Snow Mystery

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I'm back to the Twisty Puzzles, and this time I have a very cool little one, the Snow Mystery. It was designed by Leslie Li from Very Puzzles and it's classified as a dihedral puzzle. It is closely related to the Rubik's UFO, although the mechanism is completely different. Solving wise, I believe the Snow Mystery is easier to solve as well.

The colorful design of the puzzle and its snowflake shape captivated my attention right away. Usually, I'm easily thrown off by the extreme difficulty of most Twisty Puzzles, mainly because I'm not very good at solving them and hate to learn algorithms, but this one seemed simple enough to try. I was able to solve the UFO in a relatively short time and didn't find it that much challenging, so I figured this one was right up my alley. It's quite small compared to other Twistys though, with a diameter of about 7.5cm (3").

The puzzle consists of two layers with six rotating arms. Each arm has the same color on the front and back, and after you mix it up, you have to return each arm to its corresponding color. In addition to the rotating arms the two layers can freely rotate horizontally. It's a little difficult to rotate the layers at first, because the puzzle can easily lock-up if the arms are not fully aligned. A simple way to manipulate it is by handling it with your fingers in the spaces between the arms. That way, you avoid even touching the arms and prevent lock-ups.

The Snow Mystery comes packaged unstickered, so you have to do it by yourself. Don't worry, you don't have to cut anything, because each color sheet you'll be using is already pre-cut with the exact shapes. You'll be needing six different colors for the puzzle, but luckily, if you don't like some of the colors you see in mine there are a total of ten colored sheets included, so you can choose any combination of six colors you like. As you can see in mine, the center of the puzzle has a seventh color, with an eighth on the back. This is completely optional though. If you prefer to leave the center blank, you can do so. It's merely for aesthetic purposes.

The solving process, as I was expecting was rather simple. Logic alone, without any use of algorithms is enough to solve it. It's not very challenging, but still tricky as with most Twistys. If you're an experienced solver, you won't find it much fun, so it's basically a collectible.

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Closing Comments:

The Snow Mystery, despite being very easy to solve is a great puzzle to add to the long Twisty family. In a category of puzzles where "similar" is a frequent adjective, I found it to be quite original and unique. Highly recommended to any Twisty aficionado.

Availability: You can get the Snow Mystery at PuzzleMaster for $15 CAD.