When it come to beautiful, well-made jigsaw puzzles, few companies have been able to match the quality of Ravensburger puzzles. The pieces are cleanly cut, unique, and made of thick, linen-finished, glare-free cardboard stock. The prints are vividly colored and in sharp focus. And the adult puzzle collection ranges from 300 to 32,000 pieces.

Ravensburger uses what it calls its “Softclick-Technology” to guarantee a “100% interlocking mechanism for the world’s most optimal fit of individually formed puzzle pieces, resulting in an absolutely smooth puzzle.” Instead of snapping together, pieces fit so well that they seem to glide into each other, effortlessly. And there’s no denying that the experience of putting a Ravensburger puzzle together is satisfying and rewarding.

But the fun of putting together a good jigsaw puzzle is only somewhat dependent on any of those factors. Often, the image itself – the detail, the complexity, the variety – is what determines how challenging the experience will be, and how fun.

The Vintage Flora puzzle is a very good example of a puzzle that is especially pleasing to solve, and just challenging enough to keep you going until you’ve placed the very last piece. Notice that the puzzle is divided into 24 squares, each (except for the last) devoted to a different letter of the alphabet, each with a different and highly textured background, each with its own border. For those of us who like to put the edges of a puzzle together before we fill in the rest, solving Vintage Flora is very close to an apotheosis.

Though we recommend Vintage Flora especially to the casual puzzle solver, the quality of the image and design makes it something that anyone who likes a good puzzle would appreciate.

Ubongo Extreme (one of several versions of the Ubongo puzzle/game) is a game for 2-4 players who are racing each other to solve puzzle cards showing different arrays of hexagons.

There are 4 different colors, and the pieces from each color are numbered from 1-13. When you first get the game, the pieces get punched out, with die-cut, chadless elegance, from a single sheet.

The “puzzle cards” (54 of them) are two-sided. One side shows a puzzle that requires 3 pieces to solve, the other, 4. Which of your pieces you use to solve the puzzle is indicated in one of the corners of the puzzle card. In each corner a different combination of pieces is required, depending on which color you are using. So, you get 4 different puzzles on each side, and two different levels of difficulty.

You also get a baggie of different color plastic jewels, an approximately 2-minute sand timer, and 4 large hexagonal tokens. You’re going to need to read the rules to figure out what to do with these pieces. However, what you’ll find especially delightful and inviting is that you don’t have to read any of the rules to start having puzzling fun. This, alone, makes the game worthy of collective recognition and delight. It’s actually self-explanatory. Pick a set of pieces. Pick a card. Decide whether you want to solve the . 3- or 4-piece side. And, when you’re all ready, go for it!

Later on, when you’re ready to get more or less competitive about the whole thing, you can read the rules, which, it turns out, are well-written and illustrated.

The 4 tokens and 9 of each color gem are placed in the lovely, black, drawstring, gem-and-token bag. Nine sapphires and 9 pieces of amber are placed in the center of the playing area, the rest go into the bag. Players select their token from the gem-and-token bag, which determines what color pieces they are to use.

The gems are used to keep score. There are 4 different colors: 9 rubies and 9 emeralds, 18 sapphires and 18 pieces of amber. The sapphires are worth 3 points, and presented to the first player to, well, Ubongo (i.e. announce and demonstrate th g – a gem that can be worth from 1 to 4 points. The second player gets an amber gem (a one-pointer) and a free pick. The third and fourth players each get a pick from the bag.

Players each pick their puzzle card. Turn the timer over, and the competition begins.

Everyone is rewarded for solving the puzzle before the time runs out. The first and second players to succeed get more, but the luck of the draw determines how much more. The element of luck keeps people from taking things too personally, and makes the whole thing that much more fun. Since each player can choose to try for a 3- or 4-piece puzzle, each has significant control over the amount of challenge. Given this and the scoring mechanism, it is easy to fine tune the game to help level the playing field. Players who are exceptionally adept can be encouraged to select only the more challenging side of the puzzle cards. Players who have too many more points can be consider not drawing a second time from the gem bag.

Designed by Grzegorz Rejchtman, Ubongo Extreme is one version of a series of Ubongo games available from Z-Man games. Everything about the game is well-designed – the rules, the box, the pieces. There are even little ziplock baggies included so that you can store the sorted piece sets between games. Ah, the sheer, carefully honed fun of it all!

Remember the kids’ game called Perfection? That, in a very far-fetched way, is Pajaggle. Only not.

