Liquid Crystals Puzzle

Title: Liquid Crystals Puzzle
Author: Puzzle Lab
License: Freeware
Website: http://www.puzzlelab.com/liquid.html

A crystal has been broken in seven pieces, and you have to put it back together. All you have to work with is an outline of the original crystal and the seven pieces. You have to determine the placement and rotation of the seven smaller pieces. Often, the toughest part is figuring out the scale from the small outline.



There are 37 crystals to repair. The interface is simple and nearly flawless. I like their use of the mouse wheel to rotate the selected piece. The only rough spot is that you have to manually save your game to a file before exiting, and load it the next time you start.

Liquid Crystals is the freeware sampler which Puzzle Lab gives away. They have several other versions for sale. If you are looking for more puzzles along these lines, here are three. jTans is a nice implementation of tangrams. Here is a Java applet where you reconstruct figures using pentominos. Lastly, Fulfillment is a flash based game where you have to place polyominoes in a square within a time-limit.