Flip Them All: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

We've seen so many versions of Lights Out. Tiger Electronics sold 3 versions - all of them superb.

Flip Them All is a terrific version. The object is to turn the tiles from blue to orange. The green icon points up and down. Tap on it and it will reverse the color of itself and the ones above and below. The yellow changes itself and the ones on the right and left. The orange changes itself and the ones up and down. The blue dot changes itself only. The red square (not in the image above) changes itself and all the surrounding tiles - including the diagonals.

Down load this for free to solve 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 grids. Neville Attard and Sven Neuman authored this fine puzzle app.

Blockshift: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

Blockshift is a puzzle game where you score points by lining up 4 tiles in a row or column. Tap on the arrows to shift individual rows. Michael Webb is the author. He's also created a game called Stick Man Vs Zombies which sounds very appealing.

Blockshift is not a pure puzzle app. Good for kids!

Blockado Jungle: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

We have seen sooooo many versions of Rush Hour by Nob Yoshigahara and Harry Nelson. Almost all of them are, frankly, rip-offs.

Blockado Jungle is similar to Rush Hour, but it is refreshingly innovative! The object is to get the treasure chest out of the grid.

What's different?
1. On some puzzles, there are multiple treasure chests to move.
2. The grid size is not always 6x6 and the exits for the treasure chest vary!
3. Some pieces have bridges. Therefore, another piece can pass under it.
4. Some pieces have springs - these puzzles can be very challenging.
5. Make your own puzzles. Look at the second image, above. Users can create their own levels and upload them on to the website for others to download.

I have solved almost all of the puzzles. One of them: I'm convinced is impossible. It's one of the spring puzzles.

Daniel Matzke and his team have done a terrific job creating a fun, intelligent set of brain teasers. Now: let's hope the puzzle community steps up and creates their own set of hundreds more puzzles.

Bravo!

Fantastic Jigsaw Puzzles!

2 years ago I wrote an article for Games Magazine about Artifact Puzzles. Maya Gupta is the proprietor. I get the feeling it's a 1-man operation. The wood puzzles are laser cut and some of the pieces are funky!

Yesterday the UPS man delivered an unexpected parcel: a special 'no-picture-on-the-box' jigsaw. It came at 2:30 & I dropped everything & did it in about 2.5 hours. I know what you're thinking: jigsaws are not cerebral. Normally I focus strictly on the brain puzzles. However, Maya's jigsaws are just so much fun!

Confession: I bought 3 of these jigsaws to give to my siblings' families for Christmas but solved them myself first!

http://www.artifactpuzzles.com/

Oskar van Deventer's Over The Top 17x17x17 Cube Puzzle

There is a 4-page article describing Oskar van Deventer's Over The Top 17x17x17 Cube Puzzle in the September 2011 issue of Games Magazine. It is on the newsstands right now - for the next 2 weeks or so.

Games Magazine can be found at Barnes and Noble, Borders, Target and other stores that carry a lot of magazine titles.

Because I am the Mechanical Puzzle Correspondent for Games Magazine, I was assigned the task of covering this story.

Games Magazine has a minimal presence on the web: they don't post articles or puzzles and they often don't update it in a timely manner. Buy your copy today! Bring it to the next International Puzzle Party or New York Puzzle Party Symposium and get Oskar and myself to autograph it.

Crazy Circles: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

About 25 years ago, I found Doug Engle's Circle puzzles - flat versions of Rubik's Cube. I thought I understood the puzzles completely. Then Doug came out with puzzles where the orientation of each piece mattered. Click here for some examples.

Vishnu Chaitanya Pedasingu has now come out with a nice set of versions of these puzzles. Good interface. Try the free version.

Pet Jump: iphone ipad ipod touch solitaire puzzle app

Pet Jump is a solitaire peg jumping puzzle app. There are 3 different game boards. Notice the second image above. I think that's a unique board for this genre. However, I got stuck on the 6th or 7th level. I think that level was made incorrectly!

