Little Nemo was a comic that appeared in Sunday papers in the 1930. They are undoubtedly the weirdest, trippiest, most peculiar, inventive and dream-like comics ever. Each page is memorable, a complete dream unto itself. They make R. Crumb and the LSD-laced hippy underground comics seem tame. While several books reprint the entire series, this reproduction retains the comic's original scale, which you really need to fully appreciate the eyeball-slapping impact these masterworks have. It's easily the largest book I own. You COULD slice one of these books up and have 30 exquisitely printed two-side posters to give out.

-- KK

Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays!
Winsor McCay
Edited by Peter Maresca
2005, 120 pages
$95
Available from Amazon

Sample pages:

The Gyroid

Cool and useless. That's my definition of art. These very cool 3D mathematical sculptures by Bathsheba Grossman are very nerdy art. Cleverly manufactured by a new type of 3D printing, they manifest bizarre mathematical notions. Bathsheba starts with her own complicated CAD designs, which she then sends to an Ex One printer. The printer stacks up layers of stainless steel powder hardened with a laser. Bathsheba trims and polishes each final form by hand. Lot's of brilliant designs, some like alien seeds. Others are like Escher paradoxes in 3D. These mini ones are only a few inches wide, and not cheap. It's art. It's mathematics. Many are shapes never before made or even imagined -- simply because they were impossible to render before. Bathsheba also does laser etched images deep inside of glass crystal. Check her news blog for some really dazzling larger pieces. I've ordered several things from her and have been happy.

-- KK

Quintron

Beth Sheba Mini Sculptures
$80
Available from Bathsheba Sculpture

I bought a Nintendo GameBoy DS just to play this game. Designed by the legendary Japanese artist Toshio Iwai, this little gem allows you to draw music. I have always wanted to make music, but I never mastered an instrument. This tiny thing is that wondrous instrument. It lets me construct harmonic and melodic sounds in pictures. The joy of making my own music instantly and visually is intoxicating. Computer-assisted music making is nothing new. What's simply fantastic here is the utterly beautiful and ingenious interface that Iwai-san has devised, and the ease and fun it provides.

To make music I take the little Nintendo touch-screen stylus and drag around cute little sprites on the screen (it's supposed to be for kids). Musical notes in the shape of single-cell organisms bounce around between them. These "electro-plankton" jump, swim, ricochet, wiggle, and ripple sounds. By arranging the cells in different patterns, under different environments, I can direct them to play interesting melodies and rhythms. But since these little sprites are creatures themselves, they have a little bit of their own action. The music is co-created. The sound is never random noise, but coherent in some strange way. It's a visual and audible treat. When I play with it I feel good. That's all it does. However, I know of a few musicians who use this game for their professional music, almost like a sketchbook. You can export tunes from it via the speaker port. Yet, Electroplankton is not a general purpose music machine; the style of sounds it generates is limited to an underwatery ambiance. It's closer to art than a game. But it is a strangely endearing toy, perfect for sonic doodling.

-- KK

Electroplankton, for the Nintendo DS
$155
Available from Amazon

This is a comic book version of the 911 Commission Report. No joke. It takes the narrative of the official National Commission Report and transforms it into a page-turning thriller. It's a very fast read. Their visual timeline of the four hijacked flights is scarily clarifying. The artists do a marvelous job of weaving the many threads that lead up to the event of 911. In fact before reading this I had not appreciated how interconnected the many previous encounters with the jihad network were. This graphic book also reveals in simple pictures how seriously the government bungled many early clues, how sadly it bungled its real-time response to the events and how it continues to bungle the complexity of this new world. The comic does all this while remaining faithful to the the Commission's text, yet underscoring its clarity by telling the story in pictures. It's a showcase for the power of the cartoon media. Highly recommended.

