Over the years I've come to really enjoy puzzles made by BrainWright. They always have these original designs that are quite fun to play with, but also rather challenging. And that's what I look for in a puzzle, really. Cat Stax, created by Bob Ferron, is such a cute and nice puzzle that will delight cat lovers around the world.

The puzzle comes in a travel-like package, which is light and small so you can take it with you to kill some time on a long trip. Inside, 12 different cats await for you to start playing with them. To get you started, 48 challenges divided in four difficult levels promise to keep you busy for quite a while. You can also put your creative skills to the test and create your own puzzles, since there are almost infinite combinations to stack and nest the cats in all sorts of arrangements.

As expected, the 3D puzzles are much harder and complex to solve than their 2D counterparts. Nevertheless, if you solve the puzzles in the correct sequence, they are introduced gradually in difficulty, so it's not like you're thrown an impossible challenge. Since I'm more of a fan of 2D puzzles, I naturally like them better, but I also had fun with the 3D challenges. The only drawback is that, because you don't have a box to place the pieces inside when solving a 3D challenge, it's much more difficult to visualize how to stack the cats together. Other than that, this is a great puzzle.

Closing Comments:

Cat Stax is a really cleverly designed puzzle. As a cat lover myself, I found it very entertaining and challenging enough for my solving skills. If you're not that fond of cats, don't despair, there's also a dog version and a farm animals version.

Availability: You can find the Cat Stax puzzle at PuzzleMaster for $21.99 CAD. Check out other puzzles by BrainWright as well.

Ah, Sliding-Piece puzzles! My Kryptonite... Every time I can get my hands on one of these I feel like a kid again. This is the type of puzzle that I knew of way before starting my puzzle collection. They always fascinated me somehow.

The Tower Puzzle is a superb puzzle, in the sense that it not only has you slide the pieces from the classic arrangement of A to B, but also from A to C and A to D. A slide puzzle with multiple solutions, you say? Count me in...

This is what Russian puzzle designer Vladimir Krasnoukhov came up with for the 37th IPP in Paris, France, in 2017. This is quite an original design for a slide puzzle, and I was excited to have a try. As you may know, the classic slide puzzle has an usual arrangement of 8 pieces laid in a 3x3 grid with an empty space so you can move the pieces around. This time, you do have the same number of pieces, but instead of perfectly square tiles, the Tower Puzzle has three different sized pieces. And this is where it gets complicated.

So, first of all, the design: I really love the design and overall look of the puzzle. The dark color of the tiles contrasts beautifully with the yellow contours of the images of the Eiffel Tower and surrounding buildings. It looks like a nightscape where you only see the silhouettes and nothing else. Really stunning. It measures 10.1cm x 9.3cm (4" x 3.7").

Since the pieces are not the same size, you need a slightly different approach from the usual 3x3 sliding puzzles. But the idea is the same. Get the pieces from one location to the other. If one challenge wasn't enough already, you are given three different tasks, each one moving the Eiffel Tower farther away from its starting position. The first challenge is easy, with only 26 minimum moves. However, the third and most complicated challenge involves a total of 115 moves, so a lot of planning is necessary in order to solve it.

Closing Comments:

I did find the last challenge a bit difficult, but nothing extraordinarily hard or frustrating. If you know how to solve sliding puzzles, you're pretty much in known territory and only a few minutes will separate you from the goal. Nevertheless, it's still great fun to solve it and I highly recommend it for sliding puzzle enthusiasts.

Availability: You can get a copy of the Tower Puzzle from PuzzleMaster for $26.99 CAD. Also, check out other great puzzles by Vladimir Krasnoukhov.