A Shining City on Your Desktop
Written: Mar 26 '06 (Updated Apr 05 '06)
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Pros: Incredibly cool-looking, inexpensive and fun gift idea for the adult or kid who has everything
Cons: Highly limited replayability
The Bottom Line: Cool-looking, mildly challenging puzzle. A great gift idea for city-loving puzzlers young and old.
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| theeye's Full Review: City Puzzle By Think Fun |
My regular readers are familiar with my ongoing love affair with ThinkFun, the maker of a line of deviously clever solitaire puzzles. We buy them for our five-year-old son, but many of them offer challenging fun to adults as well.
During a recent visit to the suburban home of some friends who clearly still maintain a decades-long nostalgic connection to their New York City days, we happened to spot a very cool-looking, cast metal cityscape puzzle scattered about on their mantelpiece. The six nicely weighted, chrome-plated pieces featured three-dimensional representations of city blocks, complete with skyscrapers, green park areas and all the architectural diversity of lower Manhattan.
Very clearly, the six pieces were meant to fit neatly into the stainless steel base (about three and a half inches square) into which they had been rather inadequately poured by the last would-be puzzle solver. I'm not sure which of us grabbed it off the mantelpiece first, but my husband, our son and I spent much of the remainder of the visit vying for it and obsessively playing urban planner while resisting the determined attempts of other family members to wrest control over it. The combination of a puzzle, a very cool look and a New York City theme was simply irresistible.
Just as I was thinking that a puzzle like this would be right up ThinkFun's alley, someone discovered the puzzle's original packaging off in a corner of the room. My favorite toy manufacturer unsurprisingly appears to be several steps ahead of me. City Puzzle is, in fact, ThinkFun's debut offering in the executive desk toy area. And a brilliant move it is.
I did manage to solve the puzzle before we left our friends' home, though our son was still stumped and very disappointed at not having enough time to finish it. Naturally, I went online once we got home and placed an order. When it arrived, my husband and I had a chance to play with it first and compared notes on the solutions.
When we gave it to The Kid, who was eager to see if he could finally solve it, my husband gave him a one word clue. On the strength of that single word and with a little thought and experimentation, The Kid was able to solve the puzzle inside of five minutes. (This, by the way, is the part of the review in which I brag about my clever son. You didn't think I'd forget to do that, did you?)
After you've bought the puzzle (you know you want to) and have solved it, you can follow the link in the footnote below to learn what that one-word hint was. I know you won't follow the link before you've solved the puzzle yourself. That, of course, would be cheating.
City Puzzle doesn't offer quite the endless hours of challenge and diversion that most of ThinkFun's puzzles provide. This is not a multi-level brainteaser; it's more akin to those blacksmith/tavern puzzles in which you try to disentangle a ring from a seemingly intractable metal contraption. Once you understand the solution, the challenge is over.
And, in fact, the puzzle itself is much easier to solve than most tavern puzzles. Once you get past the deliberate diversion of the complex architectural detail and realize that it's only the footprints of the pieces that really matter, the problem reduces to a fairly simple two-dimensional geometric puzzle.
But all of that is beside the point. City Puzzle is cool. It's a great conversation piece on an executive desk or a coffee table -- or a suburban mantelpiece. It's fun to look at, fun to play with and is sure to garner attention in any setting. Consider it the next time you need to pick up an inexpensive but clever little gift for the senior executive or the grade school kid who has everything.
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Additional information and resources:
Manufacturer's product page: http://tinyurl.com/hlsu4
Puzzle dimensions: about 3 1/2 inches square
The ThinkFun philosophy and history of the company: http://tinyurl.com/c557q
The one-word clue that allowed our son to solve this puzzle (don't peek until you've solved it!): http://tinyurl.com/mtpox
Other puzzle games from ThinkFun: Amaze, River Crossing, Rush Hour, Jr., Roadside Rescue, Hoppers
A more expensive gift idea for the grownup geek in your life.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 13
Type of Toy: Puzzle
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
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Epinions.com ID:
theeye
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Location: New York, NY (it's a hell of a town!)
Reviews written: 66
Trusted by: 165 members
About Me:
Company president, math geek, first time mom at 39, epinion addict. Sleep? Not lately.
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