-- KK

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
Sid Jacobson, Ernie Colon
2006, 144 pages
$12
Available from Amazon

Sample excerpts:

Hard to say what this Brian Eno invention is. Part book, part screen saver, part gallery painting, part DVD video, part music, part software. It slices and dices your perceptions! The accompanying book in this package makes it clear that this an art piece that is normally exhibited in a large room. Here it comes disguised as DVD that you load onto your computer (Windows or Mac). When you fire it up, it starts to slowly generate paintings constructed by random layering of several hundred of Eno's foundational images. Very S--l---o--w---l---y each painting melts into the next painting, so that the total number of image permutations tops out at 77 million. While the images shift, Eno's ambient music also swirls in the background. Like an extremely slow screen saver, the result is ambient painting. But instead of happening in a gallery this evolution of paint happens in your space.

As I spent time watching these lovely paintings gradually, almost imperceptibly, evolve into another image, I had a epiphany. These 77 Million Paintings are not about colors, space, or painting -- but time. The reason audiences will spend hours watching gallery installations of this same DVD is that their "nows" are elongated. If they are like me, they wait anxiously for the first image to change (Hurry up, man, this is slow), but by the time the fifth one is changing , it no longer seems slow, and by the 20th, you are in some eternal zen now. It is quite remarkable how colored lights can change time.

Besides the handsome 52-page book written by Eno, and the software, there's also a DVD interview of him discussing the project. A very nice package.

-- KK

77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno
$36
Available from Amazon

77 Million Paintings website

[Note: the most recent edition is the True Films 3.0 ebook]

This is version 2 of my reviews of the best documentaries and factuals available. This time I review 150 of the best true films and list two dozen others which I deem only "good." For each film I present 4 or 5 screen shots, and captions, which I snagged from the film to give you some idea of their texture. As before I only review films that are easily available at consumer prices. That means films in theatrical release or locked up in "educational" pricing schemes are not included.

You have about 5 different ways to get this book. I designed the book in color, but you can buy a black and white softcover version from Lulu.com, where it is the cheapest, or for a bit more from Amazon, where it is the easiest to order. Or you can buy a luxurious 156-page full color softcover version from Lulu. Or you can buy a dirt cheap color version as a PDF download, and get it instantly. In a few weeks you'll be able to get versions for e-book readers and PDAs.

Now here is the thing. In each mode, I make exactly the same profit: $1.50 per book. In an experiment in new publishing I have priced each version $1.50 above my costs. So the different prices merely reflect the different costs of that venue. This means I don't care which edition you choose! Whether you buy the $2 PDF version, or the $30 color Lulu print version, or order from Amazon, I make exactly the same $1.50 per book. As I add other options for purchase the same process will apply: my total markup will be $1.50 above my costs.

Do I need to mention there is the free website version? Not as handy as a book, but updated with my latest additional reviews. However, I'm partial to the book version. It is a great browse, very concentrated and accessible and as it says on the cover "Perfect for Netflix."

-- KK

PDF Download
$2
Available from me via PayPal
$1.88
Available from Lulu

Black and white softcover book
$10
Available from Lulu

Black and white book
$20
Available from Amazon

Color softcover book
$30
Available from Lulu

TrueFilms website

I borrowed one of these non-contact thermometers to test the heat dissipation around a new fireplace I'm finishing. It worked so well that it had me running around my house measuring the temperature of lots of things that I'd often wondered about but had no way of investigating. For instance I was curious about the results of extra insulation I put in last year. I also found myself using the device to follow heat contours around the house. I could follow heat contours in the air by using this device to measure the temperature of the skin of my hand. This method made a rigorous investigation into energy conservation fun as well as informative.

One attribute of IR thermometers I really appreciated is their instantaneous response, even across a distance. Since the device is based on an infrared light sensor, there is no lag, no hysteresis (like a thermostat), no memory, no need to even be close to the surface being measured, which is a lot different from how I am used to thinking about temperature.

With the ST pro model it was like I could reach across the room and touch the wall in the back of the fireplace to see how hot the fire was getting. I discovered all kinds of readings that affected my fireplace design. For instance it was around 400 degrees near the gas pipe I was sealing with fireplace caulk. I found that it got to a max of 70 degrees above the fireplace where I was thinking of mounting a plasma TV; that it was a max of 100 degrees about a foot in front of the fireplace at the level of the hearth, and that there was a temp gradient of about 40 degrees to the side edges of the hearth. (I figure that gradient was probably not a steep enough to cause levels of thermal stress that would crack the slate I was planning to use for the hearth). However I was able to measure a much sharper gradient across the metal face of the zero-clearance fireplace, where I planned to mount tile with special heat-tolerant silicon adhesive (thus needing to confirm the max temp of the metal face at around 210 degrees after 2 hours of fire). And so on.