This is free! So give it a shot. Leo Guo is the app designer.

Hierogrid: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

Hierogrid is an interesting game/puzzle. Your man will travel along the grid in all directions gobbling up tiles. Step on a 4 tile and travel in that direction 4 times. The game ends when your man falls off the grid. Hierogrid is fun and there is a free version. I have not downloaded the full version, but I'm guessing that the user can replay a specific game and challenge yourself to get a higher score.

Make It So Studios made this. Go ahead and give it a try!

Mark Setteducati in the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal on Saturday had a nice article on my magic/puzzle friend Mark Setteducati.

Mortal Coil: the competition

When I first started playing Mortal Coil, practically nobody had played it. I started my quest to solve all 400 levels. A daunting task. A couple of days ago, I was #10 on the Leaderboard. Then suddenly.....I was #11. Somebody named Addjoe raced past me. But I caught up. Yesterday, he & I were neck and neck for about 2 hours. I decided to let him take the lead again - after all, I had to eat dinner.

Oh, right behind us is somebody named Cookie. And Prof Tangram is about 40 puzzles ahead of us. If I were betting $, I'd say he'll get to 400 first.

I'm not sure if I have the patience to solve all 400 levels. There are other types of puzzles to solve of course.

Here's the Leaderboard. Feel free to bookmark it to see my progress.

Unlock It: iphone ipad puzzle app Review

Christophe Burckbuchler is one of many people who have taken the concept of Rush Hour by Nob Yoshigahara and Harry Nelson to make their own puzzles.

What's most disturbing is that the grid sized is always 6x6 with the car being in the third row from the top.

Puzzle imitators: there is a question of ethics regarding whether one should imitate puzzles so closely. Please make a variation! How about a 7x7 grid? How about using a forklift that can shift a car in a parallel direction?

Pipe Pressure: iphone puzzle app

The object of Pipe Pressure: rotate individual tiles so the light source reaches the target number. We've seen many of these types of puzzles before, but this one requires that the objective be met within a certain number of moves. Usually pipe puzzles require all the pipes to be connected - not this game. It's free to download!

Benjamin Tang created Pipe Pressure in his spare time.

Continuity 2: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

Continuity 2 is the sequel to the original game published about 2 years ago. That original game could only be played online. Truly fabulous.

The object is to get your man to pick up a key and then to a door. Slide your man within each frame. Zoom out to rearrange the order of each frame.

Continuity 2 has all new levels. You absolutely must download this.

http://www.continuitygame.com/

Ragtime Games consists of Elias Holmlid, Dmitri Kurteanu, Guy Lima Jr., and Stefan Mikaelsson. They reside in Gothenburg, Sweden and study at Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University. This team produced a fun, great, simple, puzzle app.

Read my blog entry for January 4, 2010 when I reviewed the original game.

Mazzle: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

Mazzle is similar to other puzzle apps. The object is to arrange all the colors into squares. This is done by shifting rows & columns.

There are 3 levels. The image above shows the medium & hard levels. Notice that each square is unique, so this is harder than the other versions.

Question: is it possible to exchange to adjacent squares?

Pipe Push: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

The object is to shift rows and columns so that the lines have proper end points. 9 levels. Not too hard. I spent maybe 15 minutes on this. It's free.

Wang Yujin created this puzzle app. I reviewed another of his puzzle apps called Untangle.

Binary Sudoku Puzzle iphone puzzle app

Binary Sudoku: the concept has been around for a while. Each grid uses only 0's & 1's. Each row & column must have an equal # of 0's & 1's. No row can be exactly the same as another row. Ditto for columns.

The free version has 15 puzzles. The paid version has 100 puzzles. I did 1 easy, 1 medium & 1 hard levels. Definitely a nice change of pace from regular sudoku.

DropZap 2: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

A while ago I reviewed a game/puzzle app called Drop 7. Amir Michail contacted me recently about his 2 versions of that called DropZap and DropZap 2.

