Puzzlers in the news: Scott Kim - cool puzzler.

My favorite newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, has this interesting article about Scott Kim who's had a brain teaser column in Discover Magazine.

ChessQuest (one word): iphone ipod ipad puzzle app

ChessQuest is an interesting series of puzzles. There are about 25 puzzles, which I solved in about 15 minutes. Why am I so good at this? Because of another app called Solitaire Chess which is the exact same thing, but far better.

ChessQuest is a little different in that there is a scoring system. A pawn taking a queen is worth more than a queen taking a pawn. Ignore that part of the game. Go with the Real McCoy: Solitaire Chess, which is one of the best puzzle apps ever. And I'm not saying that because Vesa Timonen is a friend. It really is exceptional.

Mystic Glyph: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

Puzzle friends: I have received some 50 queries the past few days about why I have not posted in 1 week. The reason: I have been consumed with a new puzzle app called Mystic Glyph by Staton Richardson.

Mystic Glyph is a tilt maze puzzle. At least that's what I thought at first. Slide the tiles in any direction until they hit an obstacle. When sliding 1 tile, the other tiles will stay put. Join the 4 red corners to make a square. Beware: if your bottom right red corner connects to a bottom left blue corner - game over.

There are 91 levels. The first 15 levels are simple. Right now I've been stuck on level 72 for a few days.

A Lite version will soon be available. I can assure you: $1.99 is a bargain

2Bit: iphone ipod touch ipad puzzle game app Review

2Bit feels like a 1970's arcade game. You are the little white square. You are always moving forward. As you progress through the grid, try to avoid missiles, battering rams and whatnot. Drag your man backwards to slow him down & avoid these pitfalls.

There's a Lite version. Take it out for a spin.

Produced by: http://www.industrialbrothers.com/

9 cards puzzle app for ipad, iphone, ipod touch Review

9 Cards is an edge-matching puzzle. Place the cards into the frame so that all the edges match.

We've seen several hundred versions of this puzzle in all sorts of forms: rectangular grids, hexagonal pieces, 5x5, 7x7 and even 10x10.

Nadav Solomon created this app. It's not the greatest puzzle app, but if you've never tried edge matching puzzles, go for it.

Definitely look for Nadav's other puzzle app called Nadibom

ZooLogic: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

Place the animal and food tiles on the various grids to avoid confrontation or eating. The dog cannot be next to the cat or the bone. The mouse cannot be next to the cat or the cheese. Keep the cat away from the fish!


The 150 challenges will appeal to 5–year olds and College Mathematicians. Designed by Inon Kohn.

This puzzle was made in a physical form about 5 years ago by FoxMind, a fine Canadian puzzle company. Get it too! The app version differs from the physical box version: A tile must be placed on the angry ants - but not a food tile.

Free to download the first 15 or so levels. $2.99 for the rest.

Unlucky Twist: an Oskar van Deventer puzzle

I am now the proud owner of Unlucky Twist from Oskar van Deventer. The order: 1x2x13. This puzzle is not hard to solve. What make the puzzle so interesting is that when the two main lines separate, the pieces at the ends do not fall off. Look closely at the photo and you'll see that the piece at the end is connected all the way to the center with a telescopic shape.

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/oskarpuzzles

Spins 3D puzzle app for iphone, ipad, ipod touch Review

Spins 3D is a very sleek puzzle app authored by Nathan Carter. The object is to spin each circle to rotate the positions of the balls. Match the colored balls to the colored spots & you're done.

Each puzzle can be solved at different levels of difficulty. For example, the treasure box needs to be opened with a key to let out the ball. Some balls get itchy. If they are in the correct positions too long, they flee.

Overall, I do recommend this puzzle!

Nadibom: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

I downloaded Nadibom in part, because the image seemed silly, but compelling. The object is to get your man to the bomb. The mazes look simple but The Hero, must push walls inward to get to the closed off paths. However, walls cannot be pushed all the way onto another wall. Therefore, your task is to quickly determine a route by finding which walls can and should be pushed before time expires and BOOOOOM!, you die. I have managed to get through about 25 levels, before dying.

Nadav Solomon is the author. He's working on other puzzle apps too. Download it!

Bumpling: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

Have you played Fling!? If so, you will love Bumpling. The object is to knock the balls off the hexagonal grid until only 1 remains. However, there are wormholes. Also, there are rotating plates: if your man passes over this, it will exit at an angle. I'm not going to mention the 2 important elements of the turn-arounds.