As a homeowner it may be hard to justify buying one, but as a nerd (and especially if I had kids) I want one around. For me it has something to do with an Internet-biased mentality -- I hear an obscure concept, or someone has a question, and I almost reflexively reach for Google. Now it's like that for my home. Is that frying pan at exactly the right temperature for pancakes? Wait, I can get the IR thermometer out of the kitchen drawer...

-- Rick Botman

Raytek Mini Non-Contact Thermometer
Model MT4
$45
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Raytek

Eighteen months ago Cool Tools introduced me to SketchUp (since acquired by Google). I love this tool but always missed the discontinued SpaceBall 3D controllers that I used with high-end 3D applications. We'll, that's changed. 3dconnexion (owned by Logitech) now sells a low-cost, very high quality, 3D controller called the SpaceNavigator. You can get an edition for personal use that is only $59 (instead of $99 for the pro edition). This increases Sketchup productivity and fun factor by 2-3 times. If you like SketchUp you have to have this!

The SpaceNavigator is a six-axis controller that you use in conjunction with the mouse and keyboard. With it you can move around the model in three dimensions, intuitively and without changing from one mode to another (e.g. pan to rotate to zoom). You can also configure it to work in what ever fashion is easiest and most intuitive for you. With a little practice you can move through and around the model using the mouse and SpaceNavigator, never touching the keyboard. It provides a huge increase in productivity and, frankly, fun. I'm designing an addition to our house and my kids (6 & 8) have learned to fly through the model without my help. Of course you can use it with other 3D applications, like AutoCAD, Rhino and Maya.

This is one of those things that you purchase and fall in love with because it's useful, high-quality, and inexpensive. (It works in Windows, Linux, Unix -- but not Mac!)

-- Mike Green

SpaceNavigator
$57
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by 3dconnexion

Since I'm in the gear business, I pay attention to the many End of the year Gift Guides that pop up now. Most of these collections are filled with stuff that doesn't interest me. For some reason editors, and maybe consumers, are entranced by gear that looks cool. You know, very design-y. These fashionable objects don't work better, and often work worse, than what is already out there. As utility objects they are junk. Most often the editors haven't even handled, let alone used, the object they are listing. It's inclusion is simply based on the clever look and concept. And what is not fashionable, is electronic. Most holiday lists are full of all kinds of the latest cell phone/camera/DVD player/PDA and so on. As far as I can tell these items are selected for their features -- as listed on the product's spec sheet -- and not by any trial or use. Their supposed advantage in reality has a half-life of about 3 months, as their feature list is topped by the next model.

There are a few seasonal lists that don't get sucked in by these temptations and actually try hard to uncover new cool tools. Here are a few that I find have a high ratio of hits to junk. The primary quality they share is that the reviews have used the thing and demonstrate some passion and intelligence for it.

-- KK

Uncle Mark 2007 Gift Guide & Almanac
Mark Hurst runs the Gel Conference in NYC and every year writes up his personal recommendations of what you should get -- along with some other tips. He offers this advice in a very smart, succinct and well-crafted PDF, which is a joy to read.

*

Wired's TEST
It's a lot more work than you'd think, but Wired actually tests the contenders in two dozen gadget catagories and comes up with clear suggestions of the best gear to get. You'll get the magazine-like issue if you subscribe. If you don't, you can get the web version for free here.

*

NPR's Great Gadgets
NPR's daily All Things Considered program has a small segment where gadget experts rave about their own favorites. Called "Great Gadgets" it lets various gadget aficionados rave about their favorite things. You can listen to those segments online. [Thanks to Gregg Lewis for the suggestion.]