The object is to remove the balls before they rise to the top. Sort of like tetris, but there is no time factor. To get balls to disappear, they must shrink down one size at a time. Also, you'll see chain reactions happening with a laser-like effect & mirrors.

Give it a test run!

Monorail: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

About 2 months ago Glenn Iba sent me a promo code to play-test Monorail. Terrific stuff. Then I forgot about it. Now the real version is available. So I downloaded it. My progress on the puzzles from the demo version - gone.

But it's okay, because I spent about 2 hours doing these puzzles. There are 220 puzzles: yesterday I did about 100. The easy ones are fun! The hard ones are hard!

Oh yeah: the objective to to form one enclosed loop. Each dot must be connect to exactly 2 other dots.

What I especially like is that some lines are given: they are gray. The lines you draw are blue.

Monorail is truly addictive and more importantly fun.

Right now Monorail is free. Monorail was designed by Glenn Iba and Aaron Iba. Bravo guys!

Mortal Coil: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

Puzzle Friends: you may have noticed that I've slowed down on posting reviews of puzzle apps. The truth of the matter: I've become a little too obsessed with Mortal Coil. I've solved 161 levels and have risen to #14 on the Leaderboard. Usually, when I start a puzzle I disable that functionality: who cares? But now, I care. My goal is to rise to position #13 by the end of the week. It's a silly endeavor. But this could be inscribed on my tombstone!

Head Spin: puzzle app

Head Spin has come out in more than one version. Simple concept: align the heads to be right up by shifting rows & columns. Tricky!

Parking ManiaS: puzzle app plagarism?

Parking ManiaS looks very similar to ThinkFun's Leapin' Lizards. Very suspicious.

Synchrony: time travel puzzle app

About 2 weeks ago I got this email from Haran Shivanan:

"Synchrony is a puzzle game involving time-travel.


As the protagonist, you have to travel backwards in time and work with past (and future) versions of your self in order to solve each level.
In each level, your objective is to reach the red flag.
You're given a fixed number of time capsules that allow you to go back in time to the beginning of the level, where you can see all your past selves in action.


You will have to work together with your past selves and manipulate objects in the level like switches and platforms in order to reach your goal.
Each level is progressively more difficult and introduces new concepts to be used. The levels also have additional milestones to be achieved that require a greater degree of planning, thought and skill.
Your ability to achieve these milestones determines your rating in each level."


Without a doubt there is no puzzle game like this. I have played & solved about 10 levels. Very interesting and strange. Definitely give it a try. There is a lite version to sample. Give it a go!

Lab Mice Puzzles: Award Winner!

http://www.parents-choice.org/product.cfm?product_id=29225

The very wise judges at Parents' Choice have awarded Lab Mice Puzzles from Mindware.com a Silver Honor.

This humble Mechanical Puzzle Correspondent for Games Magazine is the author of those Lab Mice Puzzles. The fan mail from mothers & kids have been pouring in.

Attention all Android users......

Two things:

1. Solitaire Chess is now available for Android users.

2. Which leads me wondering: are there any puzzle apps that is available for Android and not for the iphone & ipad? Let me know!

Duality: iphone ipad maze puzzle app

Ajit Rao has come up with a challenging, fun, brilliant, original set of puzzles. The object: move the blue orb to the big blue dot. Note; the blue & red dots are linked. If the blue dot moves up, so does the red. To change the distance between the blue & red dots: move one of the dots next to one of the force fields.

There are 50 levels. I have solved 38 of them. Highly recommended. There is a free version called Duality Prime with 8 levels.

TipTapTop: puzzle app for kids

TipTapTop - also known as T3 - is a puzzle app for kids. Tap on 2 images to make them swap and restore the photo to order. Patrick Shirkey from Iguana Productions Company made this.

Gemocide: puzzle app for iphone, ipad, ipod touch

Move gems round a board and see how they interact to help (or hinder!) clearing gem-homes. No time limits, no random scoring – what you do is what you get! And this is a game where low scores are best. Minimum moves gives a Gold, nearly-minimum gives Silver and there’s Bronze if you clear a level but take a few extra moves to do it.

