzles for high puzzling value and low price.

Yeah you asked for it, now you get it !

Labyrinth

 

A nice puzzle made by Jean-Claude Constantin. The goal is to free the ball bearing. Easy? At a first glance, yes. When looking more carefully...not that much. Because you need to take into account several parameters: the top plate rotates and there are several hidden paths.

The quality is awsome, so I don't have much negative things to say. Suitable for children and for seasoned puzzlers. If you're completely lost and want to start from the beginning, just unscrew the screw, open the puzzle, free the ball and play again!

Crazy crescents

This is not a puzzle but more a toy and the goal is to make different shapes. I like a lot the screwing process. It's fun and can be considered as a fidget toy. And it's colorful !!

Rubix's cube secret box

Well the correct name is: Oskar's treasure chest, but the idea is that you have a box in the shape of a rubix cube. And this is clearly a rubix'scube that you solved with the existing algorithms of the rubix's cube.

I need to tell you it's not a professional rubix's cube so you cannot perform the "corner cuttings".

Valentine puzzle

A nice plexi puzzle with several challenges created by Russian designer Vladimir Krasnoukhov.

Task 1: Using all five elements of the set, make different silhouettes as pictured in the instructions.  Elements can be flipped and turned, but they must not overlap.  You can make more than 100 different symmetrical polygons with different number of angles.  The hardest one to make seems to be a polygon with 13 angles.

Task 2: Using all five elements of the set, make two congruent shapes simultaneously (ie. equal in form and size).  There are 2 solutions.

Task 3: Prove that using this set of elements one can tile an infinite plane.

I think this is a fun puzzle because you can being entertained for several hours. You don't get only one puzzle, but many!

I think there is one missing challenge (easy): put all the pieces in the tray

Perplexus

Well known game: many traps, many path. You need dexterity, patience and nerves to solve it. Don't be in a hurry to move slowly the ball from start to end!

You can find the puzzles on Puzzle Master webshop (click on the name and there will be a link that put you direcly to the puzzles

Labyrinth

Perplexus

Rubix's cube secret box

Valentine's puzzle

Crazy crescents

Pill Box Puzzle - Nesting Mazes

I am not super found of hidden maze like the revomaze puzzles, as I like to see what I am doing and if I make progress or not...

However I wanted to try a 3D printed maze to see if hidden mazes can now be my friend or still not. And the reply is YES !

Nesting Mazes is actually 3 mazes in one box because once you solve the maze, then you get another one and a third one.

It's easy to navigate the maze, no issue with the 3D printed materials. It's smooth and enjoyable (really !). No force is needed, just nice and small moves.

 

Now you can say that you cannot see your progress? At the beginning it's true. But...

But first you should be able to use your brain and don't take a false path that you may have taken previously. Secondly, at some point you can see where you're expected to get to solve the maze and then you should see which is the best path to reach your goal.

And you can apply this method to solve all the 3 mazes.

Sure it won't take 1 minute, but it's perfectly doable without any pain in you hands and without any frustration. And when you don't have these 2 issues, then you should have a nice puzzling journey :)

 

As usually the nice puzzles that I review in my blog can be bought at Puzzle Master webshop

Doug Factory fund raising campaign - The Donjon is coming !!!

You know that I love the puzzles from Doug Factory, the French company which designs many puzzle mazes, all 100% made in France, rare enough to be mentioned!

They designed many puzzles, like the novice cube series, the legend series, the phantom series and the new campaign's goal is to raise funds for the Donjon puzzle.

  

Doug Factory also designed CARAPACES, which is a DIY kit to make some geometrical shapes. A mix between puzzles and origami

 

 

So the this new project sounds really exciting because it uses the same maze principle, but with some new features like the way to free the marble in an easier way!

Do you think a dragon is hidden inside??? Only if you believe in dragons ;)

If you want to participate in this fund raising campaign, just click HERE

You support will help them a lot, and I am sure that you like their products.

In case you're new, I advise to buy the easiest cubes first to get used to how to read the maze maps and so on. And then trackle biggest challenges! Don't burn steps! :)

The smart eggs serie

So far I have not really seen blogs speaking about these nice puzzles called the smart eggs. There all in plastic consisting of an egg with an internal maze and a stick. The goal is to put the stick in the hole on the top of the egg and free it from the bottom hole of the egg...no pun or dirty meanings intended! :-)

There are several eggs in the series with an increasing difficulty. I advise to start with the easiest so that you can see how you have to play with it and how the moves are done. Basically you put the stick on one hole and usually you have to slide the stick to reach another hole and so on until you solve completely the puzzle.

Of course for the easiest eggs the internal maze is easy but when you reach a certain level of difficulty you will realize that the internal maze is more complicated and there are more holes as well. For some eggs there are not a lot of hole but it is because you will have to move the stick several time inside the egg to finally reach a hole.

Process of solving below

I don't have the specific material to make a video so I will just put some youtube links I found. It shows the solving process for some easiest eggs, so spoilers included! It allows you to better understand (if my explanation was not clear lol) how to play with them.

