For years, I’ve been seeing LEGO puzzles pop up here and there. I’ve never solved one, but recently I saw the aMAZEing puzzle for sale and had to pull the trigger. I puchased this particular puzzle from NothingYetDesigns. I’ve purchased quite a few puzzles from them recently and they’ve all been high quality and the shipping is quick as well.
aMAZEing is the first puzzle created by a new company called QUIZBRIX. I can’t find much info about QUIZBRIX or who the designer is, but I’d like to welcome them to the puzzle family and I hope they find success and continue to make puzzles.
When the puzzle arrived, I was immediately intrigued. The black and white legos create a striking contrast and right off the bat I could see many slots and holes that lead me to believe that the claimed “30 steps to discover” was going to be quite the challenge.
The puzzle itself is rectangular in shape and about 4″x3″x2″ in size. It looks to be made of standard legos, big and small and feels mostly solid. There are many slots and holes on the four faces, but none on the top or bottom. The top, however is cleverly branded with a Q and B. It also appears that there are several drawers that may open, but for now, they are all locked shut.
On to the solve. This puzzle was a lot of fun to play with. It took me a couple of months to finally solve it, but I only worked on it sporadically – about 10 minutes at a time. It’s a clever design that had me stumped at couple of different points, but the clues were always there to guide me through the next step.
It’s definitely worthy of the “sequential discovery” title, there are a few tools to utilize and and a bunch of steps to complete in order to get to the final moves. These were especially tricky and I was stumped for a while until my son Parker (who is 10) figured it out. There was a certain tool that I couldn’t figure out how to use, But Parker found a way forward which then unlocked the rest of the puzzle. Using that same technique a couple of more times finally unlocked the last drawer which contained the Golden Bar. Also in the drawer was a lego with a QR code that points to a congratulations page and instructions on how to reset the puzzle – which is a great touch.
Overall, this puzzle wasn’t super hard, but then again I didn’t know what to expect from a LEGO puzzle. The website lists it as a Level 7 and I’d say thats fairly accurate.
I will defnitely buy the next puzzle offered by QUIZBRIX and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this one to a friend. It’s also gotten me curious enough about LEGO puzzles that I’ll likely purchase more from other designers as well.
