The Orbik

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The Orbik is a fairly rare puzzle. It is a black disk, about 7 cm diameter, which has 12 small windows arranged around the front face of the disk. Behind each window is a small drum wheel that shows one of four coloured shapes - a red square, a green oval, a blue triangle, or a yellow wave. When you turn the front face of the disk clockwise, three of the drum wheels will advance once, showing the next coloured shape. Three of the windows are marked with dots, to indicate that they are the ones that will change. If you turn the front face anti-clockwise no changes occur, except of course that the marked windows will have moved to different positions. The aim is of course to get all the windows to show the same coloured shape. There is a sticker in the centre of the front face, bearing a triangular logo. If you hold it so that the triangle points upwards, and think of the front as a clock face, then the three marked windows lie at 12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, and 7 o'clock. The Orbik was invented by Shih-Hung Juang, and has patent US 4,752,074 filed 25 September 1986, granted 21 June 1988 (also European patent EP 262,251). The Orbik I have is one (of about 200?) that the late Edward Hordern brought to the 1992 International Puzzle Party as exchange gifts. Later the puzzle was distributed for a while by James Dalgety. If your browser supports JavaScript, then you can play the Orbik by clicking the link below: