Doris was unveiled at the 8th Gathering for Gardner (G4G8) in Atlanta the end of March, with great presentations by its inventor, Zdravko Zivkovic, and our co-explorer, Toby Gottfried, whose computer program and ingenuity tracked down the most unusual solutions and their sometimes unbelievable numbers of solutions. The theme of the Gathering was the number 8, and Doris's octagonal tiles were right on that wavelength. Zdravko, Toby and Kate had spent a couple of feverish months emailing ideas, questions and discoveries back and forth from Serbia to Florida to California. It all peaked when the guys got on their planes for Atlanta and Kate drove up from Miami. The private world premiere edition of 10 sets with their lavish full-color books sold out in a day, and we now offer Doris to the world, with the full-color book on DVD. More....

Intarsia came from the fertile mind of Sweden's Henrik Morast while he was trying to design modular tables. The reversible trapezoidal tiles inspired him to create 5 delightful strategy games while Kate dove into the limitless puzzle possibilities. The unique triple-decker construction of the tiles adds a "bas relief" look to each artistic composition. The solution shown is only an illusion of the shapes of the tiles. Each trapezoid you see is made of at least two different tiles. Many kinds of symmetry entice the creative solver, while games challenge the strategist. Simply beautiful, a true playable art piece, astounding and challenging. More....

Pearl Fisher is the brainchild of Ferenc Palinkas, a profusely creative Hungarian IT engineer. Thanks to email, brainstorming around the planet between Budapest and Miami could proceed 24/7. We are very proud to present this uniquely challenging strategy game. Ferenc and his associates have also worked up an online version that lets you take on the computer at various levels of difficulty. Our handcrafted, two-sided, laser-engraved wood board invites play by two humans. This is a game you'll want to play many, many times. Move pearls and shells on the board, uncover the right pearls to score (if you can remember where they are!). More....

It could only be called Dazzle. For almost ten years, this dazzling design was in the incubator, while inventor Charles Butler cooked up more hot ideas for it, and his co-inventor, Kent Forrester, pursued the patent and trademark registrations. Kate, too, did intermittent research and fretted over the fact that it seemed rather hard to solve. At last, in 2008, we were excited to release this unique and beautiful set. A rare treat—because it has 30 tiles, Dazzle can accommodate even 5, 6 and 7 players. Its large, mosaic-like dodecagons are hand-inlaid with three frosted colors, their glistening sheen a feast for the eyes. And those game strategies will really spark your imagination. More...

Other News:

We've joined the cyber community with participation on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, Flickr, Plaxo, Kaneva, so far. Their little icon hotlinks are at the bottom of the home page, in case you're curious to visit and read the micro-messages that track our news. Add your comments.

After 28 years, it's official — Our unique domain name and brand, GAMEPUZZLES, is, as of January 2009, a registered trademark, along with our wonderful slogan, "For the joy of thinking." That means we can proudly display them with the "Circle R" symbol.

A fourth design has joined our guest showcase featuring innovative polyform sets by French puzzle explorer, Jacques Ferroul. We make all four of these puzzles by special order for his visitors as well as for our own. Jacques' website provides all the puzzle challenges for these sets, free to download, so we supply only brief leaflets with them.

• His Poly-Spidrons^TM is an intricate set of 54 shapes made of combinations of triangles and spirals, based on the Spidron^TM concept of Daniel Erdely, and Jacques' webpage for these shows a wealth of beautiful and difficult, though solvable, designs.
  
  
• Jacques' second design, Tetrapentos, has the tetriamonds and pentiamonds (brothers to our own Mini-Iamond Ring) filling a hexagon with 5 spare triangles. Jacques has worked out a large collection of delightful and stylish designs for these and presents them on his website. We offer Tetrapentos in a tray and as a pocket edition.
  
  
• Jacques' other neat little puzzle design, Stelo (Esperanto for "star"), forms a star and dozens of other beautiful designs with 12 of the simpler pieces from Poly-Spidrons. Interestingly, doubled-size models of the Stelo figures can be solved with the full Poly-Spidrons set. Jacques has dedicated Stelo as a memorial for his grand-niece Maïlou.
  
  
• Jacques' newest creation is a polyform puzzle based on golden triangles—La Ora Stelo (Esperanto for "the golden star") contains 32 tiles and has boundless possibilities for forming amazing designs. Its pentagonal tray provides 9 nested rings for exploring ascending sizes of shapes showing the inflation of the golden ratio. Jacques has dedicated La Ora Stelo as a memorial for his friend Jean-Pierre Puisais-Hée. More...

Old but still good news:

We now own four additional, very cool domain aliases. Each is just a title page and links to the respective major sections of the official gamepuzzles website:

• www.tactilegraphics.us is an entrance to Tactile Graphics and Tilings and Designs.
• www.playable-art.com is an entrance to Tilings and Designs, Abstract Strategy Games and Edgematching.
• www.polyformpuzzles.com is an entrance to the Essential Polyforms section and Polyominoes and Polycubes.
• www.thelifeofgames.com leads to our journal, The Life of Games.