Pajaggle is far more fetching. And it’s not just for kids. It is a precision made, laser-cut, acrylic puzzle/game. The pieces look a little like gears – very fine-toothed gears, some round-toothed, some very, very pointy. Some larger, some smaller, some with other pieces inside. There are a total of 61 pieces, no two of which are alike. The challenge – fit the pieces into their corresponding sockets. Which reminds you, correctly but vaguely, of that round-peg, square-hole thing.

Eventually, of course, almost anybody can solve a Pajaggle. It’s not that kind of puzzle. It’s the kind of puzzle you time yourself solving. Which explains the precision electronic timer included in every set. The more you Pajaggle, the less time it takes. It’s an oddly informative fun to watch yourself improve – not that it means anything about you or your skills at anything (unless you work on an assembly line) – but that you can actually see yourself learn and experience yourself having fun doing it. And when you Pajaggle with others (a few others, even one other), you can learn how much better you can do, and how much fun it can be to Pajaggle together.

Pajaggle is “museum priced” [deservedly so: all that beautifully hand-made, laser-cut acrylic; the added niceties like the timer, the "Pajaggle Throw," the backpackable bag for the board, the bag for the pieces; the "Pajiggler" rod for dislodging Pajiggles, and, of course, all those games].

“Pajaggle Throw?” you ask, wonderingly. Part of the art of Pajaggling requires that you begin with an empty board. To empty the board, without losing any of the pieces, is somewhat of an art in itself. You take your Pajaggle Throw, wrap the board in it, turn the board upside down so as to rest it on the drop cloth, lift the board, and behold, the majority of the pieces are now perfectly dislodged. For the few that aren’t, there’s your handy dePajaggling rod (Pajiggler) which fits in the conveniently provided holes in each of the sockets – also handy for removing Pajiggles (incorrectly placed Pajaggles).

There’s only one way to solve Pajaggle. But there are apparently endless ways to play with it. You can time yourself. You can time you and someone else or maybe two or three someone else’s all playing together. You can compete, giving each player an equal amount of pieces and seeing who can get rid of theirs first. All with only one Pajaggle board.

Which makes it as fun as a solitaire game as a family game as a party game.

Ultimately, however, you’re going to have to accept the truth that the more boards you have, the more games you can play or invent, and the more people you can involve. Reverse Chaos, for example, can be played with teams of maybe two or three players playing on maybe two or three or four boards, all at the same time. You put the boards in the center of the table, and the pieces in front of each team. Anybody can put any piece wherever it fits, despite what board it fits into. The object is to be the first team to use up all your pieces. You can get very competitive, or you can forget the competition all together and go for a new world record.

Designed by the Pajaggle Team, the puzzle/game is as lovely to display as it is to fun to play. When you’re finished playing, put a solved Pajaggle on your coffee table, with the timer nearby, and watch, smugly, as your guests get sucked in to some seriously shared delight.

Re. the Pajaggle/Perfection comparison, Pajaggle Team member Bill Witt comments: “Perfection, that’s a game of failure. Pajaggle is a game of success. Moreover, perfection is one game. Pajaggle is an endless array of games.” Excellent and most relevant distinctions. The very reason why Pajaggle received the Major Fun award.

5/5/11

After two months of extensive Pajaggling, after managing to shave actual minutes off our combined Pajaggle-solving time (which reminds me, we discovered that Pajaggling is as much fun when we solve it together as when by ourselves – another way of playing with a puzzle that seems to be unique to Pajaggle), after loaning a Pajaggle out to each of our Tasters (and asking them again and again to give the Pajaggles back) Pajaggle becomes the first puzzle game to receive the Major Fun Keeper award.

As an impressionable youth, I learned that nothing can be “more unique” or “uniquer” than unique. Things are either unique or not. And then I encounter The Baffler, purportedly “the most unique puzzle ever.” Granted, to state that something is “most unique” is a blatant misuse of language. Further granted, it is an impossible claim to verify without an exhaustive exploration of every puzzle known (and unknown) to all puzzling kind. And yet, there is something, shall we say “significantly unique” about the Baffler puzzles.

There are currently three such puzzles available from the bountiful puzzle presses of Ceaco. They are each very well-made. Thick, high-quality pieces; each piece of such a unique shape and design it’s tempting to think of each as uniquer than the other.  The pieces fit together precisely inside a thick, 7.5-inch board. There are, depending on which of the three you purchase, either 67, 68, or 78 pieces.

If you have purchased the Spiral of Archimedes, you will probably find yourself trying to solve the puzzle from the inside (the center of the spiral) out. Not that this is the best approach, but rather the most intuitive, given the spirality of it all. On the other hand, should you have bought yourself the Nonagon puzzle, you might consider the outside-in approach more pragmatic. In neither case would you necessarily be right. In all cases, you will, at one time or another, find yourself appreciating the everso compassionately included picture of the completed puzzle, shown in all its carefully outlined and fully-solved glory.