HERE and HERE



To be honest I did not have difficulties to solve these eggs. It just took me a bit more time for the most advanced eggs and also for one egg that the internal maze was not cut super super "clean". I mean I needed to use a sligh amount of force. Still all the maze are very nicely made. I did not have any issues when playing with them and I did not break any sticks nor any eggs!!

So far I have spoken about the "static" eggs. But there are also 3 bigger eggs, which are also the most difficult in the whole series, that involve a movable core. This makes the eggs even more difficult to solve because you have to take into consideration more parameters to solve them.
The thing that I like is that for these 3 eggs, the stick is in metal, it's clever because maybe with plastic stick they could break if you move the core a bit too hard....

I still need to solve these 3 beast!


In my mind, the series of smarteggs are in the same spirit of the hanayama puzzles: they are collectible and fun.
I like them a lof and I let friends play with them and they had great time. So very suitable for puzzlers and non-puzzlers! I like the way they look and I keep them in their original packing to display them. I don't really see the goal of the base provided with each puzzle because you're not going to play with the base (they are not magnetic) and I am not sure you will display the eggs on their base and you would prefer displaying them in their packaging.



You can find these eggs HERE

A-mazing drawer

As the name suggests this puzzle is amazing and is...a maze with a drawer to open!

Designed and crafted by Simon Nightingale, this unconventional maze is not for the faint of heart, this is a very difficult puzzle!!

The goal is to open the drawer, the puzzle is solved when you've done that, you cannot remove completely the drawer and thus, you cannot see the mechanism, unfortunately...

Immediately after handling it, you will hear something ratling inside, like a marble, and you will assume (and you sould be right to do so) that you will have to carry the marble to a certain place where, by pushing the drawer, it should be released.

The biggest difficulty is that you have no idea of the design of the maze, nor really where you are, especially because the puzzle has some tricks (no banging by the way) that I cannot tell without spoiling. I manage ot solve it....without really understanding the puzzle and I fear you cannot really understand it without seeing the mechanism. Hence, in my opinion, this is not an easy puzzle to repeat.

Amazing by its difficulty and mechanism, I think this puzzle is a nice addition to your collection provided that you're ready to be frustrated :-)

Bolt #7

Marcel Gillen, designer and maker of this puzzle, is not only known for his maze puzzles but also for his bolts. There were several bolts, the look is pretty similar but the challenges are not exactly the same.

This is not a spoiler what I will say: this is a maze! You will find out soon that you need to solve a bolt maze, as you will hear the famous "click" sound that indicates you've been trapped and may restart from the beginning.

This is a challenging puzzle (like all Marcel Gillen's by the way!). I like the feature with the pin as I think this was a very advanced stage of the puzzle maze puzzles in its kind before the revomaze puzzle. This is the most challenging bolt puzzle you can find. But well, usually bolt puzzles are also called "trick bolts" and don't involve a lot of steps. This bolt puzzle is not a trick bolt.

Needless to say that the quality is very good and that you will have to deal with a pretty heavy brass puzzle

Maybe I can submit you another challenge whether you have or not played with this puzzle: find a way to cheat to solve quickly the puzzle.
Cheating is a way of puzzling sometimes ;-)

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!!

Ladybird

Here is one of the most beautiful puzzles (or the most beautiful I think) from Robrecht Louage, a Belgium puzzle designer. The name of the puzzle fits perfectly with the design, no doubt about that. The puzzle is very nice and some part of the body of the insect (here, the antennas) are useful to solve the puzzle. Robrecht has also designed a same kind of puzzle called Larva which is, in a way, the little brother of this puzzle :)

Like usually with Robrecht's puzzles, the goal is to free the euro coin. And Robrecht's puzzles are the only ones with which you earn money when you solve them! (ok, I know, you will say that you have to spend some money before to get it...^^ but still)

To do that, you need to pull and push the antennas while rotating the 2 disks that are under the acrylic.
When you look at the puzzle, you may think that you are very close to the solution because the euro coin is very close to the hole. Don't be fooled by that. You will have to make a long way before having solved the puzzle!
I find this puzzle very good to play with. It is very well thought.
However, I would have expected to be a little bit more difficult (even if there is a twist at some point of your road) because it's pretty straight forward. But don't worry, that does not provide you from having fun with this ladybird :)

Look the picture below, this is the "real" starting point: the line with the word "START" has to be aligned with the small line on the red part (close to the screw) of the puzzle.

Look carefully

I did not pay attention to that at the beginning and I thought that the starting point was when the metal dots were on the very left of the maze. But this is not correct! And when you align both lines (like above), the metal dots are not on the extreme left of the maze, this is normal.
I wonder how a solution of this puzzle could be written...It may be too difficult, and this may be why there is no solution with this puzzle. But you won't need it, anyway ;-)

To conclude, if you like the other Robrecht's puzzles, you won't be disapointed by the quality and the puzzling aspect. I really like it and I am sure you will like it too.
You can buy it by contacting Robrecht. If you want his email, don't hesitate to drop me an email.

Solution: HERE !!!

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!

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 !!