Pentangle, later Pentangle Puzzles, was a British manufacturer and distributor of burr puzzles and other mechanical puzzles. It operated in the UK from 1971 until 2018. It was best known as the first company to distribute what became called "Rubik's Cube" outside Hungary.
Pentangle was set up as a family business by Ron Cook. It operated from premises in Over Wallop in rural Hampshire, England, originally with seven employees including Cook's wife, daughter and son. [1]
It was registered as a company in 1971, by Cook and his business partner James Dalgety, [1] [2] with the name Paradox Engineering Ltd. to avoid infringing the rights of the band Pentangle.[ citation needed ] It traded as Pentangle.
Pentangle's first product was a burr puzzle, the Woodchuck puzzle, whose object was to assemble 24 wooden pieces into an octahedral shape. It sold hundreds of thousands of these. [1] Pentangle eventually made a total of 314 different burr puzzles, and from 1979 made and sold the "Chinese Cross", a compendium of 42 pieces including all the pieces required to assemble any of these puzzles. [3]
Pentangle also made disentanglement puzzles, most famously the Double Treble Clef puzzle, [4] and sliding block [5] : 102–104, 127 and other [5] : 171, 176 puzzles.
In 1976, a wooden puzzle designed by Pentangle for the World Wildlife Fund to offer in its catalogue was expected to sell no more than 3000 copies. But within three weeks of publication 16,000 orders had been received. [1]
In December 1977 a Hungarian puzzle collector, Tibor Szentivanyi, told Dalgety about a new puzzle: Buvos Kocka, initially know in English as the Magic Cube. [6] Pentangle obtained the exclusive right to distribute the Magic Cube within the UK. [2]
In June 1979 Professor David Singmaster, who had first seen the cube at a mathematics conference in Helsinki in 1978, wrote an article in The Observer praising and recommending the cube. [2] [7] Pentangle was now able to sell 20,000 Magic Cubes a year at about £5 each. [8]
However later in 1979 another branch of the Hungarian government revoked the deal with Pentangle, and did a deal with Ideal Toys in the US. [1] Ideal Toys agreed that Pentangle could sell what it now renamed as "Rubik's Cube" in the UK as a gift, but not as a toy. [2]
In 1982 public interest in Rubik's Cube, and in mechanical puzzles generally, plummeted. [2] Dalgety then left Pentangle. [1]
By 1986, Pentangle Puzzles had manufactured over 200 different mechanical puzzles. [2] In 1996 the Pentangle range included more than 40 lines, and the workshop in Over Wallop was producing 3000 puzzles a week, half of which were exported from the UK. [1] Cook developed a sideline in producing branded puzzles for large companies to give as Christmas gifts. One such puzzle, designed for ICI, was called "Excalibur": a sword-shaped letter-opener in a block of wood. The puzzle was, first to release the "sword" from the "stone", and then to decrypt the inscription on its blade so as to learn how to claim a prize. [1]
In 2000, the name of the company was changed to "Payday Games Limited". [9] In 2009 Cook sold the company to Timothy Dixon, [10] who changed its name to "Pentangle Puzzles Limited". [9] Pentangle Puzzles Limited ceased trading in 2018, and was liquidated in 2019. [10]
The Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Pentangle Puzzles in the UK in 1978, and then by Ideal Toy Corp in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer. The cube was released internationally in 1980 and became one of the most recognized icons in popular culture. It won the 1980 German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle. As of March 2021, over 450 million cubes had been sold worldwide, making it the world's bestselling puzzle game and bestselling toy. The Rubik's Cube was inducted into the US National Toy Hall of Fame in 2014.
A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, relational puzzles, and logic puzzles. The academic study of puzzles is called enigmatology.
Ernő Rubik is a Hungarian inventor. He is best-known for creating the Rubik's Cube (1974), Rubik's Magic, Rubik's Magic: Master Edition, and Rubik's Snake.
Rubik's Magic, like the Rubik's Cube, is a mechanical puzzle invented by Ernő Rubik and first manufactured by Matchbox in the mid-1980s.
