When I was young and my Dad would travel, he would always bring me back some little thing. Sometimes it was some chocolate, sometimes it was a small package of maple sugar candy, often it was a Precious Moments animal figurine (I had to tell him to stop buying those when I moved out…I’m not a collector of figurines and I always felt obligated to keep them and then it started to feel like clutter…), or maybe a logic puzzle book (I still love those!)
And very often, he would bring home a puzzle of some sort. Not a jigsaw puzzle, but those metal twisty puzzles where you had to figure out how to untangle them and slide them apart. Or little labyrinths, or other brain teasers. He did love to give me things to make me think.
We had one puzzle in the house that I played with from childhood until adulthood. I never tired of it; the Soma Cube. It was basically the precursor to Tetris, but in 3D. It was made of white plastic cubes and I used to make all sorts of shapes with it, sometimes even making it back into the cube it was supposed to be in. There are a number of ways to assemble it back into a cube, but it can take a bit of time and logic.
When Dad moved into a home, it was one of those stupid little items that I wanted to keep. It went into a tote somewhere and I forgot I had it. I found it again a year or two ago, but it’s in rough shape; one cube is taped on with ancient masking tape. Looking the puzzle up online, I’m reasonably sure that one is as old as I am.
Given the fragility of it, I decided to go looking for a new one and, on Amazon, I found a wooden version for quite a low cost.
Suspiciously low.
Because it is tiny. Only about 3″ square.
But it’s pretty, and cute, and it’s still a Soma Cube puzzle. So I took it to work and popped it up on my cabinet along with a couple of other puzzle cubes (Bucky Balls and a Snake Cube Puzzle). A few people have made the mistake of playing with the Bucky Balls and spent a LOT of time putting that thing back together; they don’t touch it anymore. but until recently, that I am aware of, no one has ever tried the Soma Cube.
Until this week.
I came in Monday morning and found the cube…tried…and left unfinished. I wasn’t in on Friday, and neither were my two office neighbours, so I’m not sure who was at my desk that day.
So I put it back together properly and forgot about it.
And then I came in this morning and found it in a similar condition again.
I’d left at about 4:30 last night, and my neighbours left before 5:30. Everyone else around me had already left. I was left trying to decide whether someone is playing with me, or is frustrated at not being able to do it. I “think” I know who it might have been, but he wasn’t in the office today.
Regardless, it makes me smile that someone took a break from whatever s/he was doing and challenged him/herself with one of my puzzles, that is what they are there for 🙂
(36/365)
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