Nintendo tumbler puzzle Nintendo tumbler puzzle The Nintendo tumbler puzzle, also known as the "Ten Billion Barrel" in English and originally in Japanese, is a mathematical puzzle in the style of Rubik's Cube. It was invented by Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo in 1980 and was covered by (until the patent expired in March 1995 due to non-payment of a maintenance fee). It consists of a "cylinder" of transparent plastic divided into six levels, together with a black plastic "frame". The frame consists of upper and lower discs that are joined together through the middle of the cylinder. The top and bottom levels of
Missing square puzzle under the mark in the upper image, but goes through it in the lower. Overlaying the hypotenuses from both figures results in a very "thin parallelogram" (represented with the four red dots) with an area of exactly one grid square, so the "missing" area. According to Martin Gardner, this particular puzzle was invented by a New York City amateur magician, Paul Curry, in 1953. However, the principle of a dissection paradox has been known since the start of the 16th century. The integer dimensions of the parts of the puzzle (2, 3, 5, 8, 13) are successive Fibonacci numbers, which