This kid can perform mathemagic!

How quickly can you work this out — add 34 to 446, subtract 323, multiply by 676 and divide it by 7? Even before you can begin the calculations, this wonderkid is ready with the answer.

For Tejas, a Class VI student, numbers have never been a challenge. At the age of 11, he was awarded a certificate for fastest mental calculations by the Limca Book of Records.

"Photographic memory can be developed through regular practice. Tejas underwent the ALOHA (Abacus Learning of Higher Arithmetic) programme, which brought out his skills with numbers. He can add, subtract, divide and multiply any number of two or three digits within seconds," said M Gururaj, ALOHA teacher.

Tejas was inspired to perform mental calculations at a programme attended by kids from China.

Trism iPhone Puzzle Game To Cost Five Bucks

What can you buy for five bucks these days? Depending on where you go, that might not even be enough for a light lunch at a fast food restaurant. Depending where you are, it'll get about a gallon and a half of gas. It's not that much money, is it?You might remember the revealing of Trism back in February and how the developer wanted to throw it up on the iTunes Apps Store when that launches. Now that the SDK is widely available, it has been announced that Trism will indeed be available for the iPhone and it'll sell for five dollars through the iTunes Apps Store. Trism is set to launch in June.Gameplay is very similar to Bejeweled, except that Trism makes use of the iPhone's accelerometer and tilt sensor too. For the commercial copy of the game, they're throwing in support for online achievement rankings and they're teasing at "the odd hidden feature." Maybe it has a Doom hack or something.

Video game Professor Layton and the Curious Village gets more curious

Nearly everything in and about Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a puzzle. Ask a villager for directions, and you'll get a response akin to "Sure, I can help ya. Say, that reminds me of a puzzle. Maybe you can help me figure it out?" Pet a cat, and someone likely will be reminded of a puzzle about mice.

Look at a picture, and chances are you'll discover a hidden puzzle.

With all of these puzzles popping out at you from every direction, it's difficult to stay on track and solve the bigger mysteries of St. Mystere, the "curious village" of the game's title.

Professor Layton is a series that grew out Akihiro Hino's love of brain teasers. The president of game development house Level 5, Akihiro Hino enjoys the work of Akira Tago, professor emeritus of Chiba University and author of the "Head Gymnastics" series of puzzle books.

Rascal Flatts Join the Rubik's Revolution(TM)

NEW YORK, Feb. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Techno Source, the leader in electronic toys and games, announces today a partnership with Rascal Flatts granting the group the exclusive right to host the Rubik's Revolution(TM) Light Speed(TM) online game on their Fan site www.rascalflatts.com. Rascal Flatts fans also have the chance to win one of 100 award-winning Rubik's Revolution cubes by April 30, 2008 and one lucky winner will win a pair of tickets and passes to meet Rascal Flatts at a concert of his/her choice.

"Since the Rubik's Revolution came out last summer, we have watched it become a pop-culture phenomenon," says Jay DeMarcus, Rascal Flatts. "We're excited that we can share the Light Speed online game with our fans on our Web site and give them the chance to win a Rubik's Revolution cube of their own."

Toy industry analyst Gerrick L.

Benjamin Franklin Plays Sudoku

Only in the last five years has sudoku been capturing people's recreational time. But 250 years ago, Benjamin Franklin was developing fascinating puzzles with principles quite similar to sudoku, keeping himself occupied while taking a break from his electrical investigations. Now, a mathematician has discovered two Franklin puzzles even more fantastic than those previously known and written a book describing all of Franklin's mathematical endeavors.

In Benjamin Franklin's Numbers: An Unsung Mathematical Odyssey (Princeton University Press, 2007), Paul C. Pasles of Villanova University in Pennsylvania argues that Franklin's mathematical achievements have long been overlooked. Franklin applied common-sense quantitative reasoning in many areas where it had never been used—for example, calculating the economic costs of war and slavery, and making population forecasts before the field of population demographics had been developed.

