CoCoCross

CoCoCross

So, what, you ask, is a “Rolling Block Brainteaser”? It’s a puzzle in which you roll a block, obviously, from block-face to block-face, across and around a grid. The block and grid are designed with raised ridges and grooves so that each face of the block fits snugly within the grid. The object: to roll the block, vertically or horizontally and always landing flat on your the face, from the designated start position to the designated finish position in no more than the indicated number of rolls. There are 24, two-sided puzzle cards, making 48 different levels of inexorably increasing difficulty.

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.

puzzlesThe 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.

 

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