3D Assemble Puzzles

Count Puzzles

FOOL'S SPOOL

CYLINDER TEN

do do rings

MAGIC ROADS

SUDOKU 3DBALL No.18

made by www.3d-jp.com

SUDOKU 3DBALL No.13

made by www.3d-jp.com

no copyrights

made by EUREKA BVBA

Chest of Hundreds / 100er Kiste

9 pieces

made by Philos

IcoSoKu

Difficulty: easy - medium

Playing Time: 45 minutes

The name is a word combination of icosahedron and Sudoku. Icosahedron refers to the geometrical form of the puzzle.

The puzzle is also a number puzzle similar to Sudoku, hence its name.

The puzzle consists of a blue icosahedron with yellow corners, 12 yellow pegs and 20 triangular, white plates. The pegs are numbered from 1 to 12.

A peg can be inserted on each corner of the icosahedron. The white plates resemble dominoes, as they have a number between zero and three on each corner.

The white plates can be attached to the triangular sides of the Icosahedron.

The puzzle can be played in two ways:

In the easy mode, the yellow pegs and the white pegs can be placed as desired.

In the difficult variant, first the yellow pegs are distributed by chance on the Icosahedron. Then the white plates have to be placed.

There is only one rule to consider in both variants:

Each corner of a white plate points to a corner / yellow peg. Therefore, each yellow peg is surrounded by five white corners.

The sum of these five white corners has to equal the number on the peg.

The difficulty level of the puzzle is like a moderate or difficult Sudoku challenge. But compared to other puzzles, I would classify IcoSoKu as easy,

as it is not really necessary to develop own ideas to master the puzzle.

Puzzle Review

made by Recent Toys

Puzzles based on magnets

turnabout

made by TENSEGRITY SYSTEMS CORPORATION

CUBE OCTA

made by DESIGN SCIENCE TOYS

Zen Magnets

Complicated shapes can be built by simpler shapes.

The most useful and easiest shape

is in my point of view the ring.

The rings can be combined to linked or coupled cylinders.

In a two-part coupled chain,

the magnet spheres are right one below the other.

The polarity of the magnet spheres is in the respective chains opposed.

In a two-part linked chain,

the magnet spheres have the same polarity in the respective chains,

therefore the magnet spheres lay shifted.

By pressing a coupled cylinder, you obtain a two-layer cubic solid.

The most useful tool is for me a PVC Card.

I use it to disconnect a complicated shape at a particular position.

Moreover, it helps me to connect two shapes at the right place.

Puzzle Review

made by Zen Magnets

Ball of Whacks Six Color Edition

(US patent: US 7247075)

30 identical pieces

Difficulty: easy

Playing Time: < 15 minutes

Ball of Whacks was designed by Roger von Oech.

It consists of a set of 30 magnetic pyramid-shaped pieces,

which can be played with alone, as well as in combination

with the X-ball, Y-ball or Star-ball.

Roger von Oech had the idea for this puzzle when he examined

a rhombic triacontahedron, which looks like a ball.

What is a whack? A whack is a creativity term for something

that stimulates you to think differently.

The puzzle consists of 30 (whacks) rhombic pyramids.

Inside of the whack are strong earth magnets,

which enable you to construct different figures and shapes.

The puzzle can be played with in different ways.

Puzzle Review

made by Creative Whack Company

Never-ending cord

made by Philos

Cubilus

made by HABA

Matching Puzzles

SCHLOSS EINSTEIN CUBE

made by BAVARIA SONOR

From

DODECA SPACE

made by HANAYAMA

The Great Pyramid

made by Eliot Inventions Ltd

Dodek Duo

Puzzle Design Competition 2009

made by Dodek Puzzle Company, LLC

SMARTS PYRAMID BASKETBALL

10 pieces

made by DaMert Company Berkeley, CA

SMARTS PYRAMID SOCCER

10 pieces

made by DaMert Company Berkeley, CA

CubeArt

Puzzle Design Competition 2011

Difficulty: easy

Playing Time: > 90 minutes

8 blocks

The blocks have different sizes,

for example there is a cube with 1 x 1 x 1

and another cube with 2 x 2 x 2 units.

Of the remaining six blocks

half have the size 2 x 1 x 1 and the other half 2 x 2 x 1.

The stickers have the colours:

green, yellow, red, blue, orange and white.

The goal is to order the cube in such a

way that each face has the same four-colour-combination.

There are altogether four solutions for the puzzle.

The puzzle is a classical 3-dimensional pattern puzzle

in the shape of a cube.

Popular examples of this kind are Instant Insanity or Kolor Kraze.

Puzzles of this style are not very difficult,

as you can find the solution by a systematical search.

Puzzle Review

Packing Puzzles

8Pd

made by Hiroshi Iwahara

TWIST L DAN

made by Hiroshi Iwahara

6 piece + frame

Octo 1

made by Pelikan

Difficulty: easy

Playing Time: < 5 minutes

made by Jean Claude Constantin

Fernsehgerät

made by Pelikan

5-Minute Puzzle That Might Take Longer

Puzzle Design Competition 2009

made by Eric Fuller

Red Planks

made by Eric Fuller

MC Squared Cube Puzzle

made by Eric Fuller

Yoshikatsu Hara's 21 Piece Packing Puzzle

made by Tom Lensch

DBox

Difficulty: easy - very difficult

Playing Time: 1 minute to several hours

DBOX is a Construction set which was invented by Boaz Leicht.

Each package consists of 16 yellow and 16 blue cubes.

The cubes are available in two different versions.

Eight (4 yellow + 4 blue) cubes (receptor units) have a hole on each side.

