MEGAPOST: Puzzled to Death
Few things in life are as satisfying as completing a puzzle.
It’s just you and your wits versus whatever damned infernal contraption has been set before you.
Challenging?
You bet.
But if every puzzle was as easy as the first level of Candy Crush then it wouldn’t keep you coming back for more! It’s those moments of confusion and frustration that make every breakthrough so enjoyable. And what is life if not one great puzzle? Put the pieces together correctly and what a pretty picture you end up with.
Okay, that’s enough philosophy. Today is all about fun times.
If you’re a puzzle junky (or you happen to know one), this is a great day for you. We’ve scoured every corner of Puzzledom to bring back some of the craziest and most ambitious puzzle challenges available on the market today. We’ve got jigsaws, maze spheres, puzzle cubes and other contraptions unlike any challenge you’ve met before!
#1 Puzzle Cube Times 13
Bad news for everyone who thinks they’re hot shit with a Rubik’s Cube.
There’s a new game in town…
Now, many of you reading this have never completed a Rubik’s Cube before. If that’s you then you should keep scrolling right now. Don’t be a hero. Die on a different hill.
Because this takes the challenge of a standard puzzle block (almost always with 9 panels to a face) and pushes it into an exponentially more difficult realm with 169 individual color panels per side. For real. This isn’t a Photoshop prank. Not only does this thing actually exist but there are people out there who’ve solved it!
Think you’ve got what it takes to dominate the 13x13x13 beast?
#2 Pringles Puzzle
The Pringles jigsaw isn’t terribly difficult but the replay value is higher than your usual jigsaw puzzle because the pieces are all double-sided!
That’s right. This is a 2-in-1 puzzle.
Complete it one way and you’ll end up with an image of the outside of a Pringles can. Finished the other way will give you a cutaway of the chips stacked inside a Pringles can!
You’ve gotta give it up for the branding on this one, too. Rather than a rectangular box, the puzzle pieces come packaged in – you guessed it – a Pringles-style canister, which is actually more convenient to store on a shelf.
#3 Epic Perplexus Sphere
Remember those little ball mazes from when you were a kid?
They were usually shaped like a small disc that you could hold in one hand. Cheaply made, often just a cardboard backing to a plastic piece with the maze walls. Yeah, those things.
This is like the mutant grandchild of that.
It’s a sphere, about 8 inches across, jam-packed with more twisting and turning slides, stairs and loops than anything M.C. Escher ever drew. If you call each of these obstacles a level then the Perplexus Epic sphere has 125 individual levels inside of it.
Here’s the thing, though. You’ll want to be super careful when twisting and turning and flipping the ball around because one mistake sends you right back to the start!
#4 Pencils Puzzle
Okay, here’s the first of our unusually challenging jigsaws.
There’s nothing weird or gimmicky about this one. It’s just that the image you’re putting together is confusingly repetitive, meaning that when you try looking at the finished image your eyes may find it difficult to focus on any one part…
The collage of pencils works sort of like an optical illusion – and that’s after the puzzle has been put together. You have the difficult task of piecing this confounding collage together yourself.
Have fun!
#5 Connected Circuits Box
Here’s a totally new puzzle gadget: Cool Circuits!
Borrowing a setup from “pipe dream” style video games which you may have played before, Cool Circuits is a game box that comes with only eight puzzle pieces.
Yes, eight.
But when those eight pieces are correctly assembled, the box will light up to let you know how great and smart you are!
And there are actually 40 different puzzles included in the set because your task is determined by various background cards that lay on top of the puzzle box. The “levels” get more difficult as you go, as they should.
Batteries included!
#6 Jackson Pollock Jigsaw
Jackson Pollock paintings are so abstract that the phrase “like a Jackson Pollock painting” is literally a common thing people say to describe something that is abstract.
So using a Pollock painting to make a challenging jigsaw is pretty obviously the right move, which is what’s been done here. At only 1000 pieces, you won’t spend the rest of your life putting this thing together but the visual nonsense that is the completed painting gives you basically no help in your quest.