These are good, fun puzzles – pleasing to the fingers, enticing to the eye, engaging to the mind. There are few enough pieces to make you feel that, in time, you will be able to solve the puzzles. The differences between the pieces are subtle enough to keep you surprised, and yet evident enough to make you fairly sure of your progress.

It is clear that the Ceaco people appreciate the artistry of puzzle designer, Chris Yates. They take obvious pride in associating his name with the puzzles. This says a lot about the integrity of Ceaco and unique playfulness of Mr. Yates’ creations. Maybe not uniquest, but unique enough, and, even more importantly, fun. Pleasingly, puzzlingly fun.

Berndt Eisenstein’s Pack & Stack is a family game requiring luck, speed, spatial perception, planning, and, yes, packing and stacking.

You need three-six players, from, say, eight years-old up, and 20, maybe 40 minutes.

You get Truck Cards (30 of them), each showing the outline of a “cargo area” and a number describing how high the truck can be packed. You also get 96 wooden pieces, whose properties will remind you of those Cuisinaire Rods kids use when studying arithmetic in those enlightened, workshop-oriented elementary schools. The smallest is a white cube, then comes the gray pieces which are exactly two white-cubes in length, then the orange, which are three cubes long, the four-cube long green and the five-cube purple. You will almost immediately notice that if you pick the wrong-sized cargo area, your purple pieces won’t fit, and maybe not even your greens. Since you can pack your cargo rods on end as well as on their sides, a truck with a relatively narrow cargo area, but capable of carrying cargo stacked, say, 4 units high (the number on the card indicates stack-height), you might still be able to get most of your cargo on the truck.

You also get cardboard coin-like point markers. 75 points worth of these get distributed to each player.

The game is played in rounds. In the first, you roll five dice. These dice tell you how many of each size cargo you’ll be transporting. Dice have blank sides, and when you roll a blank you don’t use any of that size cargo. So you roll, and you gather your cargo accordingly.

The next round is about picking trucks. First, you take two truck cards from the truck card pile (if there are three or four players – just one truck each if there are five or six people playing). You put them face down in front of you. Then, at the same time, everyone flips their truck cards over for everyone to see. Now comes the mad grab part. As quickly as possible, you have to decide which of the truck cards is right for the amount of cargo you’ve collected. It’s, of course, next to impossible to be absolutely sure everything will fit, but you have to select something, and you have to do it before someone else takes the one you need. Of course, if you don’t see anything, you can always take the top card from the truck pile, but that’s risky in deed.

Now for the packing. You can take your time. All you have to do is figure out how to position all those pieces so that they fit in the allotted truck space. Here’s where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, or the wood meets the cardboard, depending on your perspective. For every white-cube-sized space that you don’t fill in on your truck, you have to pay one point. And for every white-cube-sized piece that is left over you have to pay two points. O, the sheer anguish, and yet the potential glee of it all.

Points are paid, and the next round is played, and then the next, and then the next, until some poor player ends up pointless.

Pack & Stack is primarily a perceptual puzzle. It is, to say the least, challenging to try to imagine how your randomly selected assortment of pieces will fit within the dimensions of any one of a randomly selected assortment of cargo spaces. I am not sure what such a mind-straining exercise prepares you for in real life, but it is certainly a challenge, and most definitely intriguing. Eisenstein was both clever and compassionate in having luck and speed play such a large role in the game – they add to the excitement of the game, and take away from any performance anxiety one might have, as one often does, when playing against family members. Especially should one or two of said members be of the competitive persuasion. Taster Chris notes that “Pack & Stack is no less fun to lose than it is to win – of course, that’s coming from someone who hasn’t actually experienced winning since right after we bought it at GenCon last year.”

The rules suggest some variations, most having to do with truck-picking and piece collecting. These prove just enough to encourage the development of your own set of house rules – always a good opportunity to adjust the level of competition to more realistic heights.

Pack & Stack comes to us from Mayfair Games.

It is always a challenge to review a jigsaw puzzle – primarily because so much depends on personal taste. So, if you don’t like challenging jigsaw puzzles (1000 pieces) that exercise your sensitivity to color, pattern, and design as well as shape, then maybe this particular puzzle isn’t what you would call Major Fun. Not to worry, the manufacturer, Ceaco, has a significantly vast and varied selection of puzzles of all levels of difficulty, and we can, with confidence, guarantee that if you like jigsaw puzzles at all, you’ll find something very much worth the time you are willing to while away in the name of puzzling fun.

