Hasta La Gadget!

There are puzzle games, and then there are puzzle games. I would suppose that the £17.99 Inside³ Labyrinth Puzzle Cubes would be part of the equation – in the latter segment, of course. There will be five different levels, which will follow in the ascending order, namely Easy, Mean, Awful, Vicious and Mortal. Some folks just hate puzzle games absolutely because they can prove to be nerve wracking when one’s brain is unable to churn out the relevant answer required to solve a particular issue. You will find the Inside³ Labyrinth Puzzle Cubes to push your cerebral limits to its edge (Einsteins might be to differ), where the multi-storey mazes are made up of seven labyrinthian layers.

In fact, it has been touted that the Inside³ Labyrinth Puzzle Cubes would make the classic Rubik’s cube pale in comparison to it where difficulty is concerned, as it resembles a child’s toy instead. With five different Inside³ Labyrinth Puzzle Cubes to choose from, alongside various difficult levels as mentioned earlier, you will be hard pressed to “beat the cube” in the shortest time possible. Individual cubes are made up of 7 labyrinthian layers that are extremely easy to get lost in, where these would combine to make up a mind-bending, multi-storey maze. Folks who are short on patience need not pick this puppy up.
[ Inside³ Labyrinth Puzzle Cubes – time to crack your brain! copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

How good are you at solving Rubik’s cubes? I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m particularly bad at it. In fact, I have yet to successfully solve a 3×3 cube and I’ve been trying for five years and counting already.

If the usual handheld cubes are starting to bore you and you happen to be in Austria, then you might want to drop by the Ars Electronica center in Linz. The building’s facade is actually covered in 1,085 glass panes that are illuminated by 95,000 color-changing LED lights. It has been used by a number of artists as a medium for their work.

The latest is Javier Lloret, who turned the building into a game. Specifically, he turned it into a giant Rubik’s cube, and he’s calling it the Puzzle Facade.

The interface-cube holds electronic components to keep track of rotation and orientation. This data is sent via Bluetooth to a computer that runs the Puzzle Facade designed software. This software changes the lights and color of the large-scale Ars Electronica’s media facade in correlation to the handheld interface-cube.

Puzzle Facade is made more challenging since the player can only see two sides at a time. However, it’s not really a huge factor since the player can flip and rotate and interface cube.

The Puzzle Facade is part of Lloret’s thesis for the Interface Culture master program at the University of Arts and Industrial Design Linz.

[via C|NET]

When hackers break into the databases of the great and good—like Adobe—they’re often left with an encrypted password and an unencrypted password hint. In other words, a giant, modern version of a crossword puzzle.

Read more…

I know there are people out there who can solve a Rubik’s Cube in seconds, but I’m not one of them. I eventually could work my way through the puzzle, but it takes me 10 or 15 minutes on a good day. This puzzle, on the other hand, I’m NEVER solving.

What you’re looking at is a fully scrambled version of the Radio Cube 3, a torturous puzzle based on icosahedral geometry. It starts out innocently enough, looking like a Rubik’s Cube with a personality disorder:

But a few twists and turns later, and it’s a brain-scrambling disaster.

This evil puzzle was created by Shapeways contributor Eitan, and is a cubic transformation of a puzzle called Radiolarian 3 by Jason Smith. Radio Cube 3 looks infinitely more difficult to solve in my opinion, but I’m sure somebody out there will figure out a way to solve it quickly. You’ll notice how Eitan only shows how to scramble the cube in the video, and there’s no indication that he knows how to solve it.

If you’d like to bend your mind, you can grab the main parts needed for it for $150(USD) over on Shapeways. Then you’ll need to pick up 20 flat-head M3 screws at least 12mm long, and a set of stickers. And a sledgehammer. And a trash can.

Forget about tongue twisters – whenever you are getting on in age, it would be a whole lot better to make sure that your mental prowess is able to keep up with your physical prowess. It would not really benefit you if you were to sit in front of the TV and flip channels all day long, as all of the passive entertainment is not going to make that grey matter of yours get enough exercise. The $29.99 Brain Cube might seem rather odd at first, but it is a true blue brain twister.

Touted to be the “ultimate brain-bending puzzle cube”, the Brain Cube happens to be made out of Kraton, which more or less delivers a rather squishy brain feel. Not only that, the entire shebang looks even more authentic as it comes in a cool glass display jar. This is one brain challenge that is made out of a brain, where the entire goal is to match all the folds. It might sound rather easy at first, but actually, it can be rather tricky simply because it is not too easy to spot just what goes where.
[ Brain Cube offers some puzzlers to keep your brain occupied copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]