And get creative. Whether or not you clear any of the 120 set levels, you can Create your own levels and Export them to your photo albums so you can share them with your friends as you would any other picture. Email them, put them on your website, Facebook, whatever, so they can Import your level into their game. Will you devise the most fiendishly tricky level yet?

Gemocide features

Innovative puzzle system
7 tutorial levels to introduce the game

Mortal Coil: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

Mortal Coil is similar to many other puzzle apps: there is a tilt-maze aspect combined with a topology problem of filling in all the squares with one unbroken string.

200 easy levels
200 medium levels
400 challenging levels. Nobody has solved more than 390 of these. I've done 38 - in about 1.5 hours.

One of this blog's followers pointed this unknown app out to me. It came out in 2009. $1.99 is a bargain for this gem. Adam Miller & Erich Friedman are the brains behind this.

Hi Lo sudoku variation iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app

Does the world need another variation on sudoku? No! But this one is so fun, I spent about 1.5 hours on it yesterday. Object: make a Latin Square so that each row & column uses the #s 1-4 or 1-5 & 1-6 for the larger grid sizes. The inequality signs must be true for adjacent squares.

Download this for free - you get 10 levels. $1.99 for 150 more levels. Totally worth the money. Fun!

TriZen: puzzle app for iphone ipad ipod touch

TriZen is a tangram type puzzle with some 500 levels. Craig & Lindi Kemper are the authors. They've also created some other tangram puzzles. Check out their web page: http://littlewhitebearstudios.com/products.html

Tippy Tower: balancing puzzle app for iphone, ipad and ipod touch

We've seen many version of this type of puzzle. The makers of Tippy Tower contacted us yesterday with great enthusiasm. Tiago Loureiro is the author.

I downloaded the free version & solved the first 12 levels. The graphics are sleek. Pieces can be picked up and rotated: this requires using a second finger.

Some people may find this incredibly fun. My taste lies more in the cerebral puzzles. However, this puzzle app does require strategic planning. Give it a shot!

Twister 3D: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

Twister 3D is a series of take-apart puzzles. I tried this on my ipod touch and was a bit frustrated. The graphics are smooth and sleek. But, having taken apart hundreds of burrs - actual physical puzzles - doing it virtually is not quite the same.

Nevertheless, we applaud the efforts of Frank Worrell and James Low for bringing interesting puzzles into this format. Let's hope that users will be turned on enough to start seeking out, and collecting the real McCoys.

If you are interested in exploring more of these types of puzzles, do check out the Mother Lode of puzzle designs: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~rh5k-isn/Puzzle/

Trigee Color: iphone ipad ipod touch puzzle app Review

Trigee Color comes from http://istomgames.com/. Istvan Galos is the game designer. The object of the puzzle is to restore the colored triangular tiles to match the pattern given at the beginning.

We've seen dozens of versions of this. The first came from Dough Engel & his circle puzzles in the 80's. Mad Triad is more recent. It was made in limited quantities because users weren't careful & they broke. Store owners refused to sell them after that. But it's a fine mechanical puzzle.

Back to Trigee Color. It's essentially the same thing. Not so hard. However, one must memorize the correct pattern before solving.

There is a free version, so download it. Note: this is not a great fabulous puzzle. However it certainly does not deserve the 1 & 2 star ratings that some 36 people gave.

Roll Doku: sudoku type puzzle app for iphone, ipad, ipod touch. Review

Download the Free version of Roll Doku & just try to do 1 puzzle. A solved Sudoku puzzle is wrapped around a cylinder. Then it is scrambled in a clever way: The rolls are shifted around horizontally. Furthermore, the rows are shifted up and down. Very tough! Yet each puzzle has 1200 solutions.

David Whitehead is the author and he boasts that Rollduko is 'the best sudoku app ever!' That's similar to many claims of 'the hardest puzzle in the world'.

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