Speedcubing, also referred to as speedsolving, is a competitive sport centered around the rapid solving of various combination puzzles. The most prominent puzzle in this category is the 3x3x3 puzzle, commonly known as the Rubik's Cube. Participants in this sport are known as "speedcubers," who focus specifically on solving these puzzles at high speeds, or more generally as "cubers". The essential aspect of solving these puzzles typically involves executing a series of predefined algorithms in a particular sequence.
The Professor's Cube is a 5×5×5 version of the original Rubik's Cube. It has qualities in common with both the 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube and the 4×4×4 Rubik's Revenge, and solution strategies for both can be applied.
The Pyraminx is a regular tetrahedron puzzle in the style of Rubik's Cube. It was made and patented by Uwe Mèffert after the original 3 layered Rubik's Cube by Ernő Rubik, and introduced by Tomy Toys of Japan in 1981.
David Breyer Singmaster was an American-British mathematician who was emeritus professor of mathematics at London South Bank University, England. He had a huge personal collection of mechanical puzzles and books of brain teasers. He was most famous for being an early adopter and enthusiastic promoter of the Rubik's Cube. His Notes on Rubik's "Magic Cube" which he began compiling in 1979 provided the first mathematical analysis of the Cube as well as providing one of the first published solutions. The book contained his cube notation which allowed the recording of Rubik's Cube moves, and which quickly became the standard.
Jerry Slocum is an American historian, collector and author specializing on the field of mechanical puzzles. He worked as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft prior to retiring and dedicating his life to puzzles.
A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle is a combination puzzle that challenges a player to slide pieces along certain routes to establish a certain end-configuration. The pieces to be moved may consist of simple shapes, or they may be imprinted with colours, patterns, sections of a larger picture, numbers, or letters.
Uwe Mèffert was a German puzzle designer and inventor. He manufactured and sold mechanical puzzles in the style of Rubik's Cube since the Cube craze of the 1980s. His first design was the Pyraminx – which he had developed before the original Rubik's Cube was invented. He created his own puzzle company and helped bring to market the Megaminx, Skewb, Skewb Diamond and many other puzzles.
A Rubik's Snake is a toy with 24 wedges that are right isosceles triangular prisms. The wedges are connected by spring bolts, so that they can be twisted, but not separated. By being twisted, the Rubik's Snake can be made to resemble a wide variety of objects, animals, or geometric shapes. Its "ball" shape in its packaging is a non-uniform concave rhombicuboctahedron.
Ideal Toy Company was an American toy company founded by Morris Michtom and his wife, Rose. During the post–World War II baby boom era, Ideal became the largest doll-making company in the United States. Their most popular dolls included Betsy Wetsy, Toni, Saucy Walker, Shirley Temple, Miss Revlon, Patti Playpal, Tammy, Thumbelina, Tiny Thumbelina, and Crissy. The company is also known for selling the Rubik's Cube.
God's algorithm is a notion originating in discussions of ways to solve the Rubik's Cube puzzle, but which can also be applied to other combinatorial puzzles and mathematical games. It refers to any algorithm which produces a solution having the fewest possible moves. The allusion to the deity is based on the notion that an omniscient being would know an optimal step from any given configuration.
Nicolas Hammond is a British Rubik's Cube expert and businessman. He has lived in the US since 1986. He made the world's first Internet banking transaction.
Rubik's 360 is a 3D mechanical puzzle released in 2009 by Ernő Rubik, the inventor of Rubik's Cube and other puzzles. Rubik's 360 was introduced on February 5, 2009 at the Nürnberg International Toy Fair ahead of its worldwide release in August.
The Rubik's Triamid is a mechanical puzzle invented by Ernő Rubik and released in 1990 by Matchbox. The puzzle was patented in Hungary in 1991. It was re-released in 2017 at the American International Toy Fair by Winning Moves.
The Layer by Layer method, also known as the beginners method, is a method of solving the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube. Many beginners' methods use this approach, and it also forms the basis of the CFOP speedcubing technique.
Larry D. Nichols, born 1939 in the United States, is a puzzle designer. He grew up in Xenia, Ohio, and studied chemistry at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, before moving to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Graduate School. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including 'The Nichols Cube Puzzle' (1972), patent US3655201. He has lived with his wife Karen in Arlington, Massachusetts since 1959.
