Solitaire Sunday: Chroma Cube

Solitaire Sunday: Chroma Cube
From gallery of W Eric Martin
Time to highlight another logic puzzle for those of you stranded in place and looking for something to keep your mind — and fingers — active: Chroma Cube from Josh Sellers and Project Genius.

Chroma Cube is a deduction-based logic puzzle / arty coffee-table item in which for each of the 25 puzzles, you're given a starting set-up of blocks on the board (which might be zero blocks!) and a set of clues that you must interpret in order to determine where all the remaining blocks should be placed.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

You've probably seen puzzles along these lines in magazines, with you being challenged to determine, say, which students are taking which classes with which teachers at which times. Anyone who has planned a wedding has faced a similar challenge in real life as you try to pair all the parties at tables in an efficient and pleasing manner.

Like many such logic puzzles, the challenges in Chroma Cube scale in difficulty as you progress through the set of cards, but not consistently. The puzzles introduce funky terminology halfway through the set, which then requires you to interpret what the clues mean, with you getting the hang of the slang at about the time that the puzzles end. This makes me wish that the puzzle included more than 25 challenges so that you could live in the terminology longer, similar to how you engross yourself in the lingo of a new science-fiction novel, but I often have that feeling no matter how many challenges are included.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

Project Genius does have new Chroma Cube puzzles on its website for those who want more — and even if you don't own the set, you can solve these puzzles with mock-up components to see whether you like what you'd find in the box. Rules are included here in case you can't intuit (as I can't) which colors are paired with which temperatures and elements.

As for what's included in the box, find out more in this video overview:

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