Today, I'm going to take a look at
Logic Dots from Brainwright. It's a single player puzzle game for ages 8 and up.
It comes with 9 colored dice,
a nifty tray,
and a deck of challenge cards.
Whenever you check out a new game or puzzle, take some time to examine all the pieces. These dice come in four distinct styles. Three of the dice have pink, light blue, and yellow dots. Three of them have orange, green and dark blue dots. Two of them have teal, grey, and purple dots. And the last one is entirely gold. The placement of this last cube is the focus of each challenge.
Also note, that the same color is on the flip side of each cube. So on the opposite side of the pink dot, you'll find another pink dot, and so on.
The deck of cards contains 36 challenge cards, 12 solutions cards, 1 instructions card, and 1 color code card. There aren't very many rules for this game, but the instructions card does give clear definitions and examples of what things like top, bottom, left, right, row, column, between, and touching mean. Note that when a challenge says that one color is "
directly left (or right/on top/under/etc)" of another color that also means that the two colors are touching. Which is different from one color being to the "left" of another color, because in this case, there may be another color in between them!
The Color Code card is more useful than I initially thought. After I had played a few challenges, my eyes started going bonkers! I couldn't tell the differences between some of the colors anymore! If you look closely at the Color Code card, you will notice that the dark blue dot really looks like dark purple. I also had a lot of trouble with the dark blue and light blue dots. Pink started looking like orange....it was trippy! Anyhow, it's something to watch out for. If you find the challenge confusing, make sure you've got the correct colors!
So here's how to play! First, choose a challenge card, then sort out your dice. You need to flip them to show the colors that are required at the top of the card. You can see that for challenge #1, I needed 3 light blues, 2 green, 1 orange, and 2 teals. The gold cube is always included and is usually the last cube that will be placed, since the goal of all the challenges is to figure out where the golden cube should be.
Each challenge card comes with some marching orders. Read them carefully to figure out where in the grid each color needs to be placed. For challenge 1, I found that the cubes should be arranged as you see above based on clues like "The two green cubes are on the left" and "The three light blue cubes are at the top."
The last step is to pop in the gold cube, check the solution card, and we have complete challenge #1! Challenges 1-17 are pretty basic. They will test your understanding of words like left, directly below, or in the middle. These lower numbered challenges are great for younger kids practicing these types of concepts.
One note about the solutions: each solution has a series of numbers underneath it. This is the suggested order of clues to use to solve the puzzles. I didn't find these particularly useful, but if you get stuck on a challenge, this might help you figure it out.
Solving these challenges will require some jumping back and forth between the clues. There are a couple challenges that require the clues to be followed exactly in order. Just be flexible!
So what's with the tray anyway?! I didn't think it was necessary at first. It is a nice way to store the cubes. But later in the challenges, you are asked to turn the tray. And a bit further on, there will be some flipping! So the tray is an essential part of the puzzle. The clear plexi covers can both be removed and slid back into place. I had a little trouble getting mine to slide at first. My dice were stuck in the tray! But I did manage to work the covers loose and they slid pretty well after that.
For challenge 18 and on, there will be some turning (rotating) of the tray involved. For challenges 23 and on, there may be some flipping required. You can see me flipping the tray above. Both covers are required for this so that the cubes don't fall out!
For an added challenge, you could do all the flipping and turning mentally!
For me, challenges 1-24 were pretty easy. Challenges 25-36 definitely require more concentration. Flipping also caused me some headaches. I wasn't sure if I should be flipping horizontally or vertically. And sometimes, a rotate was also required with the flip. I guess part of the challenge is figuring that out for yourself!
Jack gave this a try too. He thought the easier challenges did not require enough logic skills to interest him. But he did seem to enjoy the harder ones!
Logic Dots is a pretty cool little puzzle! I like the idea behind it, and the quality of the game is nice too. The puzzle would be a great addition for learning centers in the classroom. Children will practice following directions and spatial relationships....while having fun!
Enjoy!
UPDATE 10/19/2024: I had a question from Steven about placement and I thought I would share a longwinded answer here. He asked if a challenge states that one color is below another color, does that mean it is directly below (as in the same column) or can it be in one of the other columns? The answer is that it can be in any column as long as it is still below the row of the original cube. Does that make sense? Here's an example:
In this case, we can say that the purple, green, teal, yellow, gold, and one dark blue cube are all below any of the top three cubes! So a clue might read "the teal cube is below the light blue cube" and really, it could be in any of the spots in the middle and bottom rows.
Up above I mentioned this, "Note that when a challenge says that one color is "directly left (or right/on top/under/etc)" of another color that also means that the two colors are touching. Which is different from one color being to the "left" of another color, because in this case, there may be another color in between them!" I am now not sure that is strictly true! The creators of the challenge do not state in the rules that "directly" means touching. It seems like "directly left" could just mean that they must be in the same row. So using the picture above, both the light blue and pink cubes might be directly left of the dark blue cube. Unless I went through all the challenges again, I cannot say this for certain. But my new interpretation is that directly left indicates the same row, while just left might be the same row, but could be another row as long as the cube is still to the left of the original. Shwew! One more example from the photo above:
The gold cube is directly to the right of the yellow cube. But also, the dark blue cube is directly to the right of the yellow cube! The yellow cube is touching the gold cube. Further, any of the cubes in the middle and right column are to the right of the yellow cube.
A clue must specify "touching" for two cubes to actually be right next to each other.
After all of that, I noticed that the instructions state that "Some puzzles may have more than one correct solution." So who can say? If your solution works for the set of clues, then I say you did it! The problem with puzzles that have more than one solution is that you can never know for sure if your solution is correct! And I hate that. I can never tell if I have found one of the alternate solutions, or whether I have mixed up my left and right again somewhere! Then I spend too much time trying to redo the puzzle to see where I've gone wrong. Anyways.
Here are two solutions that I think I've found for puzzle #36. Neither of them match the answer in the solutions key!
I do believe they both follow all the clues correctly. But it does get in a muddle with all the flipping and rotating. Let me know if you see an error in either of my solutions!
And I hope this helps!
Happy Solving!
