The Rubik’s Cube is the bane of many people. Most of us just give up and declare it is an evil device intent on making us look stupid. But if you can’t get enough, the cube’s inventor, Erno Rubik, has a devilish new puzzle on the market. Rubik’s 360 is not the same, though. It involves moving four coloured balls through two layers of spheres into their respetive coloured pockets on the outside. You do this by rotating the ball as well as one of the internal spheres

– each has holes cut into it to drop the balls through (see it in action over at www.tinyurl.com/rubik360). To make it even trickier, the internal sphere has a weight that keeps swivelling it into an upright position. So it’s different to the cube, but just like that famous puzzle the point of this is not whether you can solve it, but how fast... our unscientific online search suggests it’s around four minutes so far. More info at www.rubiks360.co.uk

rubik’s 360

012 sept 2009

crazy puzzle

sept 2009 013