Do you have a knack for Tangram puzzles, the ancient 7-piece dissection puzzle? If so, these two puzzles by SmartGames will delight the most avid fan and put your wits to the test.

Tangoes is SmartGames answer to a travel-friendly type of puzzles that are practical and easy to take with you anywhere. Both puzzles, Tangoes Animals (blue) and Tangoes Paradox (red), have been designed with the utmost care and attention to detail, always with the concept of convenience and fun in mind. What you get is two great products that will appeal to both adults and kids alike.

The Tangoes puzzles come in a cool notebook design with snaps lock and spiral rings to keep everything in place. The instructions are printed on the inside of the notebook and the challenge booklet is embedded in the spiral rings, so you won't have to worry about loosing anything. The pieces of the puzzles (seven in each set), the most important component, have been built with a magnetic material and a foam substance to keep the pieces malleable but still resistant and strong. The magnetic pieces stick to the right side of the notebook, thus allowing to play with it on the most uneven surfaces without loosing any piece. Perfect for those long car journeys.

Both puzzles come with 48 challenges, divided into four levels of difficulty and grouped in pairs. The challenges start pretty easy, with most of the edges between the pieces showing. As you progress , however, you'll see that most challenges don't show any inner edges. Some of the puzzles can be a little challenging, but since I'm quite a fan of Tangram puzzles, I found most challenges easy enough to breeze through all of them in no time.

There's a major difference between the classic Tangram an the Tangoes. One of the pieces, the parallelogram, can only be used with its colored side facing up. There's no flipping it here. This, in turn, will reduce the number of possible solutions for each challenge, even though there's still more than one solution for most challenges. This is true only for the Tangoes Paradox, as the Tangoes Animals only have one solution per challenge.

Another interesting fact done in the Paradox puzzle is the inclusion of similar shapes in each challenge. The idea is to have two nearly identical shapes, except for one tiny extra detail. This will make the puzzle more challenging and much more interesting, as you try to assemble both shapes with the same seven pieces. Studying closely the relationship between all the pieces will make this task easier, but until you master this you'll have to sweat a little.

Closing Comments:

I really liked the Tangoes puzzles. They are extremely fun to play with. The magnetic pieces, the convenient design and the additional challenge of the Paradox, my favorite of the two, makes for quite an enjoyable experience. Ready for a Tangoes session?

Availability: The Tangoes are available at most major toy and puzzle stores, like Amazon.

Links:

SmartGames Official Website