A review of dollar store puzzles
3D puzzles and similar brain challenging toys are definitely on my list of cool things and the most accessible can be purchased at dollar stores. They also make great stocking stuffers — if you’re into that sort of thing.
The four that I’m reviewing are part of the Brain Twister series from a company called Montoy. I believe that I paid $2 Canadian for each. That would be around $1.50 US.
Most 3D puzzles are rated on a 5 point difficulty scale. None of these puzzles should be considered higher than 1.75 points difficulty. They are meant for children 6 and up. Though younger kids could solve these puzzles, I can imagine 4 year old me shoving parts up my nose after solving them. There were, however, issues that I need to address. Those issues probably explain why these products are available in a dollar store.
So let’s go through these puzzles
I bought this puzzle because I liked the look. It’s incredibly easy. I pulled it apart and put it back together in under 15 seconds. But as I said, I bought it for it’s visual aesthetic not difficulty level. This is the only puzzle in the group where the instructions would be helpful if needed.
Difficulty: 0.5/5
I really like this puzzle. It was the first that I bought. What I enjoyed about this puzzle is that there are multiple solutions. You can spend minutes at a time looking for alternative solutions to this puzzle. The difficulty for this puzzle is super low, but the fun level is incredibly high.
Difficulty: 1/5
I found at least two solutions to this puzzle as well. It’s not difficult to pull apart and then rebuild. Inspecting the puzzle before you pull it apart makes it easy to understand the solution. However, this puzzle encourages a level of patience. You’ll need a slow steady hand as you piece it together.
Difficulty: 1.5/5
This puzzle was frustrating for all the wrong reasons. As I pulled it out of its box it fell apart in my hands. This forced me to have a look at the instructions. In the instructions there were 5 different shaped parts: A,B,C,D and … D?
That’s right 2 completely different shaped parts were labeled D. Also, though the instructions appeared to indicate that I needed 2 A pieces and 1 B piece, my puzzle had 3 A pieces. This killed the stability of the puzzle. I was forced to improvise to build it in a way that would allow it to be picked up without falling apart in my hands. My suspicion is that this is not meant to be the most difficult of the four puzzles, but it was.
Difficulty: 1.75/5
Overall: I was pleased with these puzzles. They would look great on a coffee table. The construction was reasonable and the fact that multiple puzzles had multiple solutions make them fun to revisit.
Unfortunately, the one puzzle in the set with a slightly more complicated design failed to have the listed parts. If buying these for kids, I would pull the final puzzle out of it’s box and check that it doesn’t fall apart in your hands before giving it to a kid.