Our Chief Puzzle Taster, (my wife, Rocky) is an artist. Like most of our Tasters, she has a relatively light-hearted approach to puzzles, tending to appreciate the art as much as the puzzling. Which perhaps explains why she really liked The Fiddler. It’s part of Ceaco’s Mosaic line – images that are created by assembling selections from the works of other artists. (Take a look at this hi-res image of the Fiddler puzzle for a better understanding of what you’d be playing with.)

Though, when viewed close-up, the effect of the mosaic is to present a more complex image, she discovered that it helped her find pieces by searching for a particular style of artwork, while, at the same time, sharpening her appreciation for how different artists work.

Her strategy for solving this puzzle underwent several changes as she progressed. First, she would just pick up any arbitrary piece and try to figure out where it goes. Later, she separated the red and blue color pieces. Later still, she separated pieces into four kinds of shapes to help her fill in the gaps. It wasn’t until she finished the whole puzzle that she could decipher many of the images used in creating the mosaic. And, even after the whole puzzle was solved, she was still able to spend considerable time exploring (and indeed marveling at) how the person who created the mosaic from such disparate parts was able to create a picture which, when seen from across the room, looked as realistic as a photo.

There’s a lot more to like about this puzzle, and, in deed, all of the Ceaco puzzles we’ve so far tried. The pieces lock together well enough for you to feel that you’ve actually found a fit (even when the visual cues are not as powerful as you’d like). The colors (always an important factor when doing jigsaws) remain vivid throughout. Both of these factors add greatly to the fun and aesthetic of the jigsaw experience.

Surprisingly, the Fiddler is similar, in challenge, that is, to the Wedding , one of Ceaco’s “Dream Day” series. This series, rather than presenting mosaics composed of the work of different artists, shows the work of one artist who has included 18 different “surprise” images within the context of the painting. These 18 discrete objects, like the different art styles in the Fiddler, provide useful visual clues while she was solving the puzzle.

These differences within a puzzle go a long way towards making the puzzle more fun, and alleviating much of the severity of the challenge – even though it has 1000 pieces. A puzzle like Motor Cycle Race, which also has 1000 pieces, turns out to be much more challenging – simply because the image is stylistically so similar throughout.

Ceaco’s puzzle boxes are designed for easy recycling. They open by tearing a pull tab. Though they close well enough, it does make you have to be a little more careful when you get ready to disassemble and store the puzzle. It might be a good idea to keep the plastic bag the puzzle comes in, and to tape it closed before you put it all back into the box.

Might I suggest that before you read further you refer to a review I wrote about two years ago, called “Dot’s Amazing“? Apparently, I just might.

Today, I am pleased to inform you that since that review or Dot-to-Dotty friend David Kalvitis has produced an impressively playworthy passel of new, and arguably more amazing Dot-to-Dot books, introducing yet more puzzling works of dot-connecting art.

With his most recent additions, the variety of puzzles now includes: 2 page spreads with up to 1,490 dots, ABC Sets where you have to connect labeled sets in numerical order,  Alpha Dots where, instead of Dots, you connect words in alphabetical order; the significantly challenging Arrows puzzles where you navigate thru an entire page of arrows, the often exacerbating Compass puzzles where you connect dots according to compass directions (make one mistake and you’re likely to find yourself connecting the dots on your walls), the Symbols puzzles where you connect different sets of symbols, and the Numbers puzzles where you find yourself attempting to connect an entirely dotless page of many, many numbers.

If you haven’t tried any of his amazing Connect-the-Dots puzzles, don’t worry, no matter which of his now 10 different books you purchase, you will find yourself gleefully connected to a series of satisfying and always surprising challenges that redefine the very nature of the Connect-the-Dots puzzle. If you have already gone through a book or two or several many, then you’ll need no further incentive to explore his latest contribution to Connect-the-Dotly lore. Kalvitis’ puzzles are no mere child’s play (though some mere children might think so), they’re art. And they’re fun, too.

There are three, concentric spheres. The two inner spheres turn surprisingly freely (often a bit more surprisingly than you’d expect). They each have a weight on one end, and a hole on the other. There are 6 balls, each of a different color, that begin their journey on the inner sphere.

By careful, patient turning of the outer sphere, you can get a ball to roll out of the inner sphere to the middle sphere, and then from there to the outer sphere, and finally to the pit of the corresponding color. There are two knobs that you can use to secure a ball once it has reached its goal. More or less.

Zoe, 13-year-old, Rubik’s Cube-solving daughter of one of our Tasters solved it in about 90 minutes. But for kids and your casual puzzler, it’s a lovely little thing. An exploration of balance and physics, observation and steadiness. Fun to play with. Fun to share with friends. It’s all one piece, so it’s perfect for a library collection. Not at all in the same league, puzzle-wise, as Rubik’s Cube; but most definitely worth lusting after.