The other 24 (12 yellow +12 blue) cubes have only a hole on five sides.

The sixth side has a pin instead of a hole (connector units).

The pin can be attached to another cube on each side with a hole.

Then both cubes can be attached with each other by a quarter turn.

The connection is very stable as it is not plugged together.

The receptor units serve a simple purpose:

They hide all pins at an assembled piece.

All puzzles which consist of cube units can be easily built by this technique.

Puzzle Review

made by DBOX Puzzle, LLC

CANDY POT PUZZLE

made by HANAYAMA

made by TOYO GLASS

Cheese Puzzle

Difficulty: easy

Playing Time: < 45 minutes

made by Beverly Enterprises Inc.

made by TOYO GLASS

SHOT YOU

made by TOYO GLASS

Sushi Puzzle

Difficulty: easy

Playing Time: < 30 minutes

made by Beverly Enterprises Inc.

made by Jean Claude Constantin

6 Block Pazzle

made by Jean Claude Constantin

made by BITS & PIECES

Andrew Snowie

Football Puzzle

8 pieces

made by Philos

Cylinder Puzzle

12 pieces

made by Philos

Cone Puzzle

13 pieces

made by Philos

Gizeh Puzzle

12 pieces

made by Philos

Sphere Puzzle

12 pieces

made by Philos

Markus Götz

Brunnen-Puzzle

made by Philos

Prisgon

8 pieces + frame

made by Philos

Goldtruhe von Malaga /

THE GOLDEN TREASURE CHEST OF MALAGA

7 pieces + frame

made by Philos

Tetralott

7 pieces

made by Philos

Ivan Moscovich

MIRRORKAL / ESCHER (Pat. US4898560)

comes with 5 problems

Difficulty: easy / medium

Playing Time: < 35 minutes for each problem

The Escher puzzle is a variation of the picture cube puzzle.

The puzzle consists of a frame and nine cubes. The frame has the same height as the cubes.

On each side of the frame are three picture fragments visible.

Each of the cube has a mirror which passes from the upper edge to the opposite bottom edge (along the diagonals)

and divides the cube into two parts. All nine cubes are transparent on two neighbouring sides.

The other four sides are with picture fragments. If a side with a picture fragment is next to a transparent side,

then you can see the picture from above. The reason is that the picture got reflected by the mirror.

It has a special charme to solve this puzzle:

At the beginning you only search for mirror-inverted picture fragments.

Some of the picture fragments are very similar to each other, as Escher's drawings were used as motives.

After finding all nine picture fragments, the cubes have to be put back into the frame.

This is not very easy, as the mirror-inverted picture gets reflected.

Thus, for each picture side, there are two to four possibilities.

Nevertheless each of the five tasks can be solved by analytical thinking.

The pictures have different difficulty levels.

Drawing Hands and Print Gallery are easiest to solve, Sky and Water 1 is most difficult.

Mirrorkal Escher is a bit similar to Mirrorkal Mona Lisa, but differs clearly from it.

The Mirrorkal Mona Lisa reveals through each sliding new picture fragments and lets others disappear.

To solve the Mirrorkal Escher, I search for mirror-inverted picture fragments

and think about the place and the direction of the cubes.

Puzzle Review

made by Recent Toys International

Teddy Sakamoto

Gari Garikun Puzzle / Not So Easy

Puzzle Design Competition 2010

made by HANAYAMA

Gari Garikun Puzzle / Not So Easy

Puzzle Design Competition 2010

made by HANAYAMA

Colour Cube

9 pieces

made by Philos

IcosaTriad

made by Kadon Enterprises

Dragon's Eggs Puzzle

3 Balls + 4 pieces + frame

made by Pentangle

Plus-Puzzle

4 pieces

made by Philos

Blockhead

4 pieces + frame

1986 Hikimi Wooden Puzzle Competition (Grand Prize)

made by Jean Claude Constantin

Square in the Bag

Puzzle Design Competition 2012

IPP 33 Exchange / Narita, Japan

Square in the Bag

Puzzle Design Competition 2012

IPP 33 Exchange / Narita, Japan

Culica

With Culica you can play many types of puzzle, including matching

puzzles, assemble puzzles and different sequential movement puzzles.

Culica consists of a black, hollow cube which has 3 x 3 Slots on each

face. In addition to the cube, there are coloured pegs (28 yellow

pegs, 28 red pegs, 14 blue pegs and 14 green pegs). The pegs are

pushed into the slots on the Culica cube while playing.

As there are so many puzzles, I will introduce only two examples:

CuFrog:

Playing Time: 15 minutes

The aim is to fill the whole Culica with pegs. Thereby the colour of

the pegs does not matter. The pegs are put with a Cube Hop, which

means that each peg which is newly placed has to leave a space

or a peg in relation to the last peg which was placed. Cube Hops are

only straight, not diagonal.

CuRing:

The constraint of CuRing is that pegs of the same colour have to keep

a minimum separation distance of four. This means that no two pegs of

the same colour can be closer than four spaces in straight lines,

however the spaces on the diagonal axis don't matter.

Puzzle Review

made by Culica Limited

Literature

Serhiy Grabarchuk PUZZLE DIMENSIONS

Kevin Holmes / Rig van Grol A Compendium of Cube-Assembly Puzzles using Polycube Shapes

Shops

Creative Whack Company http://www.creativewhack.com/

CubeArt http://cube-art.com/

CULICA http://culica.com/

DBOX http://www.dboxpuzzle.com/

Geduldspiele.CH http://geduldspiele.ch

RECENTTOYS INTERNATIONAL http://www.recenttoys.com/

rekubus http://rekubus.eu/

ZenMagnets.com http://zenmagnets.com/