Wooden Puzzle Cube

Both the Mayo Clinic and WebMD have recently reported on studies that suggest that activities which exercise our brains, like puzzles and games, can help prevent future memory loss.

When I had my first child, a son now 15 years old, I remember reading that you should stimulate your child's mind as much as possible before the age of 3 in order to develop strong neural pathways. After a certain age, scientists said, the brain stops growing. While this is still excellent advice, medical researchers have since discovered that is not accurate and that even adults can stimulate new brain cells by taxing their brain through mental exercise. Challenging your brain with even simple puzzles, knitting, or computer work can all help stimulate the brain and forestall dementia or memory loss.

The Soma Cube was created by a mathematician and scientist inspired by a presentation on quantum mechanics. That's right, the Soma puzzle is really a math puzzle (don't tell the kids). The Soma is made of seven pieces, each piece being a combination of 3 or 4 squares of equal size. The pieces can be arranged in 240 unique arrangements to form a cube. Now, just because there are 240 answers doesn't mean this is easy. It's difficulty rating, in terms of puzzles, is considered "demanding".

"Problems worthy of attack,
Prove their worth by hitting back."
Piet Hein

A wooden puzzle cube can be made even more complicated by changing the shape of the pieces or increasing the number of pieces involved. An offshoot of the Soma cube, wooden cube puzzles might have triangular edges to the inner pieces or fewer answers than the Soma cube making the puzzle more challenging.

Consider these various levels of difficulty carefully when choosing your next wooden puzzle cube. The easier a puzzle, the earlier you'll have a sense of accomplishment. If you're looking for something to do while sitting on a conference call at the office or just enjoy doing puzzles at home to relax, a puzzle with many solutions will give you hours and hours of entertainment. More difficult puzzles, however, may frustrate us but they stretch our minds by forcing us to use logic and reason to find solutions. Maybe it takes longer to solve a more complicated puzzle, but in the end, we're smarter for having taken the time.

Photo used under Creative Commons from hlkljgk.

More Wooden Puzzle Cubes

As I mentioned, a wooden puzzle cube can become more challenging if the shape of the pieces is modified. Following are examples of wooden puzzle cubes in four difficulty ratings.

These images link to a Canadian puzzle site with loads of the coolest puzzles around. I do not sell these puzzles directly but wanted to present an option for finding these particular puzzles because I think they're pretty, darn intriguing.

Cubetresor

Block or Cube

Deja Vu

Cube 1

Prismastar

Crossex

Flattrick

Numero Caro

Duodeciburr

Coming of Age

Wedge Cube Too

Handed Halfcubes

The Soma Cube is made up of 27 equally shaped cubes. These 27 cubes are combined into seven unique shapes, one shape containing three cubes and the remaining six shapes each containing four cubes. Following are the seven unique shapes:



Piece 1Piece 2Piece 3Piece 4









Piece 5Piece 6Piece 7

Now, think about the cube shaped items you might have in your home or items from which you can make these cubes: kids' blocks, game die, wood scraps, cardboard, posterboard. Create 27 equally shaped cubes and glue them together in the shape of the seven Soma pieces and you've made your own Soma cube! This is a great project for kids.

Reportedly, there is, however, only one solution which will allow you to balance the cube on a stand supporting only the bottom, middle square. Can you figure out that particular solution?