Larry D. Nichols Larry D. Nichols Larry D. Nichols, born 1939 in the United States, is a puzzle designer. He grew up in Xenia, Ohio, and studied chemistry at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, before moving to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Graduate School. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including 'The Nichols Cube Puzzle' (1974), patent US365520. He has lived with his wife Karen in Arlington, Massachusetts since 1959. In 1957, 17 years before Dr. Rubik’s invention popularly known as the “Rubik's Cube”, Dr. Nichols conceived of a twist cube puzzle with six colored faces. It was a 2×2×2
Sliding puzzle credited with making sliding puzzles popular based on his false claim that he invented the fifteen puzzle. Chapman's invention initiated a puzzle craze in the early 1880s. From the 1950s through the 1980s sliding puzzles employing letters to form words were very popular. These sorts of puzzles have several possible solutions, as may be seen from examples such as Ro-Let (a letter-based fifteen puzzle), Scribe-o (4x8), and Lingo. The fifteen puzzle has been computerized (as puzzle video games) and examples are available to play for free on-line from many Web pages. It is a descendant of the jigsaw puzzle in