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!

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

This is not so much of a brain teaser but more of a mind reading act, although many don’t know how it works.

Lets go through it and I’ll give you the solution at the end.

Think of a number between 1 and 10

Now Double it

Now add 8

Now half it

Take a way the first number you thought of, and you will be left with a single digit number,

Now I want you to take that number and turn it into a letter a =1 b=2 c=3 Ect.

Now take that letter and think of a country beginning with that letter .

Now take the second letter of the country and think of a animal beginning with that letter.

No Just a minute:-

There is no Elephants in Denmark

So how did I know you was thinking of Denmark and Elephant

The Solution

The number you were left with was 4 so how did we get there

You first think of a number lets say for the sake of making it simple we say 1

“I don’t need to know this because we are going to remove it. “

I then asked you to double it that gives you 2

I then give you the number 8 making a total of 10

I now ask you to half it this now gives a total of 5 which is 4+1

I now ask you to take away the number you first thought of which is 1 thus leaving you with 4 half of 8 no number I gave you

If you convert that number into a letter it’s D not many country’s that begin D and for the most part, most will think of Denmark this then gives us E the second letter of Denmark and again Elephant is the first animal most will think of.

Now You Know How it’s done…. Shhh !

More commonly know as the Chinese Rings puzzle

The objective is to remove the shuttle from the rings.

It was very popular during the Sung Dynasty ( 960 – 1279 ) were it was used as a lock with almost every Chinese family.

Although it is most often thought of as a disentanglement puzzle, it is probably better classified as a sequential movement puzzle, for this is the key to it’s solution, often classified as very difficult the principle is straight forward

The puzzle can found in many different forms some more elaborate than others and can be expanded in difficulty by adding rings.

Every time an additional ring is added it doubles the number of moves required to complete the puzzle. A simple five ring puzzle, requires sixteen moves, While the seven ring one pictured here would require 64 moves.

The solution :-

The thing that makes this difficult to work out at first is that the first part of the problem is often over looked and that is it works in reverse, by that I mean you have to disassemble it from the back to the front and this is what stumps most people.

The moves are really simple but you must remember the rules

You Can only remove the ring directly behind the first ring.

So to remove the second ring the first ring has to be on the shuttle, to remove the third ring the second one has to be there and so on.

So lets take a five ring lock it goes like this

Remove ring 1 this now makes ring 2 the first ring

Remove ring 3 as it is now in second place

Now you have to replace ring 1 so that ring 2 can now be removed and remove ring 1 again

You now have rings 4 and 5 left on the lock but as 4 is now the first ring 5 can be removed.

Now replace ring 1 this allows for ring 2 to be replaced

Remove ring 1 making ring 2 first place allowing for ring 3 to be replaced.

Replace ring 1 and remove ring 2 so that you are left with ring 3 and 4 in first and second place.

I’m sure by now you get the picture in order to remove the shuttle the rings have to be removed 5,4,3,2,1 and re assembly is the opposite 1,2,3,4,5