Dig It and Oops! are two of the new puzzle sets recently released by Foxmind. They both use an ingeniously designed carrying/storing/playing case, and are each collections of 50 puzzles involving a set of pieces which have to be moved from the starting position to the solution.

Dig It is a bit like Pentominoes, using pieces of different shapes and size. In addition to these pieces (made of satisfyingly weighty, pleasingly colorful, translucent plastic), there are pieces shaped like bones. In each puzzle, the pieces are positioned over a bone or two. The puzzle is to figure out how to move the pieces around so as to reveal the bone(s). It’s a bit like being a dog, digging for a bone. Hence the doggy graphics on the cover. In addition to the collection of pieces, there’s a puzzle book, spiral bound, with its own stand. It’s designed so that the solution to one puzzle is on the back of the previous puzzle, so all you have to do to get a hint or check your result is turn the book around. The puzzles are graded, one-paw puzzles being significantly easier to solve than four-paw puzzles.

Oops has a magician theme. There are 9 pieces. One is shaped like a hat. Another like a magician’s head. The rest look a bit like sailor hats. There are 4 colors of sailor hat pieces: blue, red, green, and yellow. Pieces are set up according to a diagram – a different piece (or two) on each space – a different set up on each page in the puzzle book. You can move a piece one space either vertically or horizontally, as long as it lands on top of another piece. Which makes it a stack of two pieces. Which can only move two spaces, horizontally or vertically, as long as that stack lands on top of yet another piece. And so on and so on, a three-stack moving three spaces, a four-stack four, until, with your final move, the hat is on the bottom, the rest of the pieces are on top of the hat, and the head is on top of them all.

The carrying/storage/playing case for both puzzle/games is in itself magical. You slide the cover to the left or right, revealing a compartment. And, once the cover has been repositioned, you can turn it over to become the playing board. It’s sturdily built of brightly colored plastic.

Each of these puzzles is an investment in fun. They’re fun to touch, fun to try to solve. The more challenging puzzles are usually ingeniously so – offering unexpected variations that sometimes redefine your whole understanding of what this puzzle is about. You can cheat as often as you need to (just turn the book around for the answer). You can skip to more difficult puzzles, essentially designing your own curriculum of challenge.

Don’t be fooled by the child-appealing design. As you progress through the puzzle booklet, even the mature puzzler will discover most definitely adult-worthy challenge.

As a teacher, these puzzles are a paradigm of good curriculum design – always inviting further and deeper exploration, always just as challenging as the student is ready for. As a player, they are invitations to mastery and delight. Well-made, cleverly-designed, continually fascinating, engaging the eye and mind, providing intelligent, functional fun.

Dizios is a highly visual tile game that plays with color the way most tile games play with shape or number.

The 70 thick, cardboard tiles are matched edge to edge. Some edges are all one color. Many more are two colors. Each tile is worth a certain number of points (indicated by dots in the center of the tile). Players get points, not for the tile they place, but for the tiles they connect to.

Dizios can be played by 1-4 players, of a recommended age of 6 or older. There’s very little strategy involved, so the game is easily accessible to younger children.

To play with more than one player, the special “starter tile” is placed in the center of the table. The rest of the tiles are placed face down, mixed, and then set aside or built into draw piles. Each player selects 4 tiles. For the rest of the game, players take turns, matching a tile on to the expanding grid, if possible; taking score (by counting the dots that appear on the adjacent tiles), and then picking a new tile from the face-down tiles. If no match is possible, the player must forfeit his turn.

The score pad is designed so any player who can count can keep score.

As a solitaire, Dizios offers a surprising variety of challenges. You can try to make a “vortex” (an array of connected tiles) of all one color, you can try for a vortex that is 8×8, 7×10, 5×14. Or, you can arrange try to arrange the tiles so they create the highest possible score. The solitaire versions greatly extend the fun of the game, and could easily lead a moderately creative player to develop more interesting variations of the competitive game.

Dizios is an easy game to learn. The visual challenge is easy to understand, intriguing enough to entice a 6-year-old, attractive and complex to engage the full attention of adults.

It is like dominoes only insofar as there are tiles that get matched – which makes the game that much easier to understand. But it is a very different game. Unique. Visually pleasing. Well made. Only lightly competitive. Intriguing (especially the solitaire versions) enough for serious adult contemplation. Inviting enough to engage the whole family. You can play in teams. You can play by yourself. You can make up your own challenge. Fun. Major FUN.