Scramble Squares: Retro-Rods

Scramble Squares - Retro Rods is an absorbing little puzzle that's harder than it looks. Nine square pieces show colorful images of all different kinds of hot rods--all ending abruptly at the edges. You must try to arrange the squares in a 3x3 grid so that every half-image matches its other half on all adjacent squares.

Scramble Squares has earned the Dr. Toy 10 Best Educational Products Award.

Hop in one of these muscle cars, roadsters, lead sleds, and coupes for a challenging brain teaser. Easy to Play, but Hard to Solve is the motto for this deceptively simple-looking puzzle. By the time you've become addicted and find yourself unable to solve the thing, you'll realize it's not so much a motto as a warning. Nine colorfully illustrated cardboard 4-by-4-inch squares depict various unfinished images of customized automobiles along their edges. The images must be matched and the nine squares arranged in a larger square. An ingenious, elegantly executed puzzle idea, Scramble Squares will have you simultaneously blessing and cursing its inventor. --Claire Dederer