Suffice it to say, this is one of those puzzle apps that you keep. Bravo to the Doodle Panda company for making this.

Cube 2D: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

For a few minutes I thought to myself, 'Oh no, not another sliding rows and columns puzzle!' Yes and no.

For the easy puzzles, it's exactly that. Scroll down through this blog and see similar puzzles.

For the harder puzzles: things get more complicated. Some rows are linked with other rows. So, if you slide row 1, row 3 will follow. Same with the columns. Definitely give this a test run.

Eui-Hwa Park is the author.

Reiner Knizia's Cluster Master: iphone ipod ipad puzzle app Review

Reiner Knizia has produced many high quality great puzzle apps. Cluster Master: Fit the hexagons into the grid to make clusters of the same color. Larger groups get more points. This is not quite a puzzle game, but it's entertaining. Download the free version and give it a test run.

Jabeh: iphone ipad ipod puzzle app Review

There are so many very good puzzle apps to play. Jabeh is a deceptively great puzzle app. Find the 12 stones in the grid. The numbers on the top indicate how many stones are in that column. The numbers on the left show how many stones are in that row. The arrows point to where a stone must be in that direction, not necessarily next to the arrow.

Arash Payan is the author. The free version has 50 some levels. I couldn't stop, until all the levels were solved. The paid version is a bit pricey at $4.99. Bravo Mr. Payan!

Boxat: puzzle app for iphone, ipad, ipod touch Review

Does the world need another tilt-maze? Not really. However, life is so much richer when a good one comes along. The makers of Boxat are modestly known as Ultimate Team. Boxat comes with 100 levels. Some are very difficult. However, this Mechanical Puzzle Correspondent tackled them all. 99 cents gets 2-3 hours entertainment. If you've never done any tilt mazes, this is a good introduction. Then graduate yourself by getting Blockhouse.

Move It

The object of Move It - to move the red square to the upper right corner. 50 levels are free. After that, there are 6 Level Packs to purchase (optional) each having 100 levels. Move It has a sleek feel & is fun. I solved all of the free levels in my doctor's waiting room. If you like Move It, do try Rush Hour & HexSlide too.

Boxed In 2: completed!

Not all puzzle apps have this little reward for completing all the levels. Boxed In 2 consists of 50 sokomind puzzles with a twist. Some of the boxes need to be pushed into corners. So if you've done many sokomind puzzles, it's difficult to break out of that habit.

Pixel Shift: puzzle app for ipad ipod iphone Review

If you've been following this blog, then you have seen half a dozen or more puzzles very similar to Pixel Shift. Slide the rows and columns to match the figure. This one has a very nice interface. Solve a puzzle quickly and receive 3 stars. 2 stars for medium speed. 1 star for slow.

Martin Robaszewski created this app. It's free, so play it a few times.

Drazzle: iphone, ipad, ipod touch puzzle app Review

Here's a colorful puzzle that's very similar to some other puzzles we've reviewed. The object is to slide the horizontal & vertical lines so that the green balls are in the middle, purple on top, etc.

It's free, so give it a shot.

See the Light: iphone, ipad, ipod touch puzzle app

See the Light has nothing to do with religion. It is a puzzle app. Use mirrors, prisms and lenses, absorbers and other tools to direct the light to the target, thus saving humanity. All in a day's work, right? Brian Sowers has created 80 puzzle levels. Fans of Lumi, Prism (Nintendo DS game) and Slime Lumia will be challenged heartily with the new gadgets.

Drop 7: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

Drop 7 comes from Zynga, the creators of Farmville and Mafia Wars. Drop the numbered discs into the slots strategically. It seems like Tetris, but there is no time constraint. I got through level 11 and scored 69,000 points. But I confess that I don't fully understand the game. In particular, there are some discs that are unnumbered. Actually, their number is hidden. To reveal the number...one must do something - but it's not clear to me. Download Drop 7 for free, play around with it and let me know what you think.

Computer simulation for a 1000 x 1000 x 1000 cube

This puzzle does not exist as a physical model. However, it's nice to see that somebody has programmed a computer to solve it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50Vhs0Xe02k&feature=related

The Big Square: puzzle app for ipad, iphone, ipod touch Review

Do you remember solving the famous Knight's Tour puzzle? Fill a 5x5 grid with the numbers 1-25 following the path of a knight. The Big Square is similar, but the rules are different. Either jump 2 horizontally or vertically. Or jump 1 diagonally. Difficult, fun and free. Antonio Cipriani is the author.

