(Credit:
Hans Andersson)
Lego Mindstorms are futuristic toys for creative kids. But who knew these DIY robots can get creative themselves and solve puzzles?
Swedish programmer Hans Andersson bought a programmable Mindstorms NXT kit for his two daughters and then began tinkering with it himself. The result: a toy that can autonomously solve Sudoku puzzles in what looks like a matter of minutes.
The Sudoku Solver scans the entire puzzle with a light sensor before determining the missing digits in each square. Its computer performs image processing with a thresholding algorithm to make sense of the sensor data. Recognizing the existing numbers in the puzzle seems to be the most difficult part of the process.
Solving for missing numbers is easy with a backtracking algorithm, according to Andersson. "But since the Mindstorms processor is rather slow, and since it doesn't allow for recursive functions, it took some care to optimize it," he writes. The toy can still do Sudoku better than me.
Andersson has also created a Mindstorms robot called Tilted Twister that can autonomously solve a Rubik's Cube in about six minutes.
Gotta love robots. Now they're playing with our toys; next they'll be playing with us!
- WiiWare
- Boingz (RealArcade, 1,000 Wii points): Boingz offers 30 levels of mind-bending puzzle solving that has you fling small creatures in order to unwind the secrets of each area.
- Sudoku Challenge! (Digital Leisure Inc., 500 Wii points): Sudoku Challenge! offers 100 million Sudoku puzzles for you to solve so odds are you'll never need to buy another Sudoku game ever again. Try out three modes of difficulty in addition to Grand Sudoku which asks you to solve simultaneous puzzles at once.
- Virtual Console
- Boogerman (1994, Genesis, 800 Wii points): The first game to ever glorify belching and flatulence, Boogerman actually worked very well as a solid platforming game. Use your arsenal of bodily functions to defeat enemies and uncover the story behind an experiment gone wrong.
What games do you think are missing from the Wii Virtual Console? Sound off here!
There's little doubt that this new free Sudoku game sports an atrociously decorated interface, bedecked with smileys and butterflies. However, the game play itself in Free Sudoku 2008 is unimpaired, and the three levels of difficulty and timer actually make this a reasonable experience if you're looking to fret over number patterns for a while.
Free Sudoku 2008 features good gameplay but a hideous interface.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The game provides the timer, the difficulty level, a solution checker, and an "I-give-up" option on the right-hand side of the panel. The main panel is taken up by the game board, and has an interesting feature: players can enter up to nine numbers into one box. Some may call this cheating, but it makes strategizing easier for those visual thinkers out there. Of course, if you hit the "Check my solution" option with more than one number per box it'll mark those boxes wrong, but I found it to be a helpful tool.
Plastered at the top and bottom of the game are static ads for the game's publisher, Best-Web-Sites.eu. I was quite skeptical about this, but since LinkScanner verified the site as safe and virus and malicious software checks didn't freak out at the game's installation, I'll go on the record as recommending this 500KB install as a decent way to kill time and stretch your brain.
(Credit:
Spycatcher)
We're no experts on night-vision technology, especially under water, but this is one item that seems to have extremely limited utility. As far as we can tell, the "Marine 2" scope is a waterproof device that provides night vision but with only 2x magnification and apparently no camera.
So unless you're in dire need of doing crossword puzzles or reading something up-close in the pitch-dark seas, we're not quite sure why anyone would want to spend 295 pounds (about $588) for one of these Spycatcher gadgets. Moreover, if this is meant to be a covert piece of equipment, the bright yellow color seems like an ill-advised option.
If you're really into playing aquatic espionage, you'd probably something more like this underwater monitor kit, which includes a 7-inch LCD and night-vision camera with a range of 9 to 15 feet. Either way, none of these items is as baffling as the night-vision Webcam.
You always knew there's an art to Rubik's Cubes, but it turns out there's more than you thought.
A mosaic made of 171 Rubik's Cubes
(Credit: Space-invaders.com)The street-art Space Invader folks, taking a break from surreptitious outdoor installations of vintage video-game mosaics, have branched out into using collections of Rubik's Cubes as an artistic medium.
They produced a number of simple Space Invaders mosaics, but more impressive are the larger photo mosaics--for example, the Clockwork Orange character made from a grid of 171 cubes. The phrase Stanley Rubikscubrik springs to mind.
A Sudoku cube
(Credit: find-me-a-gift.com)Meanwhile, for traditionalists, there are new advances in the Rubik's Cube brain-teaser crowd. This Sudocube Sudoku cube puts a new twist on the idea.
(Via John Nash at Adobe Systems and Gizmodo.)
ThinkGeek, Brookstone and others are now selling a touch screen Sudoku handheld for about $20. The Excalibur Electronics device is filled with Sudoku puzzles chosen by legendary New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz.
(Credit:
ThinkGeek)
For those of you unfamiliar with the brain game, Sudoku consists of an 81 square, nine-by-nine grid pre-filled with a few numbers. The player fills in the remaining squares by determining what number each square needs in order to create a balance of numbers 1 through 9 for each row, column and nine-square block. (The game can also be played with nine shapes.)
The New York Times Touch Screen Sudoku Handheld takes 2 AAA batteries and holds 835 puzzles, including a timer and optional hints feature.
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