#7 M.C. Escher Mirror Box
Again, you almost can’t even have a conversation about optical illusions without M.C. Escher’s name coming up.
Like the Pollock, you can probably find a jigsaw puzzle featuring any Escher work that you enjoy. We’re going with something a little more fitting and one-of-a-kind.
The setup for this puzzle is really different. You’ve got a tray and you’ve got nine cubes. Each of those cubes has mirrors on the inside of it. Depending on how you place the cube in the tray, it will show a different piece of a different Escher work on top.
Sounds simple.
It’s not simple.
#8 Pure White Jigsaw Puzzle
Honestly, you can use any image you want to make a jigsaw more difficult.
Fractal patterns, confusing collages, abstract paint splashes – those may not give you very much help in completing a puzzle. But it’s better than nothing at all, which is all the help you’ll get from this puzzle!
Like a gang of polar bears running through a blizzard, there’s nothing but white on display here. No colors, no patterns, no lines – nothing!
Just 1000 pieces of blank blankness for your frustrating pleasure.
#9 Ball Maze Phone Case
Oh, here’s one of those ball mazes right here!
Wow, life is crazy. We were JUST talking about these things and here one is!
This particular ball maze is better than all the other ones because it’s a phone case. Whenever you get tired of cycling through the same three social media app timelines over and over, you can simply flip that phone over and get to work solving the maze!
#10 The Baffler
The Baffler looks like child’s play but it’s possibly the most difficult puzzle in this entire post.
How can that be?
Well, don’t look at the solved puzzle as a whole. Look at the individual pieces. They’re really weird. Like, really really weird.
There are three variations of The Baffler puzzle. This one is just a spiral. Now, the first thing anyone learns about jigsaw puzzles is that you can put the outside together first to have a reference point for where everything on the inside should go. You can’t do that with the spiral Baffler because every piece could be an outside piece!
The actual outside pieces don’t all have flat outer edges. There’s also no image to work towards as the color of each piece seems to be totally random, which is possibly more ridiculous than a totally blank puzzle…
#11 Chrome Puzzle Globe
Backing off from the headscratcher challenges a bit, this is just a really nice piece for puzzle fans.
You won’t have much trouble putting it together but once it’s done then you’ll be the owner of a fine mirrored globe of Earth, complete with a base.
Looks good on a desk or coffee table!
#12 Clockwork Orange Puzzle
If you think about it, consciousness is the ultimate puzzle. That’s the premise of A Clockwork Orange and…
Okay, fine. You don’t need an intellectual excuse for this puzzle to be here. A Clockwork Orange is one of Stanley Kubrick’s best films and this jigsaw features a really cool take on the movie’s poster!
This is one that would be worth framing when done…
#13 Shape Shifter Puzzle Cubes
Now this is just getting ridiculous….
Somehow (and we really don’t know how) these contraptions form a regular cube when solved correctly. So it’s similar to a Rubik’s Cube except that it isn’t the location of different colors being changed when you turn a “slice” of the cube – it’s the entire shape of the gadget itself that changes.
As crazy as it looks, there IS a solution. Just keep twisting…
#14 Huge 22 Foot Disney Puzzle
Okay, so let’s say you’re a genius and every puzzle on this list is easy for you. You just can’t find a challenge that takes up more than an hour or two of your time and you’re starting to wonder if there’s any obstacle out there that can keep you working at it for long.
Here you go.
This may not be the largest jigsaw puzzle in existence but it’s certainly the biggest one that we could find!
With over forty thousand individual pieces, this jigsaw is essentially 10 inter-connected puzzles in one. Each “frame” in the puzzle shows characters from different Walt Disney movies.
Oh and it’s over 20 feet wide when assembled, so you’ll probably need a spare room in your house to be able to work on this one.
Call us in a year when you finish it!
#15 Crossword Mug
Last but not least, it’s a new way to enjoy one of the most popular puzzles in America: the crossword mug!
It’s a real coffee mug that can be written on with a pencil. The answers can also be erased and new puzzles are created every month which you can access on the manufacturer’s website!
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