Have you ever played with an Elastic Cube? - If your answer is yes, then you'll certainly enjoy the Snake Pool, one of my most recent acquisitions from Brilliant Puzzles.

The Snake Pool uses the same principle of other several puzzles by having a contiguous group of cubes, attached by a string, that you need to rearrange in order to form a desired pattern. The pattern, in this case, is to be able to get all eleven cubes inside the provided frame. It's a bit challenging, and requires some dexterity to keep the already packed cubes from moving while you're attempting to move the others into place.

The design draws attention for its bright colors, especially the red, which is used in the frame and some of the cubes. The color is painted into the wood, which in my opinion is a bad choice, because the other cubes are smudged with red. This'll only get worse with more usage, unless you're planning to get it for collecting purposes only. Other than the color, the puzzle is very well crafted and the concept is really interesting.

The puzzle comes already packaged in its solved state, so if don't like spoilers ask someone to get it out of the frame for you. It's not a big deal if you see the actual solution, because the puzzle has a few possible ones. This way, you can always go for a different challenge.

There are no specific rules to solve the puzzle other than getting all cubes to fit flat inside the frame. However, common sense says that there shouldn't be any string visible from the top. The string is flexible, but don't force it too much if you feel it's getting stretched beyond it's normal state. It's only a sign telling you that that's probably not the proper way to pack it.

Solving it took about 10 minutes. Again, it's a bit challenging at first, because it's not easy to maintain the cubes in a stationary position while you're moving the rest of them, but besides that it's relatively easy. This is rated as a difficulty level 4/5, but for me it was more like a level 3. It really depends on how well you do at packing puzzles.

Solution: Click here to see one of the possible solutions.

Closing Comments:

The Snake Pool is an enjoyable and fun puzzle to solve. The color smudge problem might be a turn off for some collectors, but if you're not picky with this kind of things, go for it. I'd rather have bland colors and a perfect-looking puzzle, but it was still worth a look.

Availability: The Snake Pool puzzle is available at Brilliant Puzzles for just $10.95 USD.