Games and Puzzles

Single person brain teaser game for pre-school children.

Based on the story of the Wolf and the Seven Goats, you have to work out where to put the pieces on the board so that all the goats are safely hidden from the wolf.

48 challenges.  The first ones are straightforward but the final ones will cause a fair bit of chin-scratching in many adults.

Age suitability: 3-7 years old.

Single player brain game for children age 7 upwards with a booklet of 120 challenges that start easy and get harder and harder.

Fiendish brain game with eight 'marbles' and their perspex cage.

Each marble has specific bumps and holes in its surface and the trick is to align these so that all eight marbles fit in the cage.  You need logic and lots of spatial insight.

Booklet of 80 challenges from relatively easy to totally impossible.

Compact size, about 6cm cubed.

Age suitability: 10+ years.

Single player brain game for children age 6 upwards with a booklet of 120 challenges that start easy and get harder and harder.

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Single player brain game for children age 8 upwards with a booklet of 120 challenges that start easy and get harder and harder.

The world's best-selling toy.

Here are a few facts:

Originally advertised as having over 3 billion permutations, apparently there are actually over 43 quintillion, that's 43 followed by fifteen zeroes.

The centre squares on each side don't move and under the surface are joined together as one piece forming the skeleton of the cube about which all the other cubes rotate.

Google worked out that it should be possible to solve it in 20 moves.

Most people solve it layer by layer but it is actually better to solve a 2x2x2 block, enlarge it to a 2x2x3 block and then sort out the incorrect edges.

The world record solving time is 3.47 seconds.  A robot achieved it in 0.38 seconds. The world record using feet only is 15.56 seconds.  

I can't do it.

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Single person brain teaser game for children age 7 and upwards (and shop-keepers when it's quiet in the shop).

Get the rabbits back safely to their burrows by jumping over the mushrooms and foxes.

Comes on a board about 15cm across with a lid, so makes a great travel game.

My favourite of all the excellent Smart Games.

SG421

Test your brainpower by manoeuvring the squirrels around the board so that they drop the nuts in the holes.

Single player brain teaser game for children aged 6 onwards.  There is a booklet with 60 different challenges.  The early ones are relatively straightforward but the harder ones will stretch many an adult.

To see more, please watch the video:

SG425

Cat Crimes is a single player brain game in which you have to identify which of the six cats committed the crime. So choose a challenge card, put the crime token on the board and then using the clues on the card work out where each of the cats were sitting.  The one sitting opposite the token is the culprit.

Age suitability: 8 years+