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
Rubik's Cube Nichols invented a 2×2×2 "Puzzle with Pieces Rotatable in Groups" and filed a Canadian patent application for it. Nichols's cube was held together by magnets. Nichols was granted on 11 April 1972, two years before Rubik invented his Cube. On 9 April 1970, Frank Fox applied to patent an "amusement device", a type of sliding puzzle on a spherical surface with "at least two 3×3 arrays" intended to be used for the game of noughts and crosses. He received his UK patent (1344259) on 16 January 1974. In the mid-1970s, Ernő Rubik worked at the Department of Interior Design at