The Modern Art version of Puzzle Blox has already received a Major Fun Award. And the Fine Art Puzzle Blox, which uses the exact same mechanics (130 cubes which can be arranged into six different images, a plastic box within which to assemble the cubes, and posters the size of the box to help you determine what probably goes where), turns out to be as attractive, challenging, and Major Fun award-worthy as the Modern Art version.

There is yet another addition to the line – Disney Puzzle Blox. The mechanics are similar, but the cubes are larger and fewer (63 cubes instead of 130). Though the puzzle is understandably recommended for a younger audience (8 and up), it is enough of a challenge to entice deep parental engagement (which may need to be stifled when the kids are playing with it). There are, as you might have deduced, six different puzzles: Mickey, Goofy, Donald Duck, Mickey and Minnie, Minnie herself, and Mickey and Pluto. The space around the figures has fewer obvious details (so the challenge becomes a bit more interesting) but there are always subtle distinctions – spatters, streaks, and geometric designs – to guide players to puzzle Valhalla.

Though the manufacturer recommends that you place the poster for the particular puzzle you are trying to solve inside the box, we’ve found it easier to tape it to the outside (using only a couple pieces of tape). That way, as you make your way through the puzzle, you can lift the whole thing up, remove the poster, and see if the image beneath the puzzle you’re trying to solve is also correct. It proves not only to be a good clue, but adds to the magic and the fun of the puzzle.

All in all, both are welcome additions to the line, and we applaud its extension. We especially applaud how the concept has been extended downward, to include younger as well as older players (the larger blocks are easier to handle and manipulate and discriminate between, making the puzzle that much more accessible to seniors as well as juniors).

Our kudos to Brainwright. The fun awaits you.

There are currently three Plexi Puzzles offered by Brainwright. They are beautifully made acrylic puzzles, all designed by Kate Jones (an exceptionally devoted designer and producer of truly elegant, and often profoundly puzzling puzzles). They are as much works of art as they are invitations to play.

Each of the three is as major in the fun it offers, each in a different way. They all include a tray (with transparent cover for storage and display), and a booklet of many different puzzles that can be explore with the pieces.

The Iamond Hex Plexi Puzzle (shown) is composed of 12 angled shapes made by combining equilateral triangles in various configurations – similar in conceptual and geometrical design to Pentominoes. The recommended minimal age is 10. I am almost 75. And let me tell you, both myself and my local ten-year-old found the puzzle to be more than sufficiently puzzling.

Then there’s the Roundominoes Plexi Puzzle – also acrylic, also beautifully made and presented with its own storage and assembly tray, offering an even greater variety of different puzzles to explore. This one is composed, as you might guess, of circles. There’s the 7 red singleround pieces (as you might imagine them to be) and the 7 orange doublerounds (two singlerounds connected), and then the 7 blue triplerounds, and an assortment of “bridges” (pairs of purple, orange and green circles with an extra thingy that fits around a round; and one light blue circle with thingy). Because there are so many more puzzles to explore, younger players (the recommended minimal age is 8) and even I found the puzzle more, well, friendly.

Finally, the Plexi XL, a set of 16 pieces built from hexagons. There’s one piece that’s a simple single hexagon, two pieces that are double hexagons, and the rest are “polyhexagons,” the shapes that result from joining sets of three, four or five hexagons in every possible combination. This puzzle is a larger format than the other two. It also has a recommended minimal age of 8. And the variety of puzzles described in the accompanying booklet is the most extensive of all.

These puzzles are, as I’ve tried to imply, not easy. But they are all enticingly beautiful, well-made, and opportunities to get deeply engaged in exploring the many the wonders of mathematical, geometrical and topological connections. For those of us who appreciate this kind of thing, these are about as Major, fun-wise, as you can get.

There are two different blocks – one is shaped like a brick, the other like an arch. The arch-shaped block is chock full of more complex implications, and is used only with the second half of the puzzle deck. Its shape is different enough to make the more advanced puzzles feel almost like an entirely different set of challenges, even though the movement principles are the same.

Like many of the best of such puzzles, CoCoCross is a model for how to structure a good learning experience. Puzzle by puzzle you learn more about the kind of thinking you need to do to figure things out. When you graduate to the advanced level, you apply everything you learned in the first to a whole new set of challenges.

The design of the package is especially appealing. The transparent grid forms the lid of the container in which the cards and puzzle pieces are housed. Because there are only two pieces, aside from the cards, it is wonderfully easy to keep track of everything. And it’s small enough (less than 4×5 inches) to take with you everywhere – in the car, the plane, to the beach and beyond.

In sum, it’s a model of good design and good fun. It’s compact enough to be endearingly convenient, complex enough to stimulate curiosity and invite you to exercise your logical and mathematical skills, varied enough to offer surprise after surprise, and fun enough to make you want to play and play until you master every one of the 48 challenges.

In sum: major fun.

You get 12 cat-like pieces, each of a different color and shape. You get two decks of 24, two-sided cards. One deck is for the puzzles, the other for the solutions. This makes it very easy to control your cheating impulses, or to lose control entirely – which, as you progress through the puzzles, you may in fact do.

Each puzzle shows you a grid and which of the cats you’ll need to fill in the grid, perfectly (no hanging cat parts allowed). This is all fun and familiar to your average cat puzzle-solver, until you arrive at puzzle #7 – the first TWO LAYER cat puzzle, wherein the reason for the name of the game becomes tantalizingly evident. Two layers, as in some cats don’t lie down like the good little puzzle-piece-cats you think they should be. They stand up. And later, you discover that some cats don’t just stand on their feet, but on their back ends or front ends or heads, even. And, later on, by the time you get to puzzle #23, you get three layers of cats! And on and on until you find yourself trying to figure out how to make a three-layer cat stack using all 12 cats!

The puzzle comes in a travel box with a transparent lid (easier to keep track of your cats that way). The manufacturers are quick to note that it you might very well arrive at a totally different, but entirely acceptable solution all on your own, because, as we have all been so oft told, there is more than one way to stack your cats.

As you make use of the two decks (puzzle deck and solution deck) you’ll come to appreciate ingenuity and compassion embodied in this minor, but brilliant innovation.

Cat Stax was invented by Bob Farron and designed by Mike Mendolese. from Brainwright

You are indubitably familiar with our rave review of David Kalvitis’ The Greatest Dot-to-Dot Adventure. I suggest you read the review so you can prepare yourself emotionally for the second coming. Well, the second book in the series.

What seems to us to be consistently amazing is how he keeps coming up with new kinds of dot-to-dot puzzles. Some of the challenges are really challenging. It’s not just dot-to-dot, it’s dot-to-OMG-to-dot. There are four-page puzzles. Three-page puzzles. There’s a puzzle where you connect the coordinates and another where instead of dots you have words, and you connect them alphabetically.

And then there’s the adventure – a picture story that only becomes clear after you’ve completed all the puzzles. One reward after another.

This is the second in Kalvatis’ Dot-to-Dot Adventure series. The first also earned a Major Fun award.

And in all of his work, it’s quality of the drawings themselves that makes the fun so major: always surprisingly masterful, and deeply satisfying when you complete them – satisfying enough to entice your resident artist (my wife) to making that extra artist effort to color them in.