Archive for the ‘Brain Teasers Through Time’ Category

Puzzles A history

Puzzles in various forms are laced through world history. Evidence of puzzles occurs from many historic times and areas. For example it is suggested that puzzles, riddles and rhymes were used as entertainment during Ancient Greece, the winners of such games were also rewarded with a crown of laurel leaves. Evidence of Tibetan monks, completing maths problems on the walls of caves has been found and in Persia it is thought that riddles and puzzles were a kept component in their religious practices. In fact this is the case for many religions, in many key scriptures. Evidence even suggests that riddle completions were held in the remote Fiji Islands!

The first jigsaw puzzle was created as a teaching method by a mapmaker and engraver. A man from Britain in 1720, mounted a map onto wood and made each country into a hand sawed jigsaw piece. He used it as a means of teaching geography! Crosswords first appeared in 1890 in an Italian newspaper, missing were the shaded squares but it was a 4 by 4 grid with horizontal and vertical clues. In the 3rd century BC, the first mechanical puzzle was made in Greece.

It was a wooden cube cut into 14 pieces and the aim was to create different shapes with the pieces. “Puzzle locks” were created in Iran around the 17th century, and the Tangram puzzle became popular in china in the 1800’s eventually reaching America and Europe! Development in both puzzles and technology has grown ever since and had lead to things such as the Rubik Cube, something that nearly every family has owned at some point!

The Rubik’s Cube

No brain teaser site would be complete without the Rubik cube, I remember the very first one I got all so many years ago, this thing drove me mad and to make things that little bit worse there was speed trials poping up all over the place to add to my inadequacies.

Who would have thought that this thing would be the suggest that it was a simple concept for a cube with 6 different coloured sides that took just seconds to mix up and years to put right again, or so I thought.

Who would have thought that this thing would be the suggest that it was a simple concept for a cube with 6 different coloured sides that took just seconds to mix up and years to put right again, or so I thought.

It was invented in 1974 by an Hungarian professor of architecture Erno Rubik using his skills as a sculptor to create a 3-D mechanical puzzle that become the Rubik’s Cube, originally called the “Magic Cube “ it was licensed to Ideal Toys for sale in 1980 and has gone on to achieve outstanding results including,

German Game of the year, and by January 2009 it had sold 350 million world wide and it considered to be the number one top selling puzzle of all time.

The classic Rubik has nine coloured sticker on each of its 9 sides and on the original these were white, red, green, yellow, blue and orange.

Each face could be moved interdependently of each other allowing it to be mixed up to solve the puzzle you simply had to move them around so that each face was made up of the 6 colours once more.

The solution, well one of the popular ones was to remove the stickers and replace them on the correct face, but the reality of it there is so many the rubik is one of those puzzles that works mathematically once you know the who it’s a forgone conclusion and as I said speed was of the essence it soon become not if you could do it but how quick could you do it and the world record for it is a staggering 7.9 seconds.

The solution can be found on many websites here is an example

If you have ever tried the Rubik and failed it really is child’s play