Do your kids love puzzle challenges?

Or maybe it’s you that loves such challenges.

If so, then you’ll want to check out Mondrian Blocks, published by Smart Egg.

On its own, it’s essentially a solitaire puzzle. However, if you’ve got more than one copy, you can play them in head-to-head races.

 

How to play Mondrian Blocks

This will be a super short section because Mondrian Blocks is super simple to learn how to play.

The goal of the puzzle is to place all the rectangles and square in such a way that all can fit in the grid. The challenge is that to start out, players choose a card which indicates where the 3 black rectangles are placed.

Once those 3 pieces are placed, the player tries to fit all the rest of the pieces in the grid as fast as they can.

And that’s all there is to it!

Of course, to make a game out of it, you’ll want to go up against another player. You could either do this by timing each other and seeing who completes it the fastest. Or you can get 2 copies of the game and go head-to-head racing. (Just make sure to choose the same card number to make the initial placements.)

The player who completes it the fastest is the winner.

 

Can the whole family enjoy playing Mondrian Blocks?

Mondrian Blocks is a great brain teaser puzzle for players of all ages.

Since the puzzles are all about placing differently sized items in a grid, they’ll test a player’s spatial ability. And that’s something that people of all ages can work through.

The game comes with 44 double-sided cards for a total of 88 puzzles!

And they’re grouped by increasing difficulty by color (22 of each color).

It’s not likely that a player will memorize how to put all 88 puzzles together, but this is a type of puzzle where players will get better with practice.

The more challenges a player attempts, the better they’ll get at recognizing how the pieces are likely to fit together.

And you may have to watch out if your child challenges you to a head-to-head battle after they’ve spent 30 minutes or so doing different puzzles. They’ll be primed to do well.

And if you’re going to do head-to-head challenges with players of different ages or abilities, you may choose to not pick the same card number. Perhaps you could give the less practiced player a lower card number and the more practiced player a higher card number and see who comes out ahead.

 

High Quality Construction

Smart Egg has done a great job with the construction of Mondrian Blocks. The plastic pieces are high quality and set in the grid without falling out. That’s because the grid has raised squares and the pieces have hollow bottoms so they fit in nicely.

In fact, you could even play Mondrian Blocks while riding in a car because the pieces won’t fall out.

While the game comes in a box, the pieces and cards are all self-contained in a latched case. So you don’t have to keep the game in the box if you don’t want to. Everything stays nicely shut in the case.

The case has a compartment on both sides. And to open a side, you simply twist the latch and then open the lid. The cards are stored on one side and the pieces are stored on the grid in the other side. To keep everything shut in, simply twist the latch so it’s vertical and neither side will open.

It’s pretty slick.

Smart Egg has also published the game with 4 different color boxes/containers. And the colors of the rectangles and squares in each are colored differently so it’s easy to keep them separated. Which also means you can really face off with 4-player races to see who’s the quickest.

 

How does Mondrian Blocks score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Mondrian Blocks nicely satisfies the spatial brain teaser itch in just a few minutes of play. Simple snap it open and start placing pieces.

Of course, those few minutes will stretch into more minutes because once we start playing, it’s hard to not try “just one more” puzzle.

Which means Mondrian Blocks has made a permanent home in our game closet. (Actually we have two copies of Mondrian Blocks that will both be sticking around because we like the challenge of head-to-head play best.)

So if you enjoy quick, spatial puzzles, grab a copy of Mondrian Blocks.

We’d like to thank Smart Egg for a review copy of grab a copy of Mondrian Blocks.