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(More customer reviews)My 11 year old son got a 36 cube for his birthday and played with it for many hours. From that standpoint, it's a reasonable toy. I found it interesting to think about just how difficult a puzzle this is. There are 6 different colors and each color has 6 pieces of 6 different heights. At first thought, there could be a huge number of possibilities but there are also posts that the pieces have to sit on and they constrain the possible locations of the colored pieces. The next paragraph of this review contains something that many would consider a spoiler but I feel it needs to be said. If you plan to buy this puzzle for someone else and have no intention of trying to solve it yourself, you should read on. If you think a good puzzle is one that is easy to understand but a challenge to solve, like a rubic's cube, you might want to read on because you might not like this puzzle.
ThinkFun describes this puzzle as having an Aha moment when solving it. There are many types of Aha moments, like the moment you realize a new way to deduce a value in Sudoku, or, when you realize you have been betrayed by someone you trusted. I enjoy the first type but not the second. Unfortunately, I consider the Aha moment in this puzzle to be in the second category. With this hint, some may want to stop reading here and take the challenge this puzzle offers.
After wondering how many combinations there really are in this puzzle, I decided to write a computer program to explore its possibilities. My program determined that there were no solutions. I checked my logic carefully and there were no mistakes. This prompted me to do a quick web search and I found that the Aha moment in the solution is when you realize that this puzzle is not what it first appears to be. One would naturally assume that all the pieces of the same length are identical but they are not! To hide this fact, unlike most puzzles, this puzzle does not come from the factory in the solved state. Had it come solved, people would realize that some of the pieces were in places where they shouldn't fit. This left me feeling that Think Fun cheated. It's the most challenging puzzle in the world because, if you don't realize there's a trick to it, it's impossible! I now view it as a practical joke and not a puzzle. Once you realize its secret, it's not an extremely difficult puzzle. After adjusting for the secret, my computer program solved it after placing under 2000 pieces. Unlike Rubic's cubes and Sudoku puzzles, I doubt if there is an elegant way to solve this one so it's not a very enjoyable puzzle.
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ThinkFun 36 CubeHow many towers can you place?Full on its mission to empower the world to become better thinkers, ThinkFun has come through with the greatest challenge yet, 36 Cube!Start by removing the towers from the base. Your goal is to place the towers, following two simple rules: there must be only one of each colored tower in every row and column, and the towers must fit into the base to form a perfect cube with all the towers being the same height. Sound simple?Think again! For 1 single player, ages 8 and up.Contents:1 game base, 36 colored tower puzzle pieces.
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