Eight cubes

This puzzle is made of eight cubes. On each small cube there are six different shape (or color) The aim of this puzzle is to arrange eight cubes so each face of the cube will contain same four shape (or color) and all internal touching cube faces will have same shape (or color).  This puzzle is more difficult to solve than you expect. By turning cubes and trying, it’s nearly impossible to find correct solution. For each small cube arrangement there are two way. You can read more about the mathematics of this puzzle from here. I made for myself two different version of this puzzle. I used 30x30x30 mm (11/4″x11/4×11/4) wooden cubes. I cut them from a 30×30 mm stock with a miter saw. For the version on the left I draw shapes with some templates and painted them with an ink pen. For the colored version I draw circles on each cube face and I painted outside of the cubes with black and inside of the circles with color ink pens. You can make also with wood burning or by pattern transfer methods on wood. If you want you can also print labels and you can put labels on school cubes etc. Or you can find your best method.

If you want make your own puzzle, puzzle pieces are here. You can read also more information about this puzzle and you can find the solution of this puzzle from Jaap’s octacube puzzle page. If you follow solution steps you can solve and also you can understand better this puzzle.

Advertisement

Puzzles from Yukio Hirose

A few years ago I discovered a very nice web site with a lot of beautiful color and pattern match puzzles. Mr. Hirose Yukio is a Japanese puzzle designer and designs very nice puzzles and share them in his web site. I made one for my collection almost all his puzzles. You can visit Mr. Hirose Yukio web site and you can see all his nice puzzle designs. You can also download free patterns from his web site. Mr Hirose also describe a method for making your own puzzles you can read his method and develop your own

Here I will explain my method for making this kind of puzzles. I start by printing puzzle sheets with a laser printer. Laser printer printouts are more durable than inkjets. I prefer using a heavy paper. My printer limit is 160 gr/m2 and I use this limit. For tiles I am using 3 mm grey cardboard. I cut grey cardboard to same size with my sheet (I use A4 sheet 210×297 mm). I apply carpenter glue quickly to grey cardboard and to paper. I fix paper to cardboard with care. You can start from top or bottom side of paper and fix it without trapping air between cardboard and paper. After I place this to a flat surface and under something heavy. I let it to dry. After I glue a wallpaper to the back side of the cardboard. You can see from photo my red wallpaper. You can find very cheap wallpapers from stores. At end of seasons stores makes big discounts for out of production or end of stock products. Now your tiles are ready for cutting I am using a thick metal ruler and a heavy duty craft knife. You must be careful for your fingers.

After making your tiles you can find a nice box for them. I found first box shown on the photo in a small shop for less than 0.5 USD. Other two plastic round box are candy boxes. I made a label on their cover. I am sure you will find your own best method.

Ladybugs

The aim of this puzzle is arranging six tiles for obtaining 7 shape pair. This puzzle is my arrangement for vintage “Matador puzzle”. You can see the original puzzle from Rob’s puzzle page. The original of this puzzle instead of shapes contains half of domino tiles. I like share here my unusual and simple method for making this puzzle. I made puzzle tiles from 3 mm plywood. Each tile is 50×50 mm. Approx. 2×2 inch. For funny looking shapes I used baby dress buttons.

This buttons are cheap and you can find a lot of different shapes. I was bought a lot of them for making game pieces and puzzles. But their back sides aren’t flat. For this reason I cut their back sides with a miniature side cutter. Unfortunately after cutting their back side, still a little plastic remains and I melt this excess plastic with a soldering iron and I obtain nice flat back shapes. Finally I glued them with hot glue to wooden tiles. I applied varnish to wooden tiles after gluing all pieces. If you want make your own puzzle, puzzle pieces are here. You will need to seven different shape.

You can make also this puzzle on cardboard or if you want make a print and play copy of this puzzle you can preview or download this free PDF file (223 KB on secure server box.com) including black and white and color print and play versions of this puzzle.

Chess cube

Chess cube is another nice and easy to make puzzle. The aim of this puzzle as you can guess is making a 2x2x2 checkered cube. This puzzle designed by Russian designer Leonid Mochalov. I saw this puzzle in his website. In his web site there are also a lot of mechanical  and mathematical puzzles. I can advise to visit this web site to all puzzle enthusiasts. Thanks from here for this puzzle and for his nice web site.

Making this puzzle is very easy. You must cut or find eight cube. I cut from 20×20 mm ready beech stock with my hand miter saw. I made dots with my wood burning tool. You can paint or you can add labels. If you want you can make also paper cubes and play with them. But school cubes ( some times they sell as inch cubes) are cheap and widely available. Using them with labels or stickers is very easy.

After making this puzzle I tried to solve it. There is only one difficulty as shown on the right side of the photo. If you make 4 sides faces correctly checkered, unfortunately top and bottom faces don’t fit to this pattern perfectly. But in any case a nice and difficult to solve puzzle.

Nine queens puzzle

Eight queens puzzle was one of my old puzzles. When I shared this puzzle I saw nine queens chess puzzle on wiki page.  This was a good puzzle idea and I decided to make a nine queens puzzle. Unfortunately all the solutions that I found on the web was including empty tiles. I tried to find a solution so each tile include a queen. After a few hour my sister found a solution. As you can see from photo there are three type of piece. One piece has a queen on center square. Four piece has a queen on the corner square and four piece with a queen at the center of the edge.  The distribution of tiles looks interesting.

