A work mate was trying to relieve the boredom and found this video clip.
If someone laughs at you for suggesting that skipping a rope should be an Olympic sport, tell them to watch this and see their jaws drop.
Oh yeah – and it’s a storming tune by DJ Fresh to boot.
Cheers Dean!
Like many folks my age, I had a Rubik’s cube when I was a kid. Also like many kids, I spent hours in frustration trying to solve the damn thing before taking it apart with a screwdriver and putting it back together ‘solved’.
The thing is, that made me feel uncomfortable, because I knew that what I had done was wrong. I was a bad puzzler. Then I was introduced to puzzles where the aim was to put the pieces together or dismantle them. These, I loved.
This one, however, scares the crap out of me.
The Intimidator is – technically – a piece of artwork designed to sit on a desk and look good. However, if work slackens off a little,* then you could waste a little(!) time on attempting this. At 8″x5″x4″, and handcrafted from blocks of cast metals, it’s no lightweight. Never mind it falling on your foot though, there’s a far more dangerous aspect; Inside each Intimidator are certain pieces that, when put together correctly, form a small working handgun!
Go see more over at GarE Maxton’s site.
*Well, when I say ‘a little’, I think that you’d need to be more concerned about the state of your job than the puzzle on your desk if you have that much free time at work…
Here’s something to inspire you should you require it:
Actually, given the options, it’s impossible to be a swamp dragon.*
Oh, sorry – haven’t I told you what this is about yet? Well, those of an age to will remember fondly those books where you chose what type of adventure you could have by responding to various options and turning to the appropriate page. For those that they needed a little more, Steve Jackson came up with a whole series which required you to roll a die and take note of changing numbers… Dungeons and Dragons for the literati, essentially.
Given the internet and the state of computers and the graphic abilities thereof, you would have thought this sort of game would have died off. Not so. A couple of guys by the names of Dan Fabulich and Adam Strong-Morse have come up with “Choice of the Dragon”, a corking choose-your-own-adventure of the simple type.
Simple, it may be, but it’s definitely involved and engaging enough to hold you to the end. It’s not a massive game, but it does hold replay value. I certainly want to know what could have turned out differently, had I made a different choice here or there.
You jump straight in, being attacked by a knight and his steed. Once he’s dealt with, you answer a couple of questions and then it’s back into living the life of a dragon…
What’re you waiting for? Go give it a shot!
*Swamp dragons, for the uninitiated, are runty little sort-of dragons that have, as their main defence mechanism, the ability to fatally explode. Obviously, this is a good trait for the species as a whole, not the remains of the particular dragon settling over the landscape in smouldering little lumps.
Yes, I’m paraphrasing Terry Pratchett.
There are two things here that make this item a win. First is the fact it uses art by M.C.Escher,one of my all time favourite artists and explorers of the boundaries of reality. The second is that it’s a puzzle that actually requires you to think – and think hard.
The Mirrorkal Escher, at it’s heart, isn’t a new idea, but the application of using Escher’s famous line art certainly is. Within the puzzle, there are nine clear plastic cubes which have to be arranged just so, in order for you to create one of five possible pictures.
How? Well, as the phrase goes, it’s all done with mirrors. Take a look:
It’s available to buy and not too pricey either, at £13.65 [$20.48] before tax and delivery. Go get it from Grand Illusions – and spend some time looking around the site too – you won’t be disappointed!
…or goony geeks, whichever works fer you…
Who doesn’t like crazy golf? The proper crazy golf, that is, not the type where the odd mound or dog-leg is about as exciting as it gets. The thing is, CG only seems to be played when yer on holiday and everything else is shut, the weather has or is about to turn nasty, but the folks have said, “we ARE going to play this and we ARE going to have fun.”
Bugger that.
Why not partake of a little Flash goodness then? Why not play Adverputt? No! Come back! This is nothing at all like the other advertising games. It’s not obtrusive, and you can even sponsor one of the holes yerself if yer of a mind to. In the meantime, just waste a few minutes puttering around this course, which is strangely reminiscent of Mousetrap….
Go on, play the game, ye know ye want to!
Yes, it’s yet another reference to the awesome Rube Goldberg machine video OK Go made fer ‘This Too Shall Pass‘. This time, we’re taken back to our childhoods and what would probably have been our first encounter with anything at all like this – Mousetrap.
Did anyone actually get it and play it for the sake of the game itself? Of course not. You only wanted it more than life itself because all that plasticky gizmo-ness looked so much fun.
Except… how often do you remember it actually working like it’s supposed to…? No, me neither. Nor do these guys…
Via The Awesomer.
If you’re a devotee of playing games on the internet, then you’ll know that, of those games involving the mouse, most require you to move the cursor around and click on a particular item (or an apparently blank piece of wall if it’s a nasty room escape type of game). Others need you to move the mouse around either by manoeuvring the cursor through a maze or using the drag ‘n’ drop function. Many of these games are very good.
However, how many games do you know that use the mouse’s scroll wheel? You’re not going to run out of fingers counting them, I can tell you that.
That said, be pleasantly surprised by Record Tripping.
It’s not a huge game by any standard, but it’s certainly got a bit of replay value. Slotting firmly into the ‘puzzle game’ category, you use nothing more than the scroll wheel* to achieve the aim in each level; this could be manipulating a windmill to direct seeds to flower pots, or to open a safe, affecting a clock or factory manufacturing line.
The best part of it is there is a narrative laid over the top; someone is reading a bit of Lewis Carroll, which goes wonderfully trippy when you whizz the scroll wheel back and forth.
Scratch mix Alice in Wonderland… wow man…
Click the pic to go right to the game.
*although you do need to use the left-click occasionally to slow things down. Lewis Carroll on dope ftw…