Update: I've solved the 5x5 & 6x6 grids. Got to 48 on the 7x7 grid. Very clever puzzle concept!

Amtalee: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

Mikolaj Sikorski has created Amtalee. It's a rolling block maze. Very very similar to Bloxorz which you can play online here.

Download the free version. The full version costs $2.99

Rogo: math puzzle app for iphone, ipad, ipod touch Review

The Traveling Salesman is a classic math problem: if a person has to travel to, say, 15 cities, what would the shortest route be? Rogo is similar, but different. For each puzzle, your route must cover a certain number of squares, say 12. What route, covering 12 squares will score the most number of points?

Very clever set of mathematical, logical puzzles.

Watch the youtube video here.

Dr. Nicola Petty from New Zealand is the author. She has plans for more puzzle apps.

Her webpage is here.

Dicoron: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle Review

Roll and move a dice to the goal.
You can roll the dice only if the landing spot will match the face of the die.
There is only 1 puzzle in this program. Is this a great, fun, fantastic, amazing puzzle app? No! Suppose you try to make an illegal move: the screen has an awkward way of informing the user. Hey, it's free.

There is a 10 minute time limit. It took me about 6 minutes. I was distracted.

Unlucky Twist: an Oskar van Deventer puzzle

Click here to order the puzzle.

Oskar van Deventer - I've written much about him. My first article for Games Magazine was a 6 page story about his puzzles. That was February 2006. Games Magazine will soon publish my story about Oskar's 17x17x17 cube.

It's impossible to own all of Oskar's puzzles because many are cost hundreds of dollars. This is due to the high cost of 3D printing.

Unlucky Twist is now in my collection! It's a 1x2x13 cubic puzzle. It's not hard at all. But what's amazing is the telescopic mechanism that keeps all the pieces together.

SmartBalls: iphone ipad ipod puzzle app Review

SmartBalls comes from Sergey Lesnichenko. Slide the rows and columns to match the diagram in the upper right corner. This is similar to other puzzle apps reviewed on this site. SmartBalls is free, so do a few puzzles.

Ballentines: action puzzle app for iphone, ipad, ipod Review

Ballentines is an action puzzle. Move balls around to line up sets of 3 in order to score points. As soon as you score, more balls start to fill the screen a bit like Tetris. Hey, it's free, so give it a try!

Sebastian Logod is the author.

Strimko Gold: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

The Grabarchuk family has a long history of creating innovative, interesting and fun puzzles. Strimko is essentially a twisted version of sudoku.

Download the Gold version and get over 300 puzzles. I downloaded it 1.5 weeks ago and have solved about 70 levels in about 6 hours. This would be a bargain at $10. But it's $1.99

Photography Apps

Suzanne Davies is something of an expert in photography. So, if you're looking for some good iphone photography apps, click here.

Beam Puzzle: puzzle app for ipad, iphone, ipod Review

15 years ago the Rubik Empire released a CD-ROM of puzzles. One of them was called Cover Up. Great, fantastic, fun puzzle concept.

Ferhat Ayaz has created 50 puzzles of the same concept, now called the Beam Puzzle. I have solved all 50 puzzles. It took maybe 2 hours. Let's hope he keeps going and produces another 50 levels.

Blind Knights Chess: app store game review

Blind Knights Chess comes from Aaron Coleman. I believe his sons Jonathan & David made the graphics and sounds! So this is a family enterprise.

Here's the deal. You make a move, but cannot see your opponent's pieces. Then you hand it to your opponent and your pieces disappear while his appear. Interesting concept among the hundred of chess variations that currently exist. Bravo!

Untangle: puzzle app for iphone, ipad, ipod Review

Untangle comes from Wang Yujin of Bluesky Studio. We've seen puzzle apps very similar to this.

Visit http://www.planarity.net/# to play online with a big computer screen.

Twistrix: puzzle app for ipad, ipod, iphone Review

Twistrix is very similar to the mechanical puzzles Babylon Tower and Whip-It. Easy puzzle. As you advance through the levels, the tower adds an additional level. Still, it's too easy.

If you download this puzzle app, you won't have to buy those other puzzles. Hey, it's free!