The aim of this puzzle is placing eight chess queens on an 9×9 chessboard so that no two queens threaten each other. For solving this problem, you must place nine wooden tiles so no two queens share the same row, column, or diagonal.For making this puzzle I used 6 mm cherry wood. I cut first a 30 mm strip and after 30×30 mm tiles. I made saw traces with a hand saw. I made spots with my wood burning tool. Tiles are two sided.

This is a very easy to make puzzle. But if you don’t have woodworking possibilities you can download or preview  print and play PDF file including solution from here. (0.4 MB on secure server box.com) You can print and play or you can glue them on thick cardboard. Another easy and durable puzzle making method is printing them on full sheet label and putting them on plastic tiles.

Eight queens puzzle

The aim of this puzzle is placing eight chess queens on an 8×8 chessboard so that no two queens threaten each other. For solving this problem, you must place four wooden tiles so no two queens share the same row, column, or diagonal. You can read more about this puzzle from here. This classical chess puzzle was produced by different companies. This is a very easy to make puzzle and fun to solve. I made this puzzle by using four 40x40x10 mm wooden tile. I made saw traces on each tile and I added spots with a wood burning tool. You can make also by drawing lines and spots with a pen. There is only one important point that the tiles are two sided.

This is a very easy to make puzzle. But if you don’t have woodworking possibilities you can download or preview  print and play PDF file including solution from here. (0.4 MB on secure server box.com) You can print and play or you can glue them on thick cardboard. Another easy and durable puzzle making method is printing them on full sheet label and putting them on plastic tiles.

Three disk puzzle

A simple but nice puzzle. I made this puzzle according to an old patent. This puzzle was designed by A.H.Wheeler in 1910. You can see original puzzle patent US0968218 from here. I made some versions with different art works made by my sister. The aim of this puzzle matching each body with a head. Discs are two sided. I prepared a print and play version of this puzzle with a different art work. If you want make your own puzzle you can preview or download this free PDF print and play file from here. (0.6 MB on secure server box.com)

Instant insanity

This is a well known and popular puzzle. Invented or patented by F.A.Schosow in 1900. Puzzle patent PDF is here. After produced with different names and shapes by different companies. This puzzle consists of four separate cubes. On each side of a cube there is a color or a symbol. There are four colors( or symbol) for four cube version. The aim of this puzzle is to put the cubes on top of one another in a tower such that each side of the tower will have one from each color (or shape). The colors of top, bottom and hidden faces aren’t important.  I like share here my home made examples. Puzzle pieces are below,

I made this puzzle from 30×30 mm wooden cubes. I cut them from a 30×30 mm ready stock with my hand miter saw. For ornaments my old technical drawing stencils was very useful. I painted them with color gel pens and applied very thin lacquer. I made also some other versions,

Example on the left has stand and I drilled each cube center. But this version isn’t good to play, second version is made from plastic school cubes. I drilled spots on faces. very easy to make.

This puzzle has also 5 and 6 cube variations produced with different commercial names. Five cube version has five color(or shape) and six cube version has six color (or shape). You can find all information for 5 and 6 cube versions and method for solving them from here.

You can make ornaments on each face also by wood burning. You can see some nice vintage examples from  J.A Storer page.

 

Unlucky dice 2

This puzzle is more difficult than “Unlucky dice 1”. I made this puzzle by using standard dice. For making this puzzle you will need 27 dice in three different color. I glued them with a kind of superglue. Each piece has “L” shape and made by gluing 3 dice together. For this puzzle there is 3 different problem.

1. Make a cube. An easy problem
2. For this problem you will ignore numbers and you will try to make a cube so on six face two same color will not be placed on same row or column. Same color may be placed on same diagonal. Inside (non visible ) faces will be ignored.
3. This is most difficult problem for this puzzle. You will try to make a cube so on six face two same color will not be placed on same row or column and in same time same numbers will not be placed on same row, column or diagonal.

Puzzle pieces are here,

But you don’t need make same puzzle with me. First make a cube with 27 dice according to rule 3. After you must find a solution diagram for this cube and take pieces 3 by 3 according to solution and glue dice together without changing their positions. This method may be easier for making this puzzle. An easy to make and very difficult puzzle to solve. An example solution diagram is here.

Unlucky dice 1

 

I made this puzzle by using standard dice. For making this puzzle you will need 27 dice in three different color. I glued them with a kind of superglue. Each piece has “I” shape and made by gluing 3 dice together. For this puzzle there is 2 different problem.

1. For this problem you will ignore numbers and you will try to make a cube so on six face two same color will not be placed on same row or column. Same color may be placed on same diagonal. Inside (non visible ) faces will be ignored.
2. This is most difficult problem for this puzzle. You will try to make a cube so on six face two same color will not be placed on same row or column and in same time, same numbers will not be placed on same row, column or diagonal.

Puzzle pieces are here,

But you don’t need make same puzzle with me. First make a cube with 27 dice according to rule 3. After take pieces 3 by 3 and glue dice together without changing their positions. This method may be easier for making this puzzle.  An easy to make and very difficult puzzle to solve.