The IQ Fit - The L Challenge

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The IQ Fit is a series of colorful puzzles by Mi-Toys. Each puzzle presents you with many challenges using different color combinations. These puzzles are designed by Y. Gong, but knowing his shady practices of altering the designs of other renowned designers ever-so-slightly in order to avoid copyright violation, I wouldn't hold my breath as to the authorship of these IQ Fit puzzles as well. Maybe I'm being a little unfair, but once you go that road you can't ask for respect from the puzzle community.

Design authorship apart, The L Challenge looks interesting enough, and the bright colors make it stand among other more bland colorless puzzles.  The pieces are made of hardwood and painted in four different colors. The build quality is satisfying, considering its low price. Each color represents a different shape, so you have four identical L-shaped pieces for each of the four colors (green, yellow, red, blue).

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The puzzle comes neatly packed in a tray, but unfortunately it's made of paper. In this case, a wooden tray would've made a bigger difference in the presentation. In the end, you have to keep the paper tray, because otherwise you don't have anything to keep the pieces organized.

The L Challenge comes with 24 "different" challenges, but from what I've seen, they're not that different from each other (difficulty wise and in variety). Essentially, there are five different shapes you can build with the pieces. There are various solutions for each shape with distinct color combinations, but they're quite easy to solve and don't seem challenging at all. Honestly, I don't understand why it's rated as a difficulty level 10/10. I managed to solve several of the 24 challenges within 5 minutes, and the rest is just more of the same, so the variety and novelty factor wears off pretty quickly. You can try to solve four shapes at a time with all 16 pieces, like the photo below.

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Closing Comments:

The L Challenge proved to be a bit of a disappointment. Yes, it looks cool with all the colorful pieces, but it leaves an underwhelming feeling for a packing puzzle fan like me. The challenges can be an incentive to keep playing, but bear in mind that they won't get harder as you try to solve them all.

Availability: You can get a copy of The L Challenge at PuzzleMaster for about $11 CAD. The others in the IQ Fit series are also available.

Challenges: