Anybody knows anything about this new puzzle?

http://www.elogiq.com/cmetrick.html

The only thing i know about this puzzle, is that i just bought one ! (hehe)

Michael

Seems to be based on the following patent:
Puzzle
Patent Number: US2004000756
Publication date: 2004-01-01
Inventor(s): ROM DROR (US)
Applicant(s): PROSOFT SOFTWARE INC (US)

How about this one?

http://www.crossteaser.com/Crossteaser/html/framex.html

I wonder. The Crossteaser looks very similar. Has anyone been able to get hold of one of this?

You can deduce the internal mechanism from clues on the outside of the puzzle. Hidden under the plastic are little gears with spokes on them which allow the piece they meet to turn in tandem with them in one direction and spin freely in the other. The overall movement is that all three pieces in any row or any column can be made to rotate in tandem in the direction which that row or column goes.

It's a fairly simple puzzle, but is a true twisty puzzle and the solution has the insightful quality which makes solving twisty puzzles so interesting. It also involves the very interesting group of rotating a cube in 3-space, and is probably very good for teaching people 3D visualization. I worry about this puzzle's fiddle factor - you're mushing around spheres, which it's hard to get a good grip on, and getting the snap-to on this puzzle to work well is difficult.

Kudos to the inventor. I tried to come up with a puzzle along this lines and didn't come up with this mechanism. It's very clever.

Crossteaser is sort of a Cmetrick and 15 puzzle mashed together. It's much more difficult to solve, and has a much simpler mechanism. It's also probably much nicer to fiddle with, but I haven't gotten my hands on either.

Another note about this puzzle: The proper size for this mechanism is probably 2x2, rather than 3x3. The 2x2 and 3x3 are almost exactly the same level of difficulty, and the 2x2 would be much easier to engineer with good fiddle factor, since it would have much larger balls and only a single gear to give snap-to for each row.

Most puzzles have their appropriate size, above which they simply become larger, instead of harder. In fact, they usually become easier, because you have more room to move around. Larger puzzles are also more intimidating, and hence less addictive, to neophytes.

I would not call Crossteaser similar. It's more like rolling cubes, but with the mechanism that keeps it all together. In Crossteaser 3-D crosses do change location, whereas in Cmetrik the balls don't.