Growing younger

ATWATER -- For centuries people have been searching for the "Fountain of Youth" but the elusive prolonger of life is nowhere to be found and may not exist at all. Still an Atwater man believes it's possible to halt the advance of time even in later years.

Sam Dolber teaches a noncredit Merced College class in Atwater called "Growing Younger." His philosophy is the mind is like a muscle and if we don't use it, we'll lose it. Various games, puzzles and mental exercises are just the ticket to grow younger, he believes.

"We cannot avoid growing older in years but we can always choose to stay young in spirit," Dolber said. "We do not stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing."

In the 1500s Spanish explorer Juan Ponce De Leon sailed the seas looking for the magical live-forever water source that the Puerto Ricans were talking about.

American Crossword Puzzle Tournament

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament will take place Feb.29-March 2 at the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott Hotel in New York.

Contestants from all over the world will converge on the hotel to compete for prizes in more than 20 categories. The grand prize is $5,000. Points are awarded for both speed and accuracy.

The event, which is directed by Will Shortz, was started in 1978 at the Stamford Marriott in Stamford, Conn., as a way to fill up the hotel during the winter. That year 149 contestants participated, and the top prize was $250.

The contest has grown every year, but took a huge leap after the 2006 film "Wordplay" focused attention on it. It finally outgrew Stamford, "and we had to move to Brooklyn," Shortz says.

People not attending the tournament can still participate online.

New book provides Oscar-winning puzzles

What do "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good as It Gets" all have in common? If you know jack about the Oscars, then you can figure out they're the three films for which Jack Nicholson won his Academy Awards.

Even if you missed that question, there are plenty of others to test your Oscar IQ in "So You Think You Know Oscar" (Dorrance, $9), a new book by East Hampton writer Gerald Granozio that combines his love of the movies with his passion for puzzles.

"This book was really a combination of two interests I've always had: the Oscars and puzzles. There are a lot of books out on there on the Oscars, but this one was different because it put those two interests together," Granozio said.

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Sudoku And Other Big Issues

Sounds like the opening of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting but even number puzzles can create addiction and in my case nearly did! So after about a year I quit and subsequently allow myself a once a month "drink at the trough" by doing the (usually) nice simple one in the "BIG Issue" giving myself some altruistic justification - at best, a rather weak excuse but ...

anyway there are often some good articles as well ...

For those unfamiliar with Sudoku, it has a 9 x 9 grid printed grid (like a chess board), containing 9 3 x 3 mini-grids; as presented, 17 or more numbers are given (out of 81), depending upon difficulty (roughly) and the challenge is to complete the grid within the rules; the rules are that each column and row and mini-grid shall contain all the numbers from 1 to 9.

A Real Man of Letters

An NYT Sunday puzzle pays a cool $700, but the weekday and Saturday submissions are only worth $135 each. It can also take as much as four months to hear back on the status of a pending crossword, according to the Crossword Constructors Community Center.

Although Mahowald has ambitions beyond puzzles, he will still enjoy the festivities that come with his hobby. In March, hundreds of crossword junkies will gather in Stamford, Connecticut for the biggest and oldest crossword tournament in the nation: The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which was started by Will Shortz thirty years ago. And Mahowald will be one of them.

Mahowald, who competed for the first time last year, is still deciding in what capacity he will be attending the competition. "I can go as a judge or a contestant, but I don't know which I will do yet," he says.

EA, Steven Spielberg Unveil Boom Blox for Wii

Electronic Arts and Steven Spielberg today unveiled their first videogame collaborate: Boom Blox, a puzzle game for the Nintendo Wii. Amazingly enough, although the game was officially unveiled today, Boom Blox for Wii will be available in stores this May.

Boom Blox offers a host of levels that engage Wii owners in single-player, co-op and versus modes. The premise of the game, which uses real-time physics, is essentially making players destroy blocks and solve puzzles to make their way through a host of challenges.

Boom Blox has more than 300 levels and a cast of 30-plus characters, but the biggest addition, particularly as it goes up against games like Little Big Planet for the PS3, is its an in-game editor that lets players create their own levels and challenges -- and then share them with others.

