The Nintendo tumbler puzzle, also known as the Ten Billion Barrel in English and originally tenbirion (テンビリオン?) in Japanese, is a mathematical puzzle in the style of Rubik's Cube. It was invented by Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo and is covered by U.S. Patent 4,376,537.
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 the cylinder form a single piece, but between them are two rotatable pieces each two levels high. Each of the four central levels is divided into five chambers each containing a coloured ball. The top and bottom levels have only three chambers, containing either three balls or three parts of the frame depending on the relative position of frame and cylinder.
The balls in three of the five resulting columns of chambers can be moved up or down one level by raising or lowering the frame relative to the transparent cylinder.
The object is to sort the balls, so that each of the five columns contains balls of a single colour.
Famous quotes containing the word puzzle:
“Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspect they differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)