Qfold
http://www.qfold.com
Grade: A-

Date reviewed: 8/15/2006

Remember those puzzles from Highlights magazine that involved looking at two very similar drawings and spotting the differences between them? Ted Vaughan has taken that concept to a whole new frustrating level with Qfold.

Qfold presents four very similar abstract drawings arranged in a square so that each drawing is a perfect mirror reflection of the drawings adjacent to it. Well, a mostly perfect mirror reflection. Each drawing has five "outs," variations that make it unique from the others. The outs range from objects growing or shrinking in size, to switching from light to dark and vice versa, to changing shape or disappearing altogether.

Once you've found all 20 outs - a task that took me almost an hour - you're still not done. Now you have to correctly classify the outs you've found into the ten different types (i.e., shrink, grow, light, dark), as task not as easy as you may expect. There will be at least one and as many as three of each type. If you've found them all and classified them correctly, you can fill in a paint-by-numbers grid to spell out two words, which are the final answers to the puzzle.

As of this writing, there are only 11 puzzles on the site (and you'll need Adobe Acrobat to view them). However, the site is only five months old, so we expect it will continue to grow. All in all, Qfold is a great test of observation skills - if you've ever wanted to be a quality control inspector, here's your chance to prove your stuff!