Honda pieces together fresh puzzle ad

Honda's latest TV campaign features a car made of jigsaw pieces and a giant sculpture of an engine constructed from thousands of Rubik's cubes.

The TV campaign, which breaks on Monday, features Honda's engineers tackling a series of bizarre puzzles to showcase the innovative nature of the company's FCX Clarity hydrogen-fuelled car.

A colourful and quirky opening scene features a bearded and bespectacled engineer playing with a Rubik's cube, set to Mark Mothersbaugh's Ping Island from the soundtrack to the Wes Anderson movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

The campaign, developed by ad agency Wieden & Kennedy London, aims to launch the Honda FCX Clarity, a zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell car.

Honda's 90-second ad, called "Problem Playground", shows a team of 140 people tackling a series of giant-size puzzles representing problems the engineers have to overcome to create products that are as radical as this new type of car.

Mercury Meltdown Revolution

Sometimes it's the simple ideas that are the most effective. Sometimes you don't need cutting edge AI, jaw dropping visuals and a mega-money licence boasting voiceovers from the Hollywood elite. Sometimes all you need is a little tilting mercury and 200 levels of post-pub puzzle fun. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Mercury Meltdown Revolution, we guarantee that you'll be staying for a while.

The Wii-exclusive game from little known publisher Ignition challenges players to immerse themselves in a colourful world of sci-fi machines, crazy characters, and bubbling test tubes. Using the Wii Remote, players guide a liquid mercury 'blob', around traps, door switches, spikes, moving floors and other hazardous elements in order to complete the level.

If you're looking for a perfect example of a game that pits players against their environment then this is it.

MEGA Brands Takes Construction Play and Activities to the Next Level ...

MONTREAL, Feb. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- MEGA Brands (News) is set to launch its 2008 toy line-up at New York Toy Fair, featuring next generation building systems, technologically enhanced classical toys and imaginative activities that inspire creativity in every child.

'MEGA Brands' new toy portfolio is designed to deliver new play patterns and creative experiences for kids through innovation and technology,' states Vic Bertrand, Executive Vice-President of MEGA Brands. 'Combining technology and classical play continues to be a huge trend and we're always looking for innovative ways to introduce products that draw young minds into a world of imagination and creativity.'

'MEGA Brands is capitalizing on one of the major trends emerging from this Toy Fair,' says Toy Wishes contributing editor Chris Byrne aka The Toy Guy(R).

Cultural differences alter the brain

It's no secret culture influences your food preferences and taste in music. But now scientists say it impacts the hard-wiring of your brain.

New research shows that people from different cultures use their brains differently to solve basic perceptual tasks.

Neuroscientists Trey Hedden and John Gabrieli of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research asked Americans and East Asians to solve basic shape puzzles while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. They found that both groups could successfully complete the tasks, but American brains had to work harder at relative judgments, while East Asian brains found absolute judgments more challenging.

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Video games: New puzzle games reach out to wordplay fans

The worldwide sudoku craze appears to be fading -- if electronic versions of the number-logic game are any indication. Since 2005 I've seen dozens of sudoku games for consoles, handhelds, computers and cell phones. On the schedule for 2008 are none. I gave into the fad for a while, in much the same way I got hooked on "Tetris," "Minesweeper" or "Bejeweled." But now that I've achieved a reasonable skill level, it feels like there's not much more to see. I've put aside sudoku and returned to my old two-crossword-a-day puzzle regimen. I'd love to see more video games based on word puzzles, and I think there's an audience out there. Casual gamers have made modest hits of PC games such as "Bookworm" and "Text Twist," while the Facebook crowd has turned "Scrabulous," a Scrabble knockoff, into a phenomenon.

Welcome

This is a blog about all sort of puzzles - be they words , numbers or objects. We hope to look at all sorts of puzzles and brain teasers that we find interesting. Everyone is welcome to add to this blog