puzzles

We're big fans of old-school jigsaw puzzles that you put together on your coffee table, so we were intrigued to test one out on our iPhone. Photo Puzzle Plus FREE lets you snap your own pictures to turn into a custom puzzle. While the interface navigation could be better, we were pleased by the puzzle results.

Photo Puzzle Plus FREE opens with a plain interface. Three menu buttons reside at the top of the screen, right above a banner ad, so you have to be careful where you tap. The Upgrade button, of course, lets you upgrade to a … Read more

"Three of these things belong together; three of these things are kinda the same." Kids who remember the classic "Sesame Street" song and game already know the basic premise of 4 Pics 1 Word Puzzle Plus, a new edition of the popular title from Second Gear Games: Compare and match images to deduce the correct answer. But unlike One Of These Things, this free Android app doesn't show you the answer directly. Your job is to identify the word that all four pictures represent. The pictures appear one by one, and you get extra credit … Read more

With a number of puzzle games available for Android, finding one that sets itself apart may be a difficult task. Traffic Jam Free, while having an original concept and playing style, is too simple to entertain users for long periods of time.

Download and installation of Traffic Jam Free completed quickly via the Google Play store. At startup, the program immediately opens up to the game screen and lacks any instructions or tutorials. It did not appear that technical support was available either. This meant trial and error was needed to figure out the gameplay and controls. The game is … Read more

Tangram puzzles are a fantastic tool when teaching young children geometry, spacial relationships, and art concepts. The iPad is a perfect device for completing tangram puzzles, so when the two are combined, you have a well-structured educational app that is a lot of fun to play. Perhaps that is why Swipea has created nearly a dozen versions of their very popular tangram puzzle apps, each with a different theme. The Swipea Tangram Puzzles for Kids: Houseware edition is identical to the others, but with a focus on household items.

The app's interface will take some time to get used … Read more

A tangram puzzle requires children to move and rotate sharp angled geometric shapes into a specific configuration to match a picture provided. Swipea has created a series of apps that makes these puzzles easier and more accessible for kids, perfect for a young child eager to use your iPad. In the Swipea Tangram Puzzles for Kids: Handy Tools edition (one of more than a dozen variations of the same free app), children will use those shapes to create household tools.

The concept of the game is very simple. Children are given a collection of rectangular and triangular shapes and must … Read more

The Swipea line of Tangram puzzle apps is impressive. These apps, including Swipea Tangram Puzzles for Kids: Transport, manage to take a very popular puzzle game that children have been playing for decades and transform it into an engaging, colorful mobile experience that takes full advantage of the features of the iPad and touch screen controls. While the lack of clear labels can be confusing as you get started, once the game is underway, your children will have a blast.

One thing that makes Swipea Tangram Puzzles for Kids: Transport so much fun is that nearly everything in them is … Read more

Fetch for iOS is a touch adventure game that plays like an animated movie, letting you explore a strange world as a young boy in search of his lost dog.

Made for children, but fun for adults, too, Fetch combines a great-looking artistic style, rich sounds, and mysterious environments with tons of touch-screen interaction as you set off on your adventure. The story revolves around the disappearance of a little boy's dog named Bear and the lengths he must go through to get him back. Quickly, he finds out that dogs are being stolen around the world, and he … Read more

The Room is an intensely challenging puzzle game with beautiful 3D graphics where the object is to unravel a mystery by opening steampunk-style boxes.

Though "opening boxes" may sound boring, with The Room, each box has several hidden secrets and clues that keep you engrossed, trying to find the right sequence of actions to open the box. There are dials to turn, complex safe combinations to figure out, hidden compartments that contain keys, and much more. You also have an inventory on the left where you store the various keys and other items you find as you search … Read more

When you're a Rubik's Cube aficionado, sometimes you have to think outside the box -- err, cube -- to really challenge yourself.

In an amazing video, 21-year-old Ravi Fernando appears to juggle a Rubik's Cube and two hacky sacks while simultaneously solving the complex puzzle.… Read more