*

2006 Street Tech Holiday Gift Guide
Gareth Branwyn collects the best of the stuff he had seen in a year of reviewing gear for his online site Street Tech and distills the best for the year. It is a personal selection, of (mostly) stuff that he uses, which gives the recommendations some clout.

This is a little R/C airplane that is tough, easy to fly and lots of fun. It flies using differential thrust from 2 tiny motors on the wings and has no moving control surfaces. If you want to go up both motors spin faster, left the right motor spins faster, etc. This is a great little plane with a big following on R/C forums. There are lots of mods that have been done. Flies slow enough to fly in a backyard and minor repairs can be performed with hot glue. Comes ready to fly.

-- Jason Tan

Air Hogs Aero Ace 27
$30
Available from Toys R Us

As commercial book publishing crashes, personal book publishing is booming. Personal book making entails printing high-quality books in very small quantities, including quantities of one. New technologies permit anyone to print one copy of a softcover or hardcover book, including all-color photo books. These printed-on-demand books are indistinguishable from commercially printed books. In fact, some of the books you buy on Amazon are manufactured with this same technology. You just can't tell the difference.

However, being able to print as few as one copy -- instead of a minimum of a thousand -- shifts the economics of bookmaking toward individuals with more passion than money. For the past two years I've been producing high-quality books in very small quantities using several different services. I've shown these finished books around to many people, including those in the New York publishing industry and media, and everyone has agreed the quality is first class. Several of the photo books I've made look like coffee-table artworks, and cost about the same, yet I can produce them one by one on demand. I've also made text only books which appear to be store-bought trade paperbacks or hardcover books from the bookstore.

Having tried most of the services available and created dozens of books, I'm ready to recommend the best services to use. My advice is slightly complicated, because the success of book making and book publishing pivots around your aims.

To turn a text manuscript into a regular book, either softcover or hard, I recommend Lulu. Their website has a very thorough step-by-step process which will enable you to make a book with the least amount of money. A 100-page trade softcover book in black and white will cost about $7 to print. Lulu will walk you through the edit, design, and production sequence. They offer templates you can follow. Once in digital form, you can easily order one book or many. Lulu will also offer help in getting your book out into the world, but it can't really help you market or sell it. That will be your job as a self-publisher. If you are a more sophisticated book maker with your own design skills you can send Lulu a PDF file of your designed book, and simply have them print it, at the same prices. This is the way I use them. Finally, Lulu can also print full color books, including smaller full-color paperbacks. (These could run $20-30 a piece for 150 pages) The overall process of getting a book printed is smooth and fairly hassle free.

My recommendation for the best personal color book printer is Blurb. Blurb produces color books very similar to the iPhoto books you can order from Apple. Using iPhoto Books is slightly easier than using Blurb's software, particularly if all your photos happen to already be in iPhoto, but it works well enough. The idea is that you can drag images (photos or illustrations) into template book pages, add text or captions where you want to, then hit a button and have the finished book mailed to you. (all these systems work with PCs and Macs)

A few of the books I've made in copies of one.

The results from both Apple and Blurb are marvelous. In fact, these books are astounding. That's because they both use the same back-room engine, the HP Indigo 5000 (as do the other color book makers like Snapfish and MyPublisher). The Indigio is essentially a high-speed, high-quality liquid-toner printer that will print your photo book several pages across. (Lulu on the other hand uses a dry toner process called iGen3 from Xerox) The final result of a Indigo-printed page is a very richly colored, very finely detailed image. It looks like a page from a color magazine. The color-match is pretty close to the image you see on your monitor, with this exception: I've notice that printing on paper is far less forgiving of blurred or out of focus images. The human eye notices less-than-perfect sharpness on the page more than on the screen, so you have to be far more ruthless in your editing when making a book.

While Apple and Blurb both produce lovely printed books with well-crafted covers (in quantities of one), Blurb does it for a lot less money. A 100-page book of photographs will cost $100 with Apple iPhoto Books, but only $39 with Blurb. They are currently printed on the same machines. Blurb also offers more options for working directly from PDFs. Recently they announced an easy way to make a printed book version of your blog (or any part of your blog) which I have not tried yet, but will soon. Apple actually subcontracts their bookmaking to MyPublisher, so this is not their focus. Blurb, however, besides having the best prices, is the most dedicated to servicing the widening long-tail of personal book making.

For instance Blurb has noticed that while most people start out by ordering one copy of a personal book, they quickly come back for more. Ordering 50 or more copies is not uncommon. Furthermore, once people discover how easy it is to make a book, they make a lot of them. Maybe several a year. A book has an authority and weight that is not easily dismissed in this digital world. For instance, some people have discovered that by mailing out very nice books out of their reports, business plans, or even Powerpoint presentations they got more attention and calls back because "people won't throw a book out!"

I've also played around with different sized books. MyPublisher offers a truly coffee-table size photobook ($60) that is very impressive. I filled it with snapshots from a trip to Italy we made one year. At the other end of scale, I've made a number of itsy-bitsy books the size of a deck of cards with Apple iPhoto and MyPublisher books. I was first handed one of these diminutive works by a photographer who was using this cute booklet as her portfolio. Cool. I've made little ones this size devoted to curious themes just to hand out.

There are tons of reasons why people make personal books. Artists can use a clean trim hardcover book as their portable gallery. Cookbooks take on a higher class production when you can add photos of your dishes. I even saw one Blurb-produced book that was a reproduction of a relative's old typewritten manuscript of poetry. It had a lot of soul. Several friends who were scrapbook enthusiasts decided to switch to classy photobooks (everything is scanned first) when they saw the tidy fit-and-finish of the Blurb books. Photobooks are hot mementos for reunions. We now make a photobook from all our vacations. I attended one hi-tech conference recently at which everyone got an instant Indigo-produced color book summarizing the conference, pictures and all. At some of the foundations I am involved in, we've used hard cover color books of a fun meeting or trip as perfect gifts for potential funders. And nowadays Blurb books are inexpensive enough that some high school kids are making their own full-color alternative anti-yearbooks.

Most information in the world today is digital and has no need to ever leave the screen. But the more personal your expression is, and the more personal the audience, the greater the impact you get by making the information tangible. For making text in black and white, use Lulu. For making color pages, use Blurb. Lulu has great online tutorials, and Blurb has released a meta-book, a book which tells you how to make a book. It's quite well done, with solid advice useful no matter where you get it printed. While you can purchase a Blurb-made hard copy of this book, they also wisely offer a free downloadable PDF version.

-- KK

Lulu Paperback
$4.50 base price
Available from Lulu

Blurb Photobook
$19 base price
Available from Blurb

Blurb's How to Make a Book

Cardboard is a wonderful building material. You can do far more with it than you might expect. Use it to make furniture, sculpture, models, and of course play structures. The common way to assemble projects with cardboard boxes is to slap pieces together with duct tape. But tape is clumsy, expensive, will unpeel outdoors in weather, looks clunky, and won't take paint. A cool alternative are these Kevlar-like rivets specially designed for box cardboard. One shape does both sides. The rivets sport a grippy ratchet that clinches them close, yet enables them to be reused. The large button gives them holding power and allows you to make joints that can swing, too. We've found that you need either two people working, or ape-long arms, to squeeze both sides of the rivet pairs. Also, they are really made for the double wall corrugated cardboard of the kind you find in large appliance boxes; on thin cardboard they aren't as prettily snug, but still will hold fine. A set of 100 (50 pairs) is enough for a small maze.

-- KK

Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets
$8 per 50 pairs
Available from Mr. McGroovy's

Mr. McGroovy has free plans and some nice tips on where to locate free large boxes.

Our son is a very sound sleeper and had problems with bedwetting. We tried everything we could think of. Finally I stumbled across a mention of Enurad in a parents' forum. It's a wireless wetness sensor that you place in the child's underwear. A standard alarm clock has been modified to ring at the slightest wetness. Enurad combined with limiting nighttime fluids solved the problem in a couple of months. He wore the device for sometime after that as an insurance policy. He just slept better knowing it was there. At $210 it's not inexpensive, but worth every penny. Enurad doesn't have a US distrubuter that I know of. I ordered ours from Austrailia. Highly Recommended.

