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
Isolate (puzzle) Isolate (puzzle) Isolate is a logic-based line-placement puzzle. The puzzler is provided with a grid containing walls, dots and a set of area sizes. A solved grid will contain areas of the given sizes containing two dots each. The puzzle was invented by an English puzzle enthusiast, Laurence May, in 2007. It is produced by Vexus Puzzle Design and appears daily along with Sudoku and Kakuro in the Daily Mail. The Isolate grid must be partitioned into areas so that each area contains two dotted squares. Area sizes must match those shown below the grid and each + sign must