Puzzle & Thinking Games · 27

Ernő Rubik designed his famous cube in the 1970s as a way to explore three-dimensional movement before it became a worldwide puzzle phenomenon. The player-facing version of the idea is simple: Puzzle designers use symmetry as both help and misdirection; a repeated pattern can reveal structure or convince the player to assume two sides behave the same when they do not. A good clue feels useless right up until the second it becomes the only thing that matters.