-- Johnboy

[According to the most recent science (see this article) moisture alarms are the most lasting medical cures for nocturnal bedwetting, better than commonly prescribed drugs. -- KK]

Enurad Remote Sensor Alarm
$210
Available from Bedwetting Solutions
Manufactured by Enurad

SmartFlix will rent you nearly four thousand How-To DVDs in English. Subjects range from construction techniques (tile laying, cabinet making, timber framing), outdoor activities (kayaking, archery), and self-help, to such specialties as welding, lock-picking, and primitive fire-making.

The quality of the instruction varies tremendously. Some DVDs are smart and effective, some aren't. Some are old, some brand new. All come from various publishers. The SmartFlix site smartly provides customer reviews (although not all DVDs have reviews). I have found the reviews tend to be generous; I mentally deduct one star from the ratings.

It's amazing what you can learn from how-to books and videos. Most of my livelihood skills I learned this way, out of school and without teachers. A great book or video can equal, or at least compliment, an okay teacher. Through years of watching instructional videos, I've found I need to view them more than once. First I watch before I do anything; then I review parts in the midst of doing; and lastly I watch it again after I'm done, when I finally understand what they were trying to say. You to rent these videos for one week (it should be longer).

Renting these DVDs is not as cheap as using Netflix, but they are nearly as handy with their postage-paid mail-back carton and clear website. The cost is $10 per rental for a week, which works out to about half or a third or more of what buying them would be. None of these how-to's are available on Netflix, and no where else are they gathered together with such easy search, ordering, and evaluation.

SmartFlix was formerly known as Technical Video Rental; they are currently selling off all their video tapes and only rent DVDs now. The site and service is still young. As more members rent and review these very specialized factual films, this service will increase in value.

-- KK

SmartFlix
$10 per film
Available from SmartFlix

My second time snowboarding I got a concussion and lost memory of the day. Since then, I wear a helmet as much as possible when boarding. However helmets are hot and bulky, and if I am traveling, or if it's a nice soft powder day, I have always wanted something that offers protection without the hard shell. D3o Labs has come up with a new foam that is soft in general use, but gets rigid when impacted. This material was used in Olympic slalom ski suits to take the sting out of the on-coming gates and to offer crash protection. A Swiss company, Ribcap, has licensed this material for a set of very nicely made knit caps. These hats have this smart foam sewn in to make them effectively a soft helmet. This is by no means a substitute for a rated hard shell helmet, but I like having the option, especially when traveling where a helmet is bulky. The hat I just got from a retailer in Canada (so far the only place I have found them) is really nicely made, and has a built in balaclava.

-- Alexander Rose

Ribcap Protective
$80
Avialable from XX Inc.a

Video demo
Manufactured by Ribcap
Manufacturer of smart foam: D3o

I've renounced chains on bikes now that I've fallen in love with the chainless bicycle. I've been riding a chainless for about 5 years now. Drive shafts for bikes were invented at least a hundred years ago; what's new is their new low cost, clever shifting, and improved efficiency. Since there is no chain, contemporary chainless bikes use a hub transmission on the back wheel instead of a stack of different gears to "shift gears".

A good ol' standard bike chain can be more energy efficient if -- big if -- it is kept well-lubricated, aligned precisely, and fine-tuned with constant attention. Mine never was. But a modern sealed drive shaft beats the efficiency of the average neglected crusty chain (like mine). Getting rid of a chain removes the least stable part of a bike, the item most likely to need adjustment or fail, and the dirtiest component. Shifting is a breeze on these drive shafts; just click into discrete gears. I don't mind tossing the bike into a car (no grease) and I can ride with long pants (no pinched trousers). Removing a rear wheel for repair or a flat *is* more of hassle with a drive shaft, but not unduly so.

There are some high-end custom versions of the chainless bike, but they all use either of two drive shafts. The bike I bought is a slightly clunky Taiwan-made $300 weekend bike outfitted with a Sussex drive shaft -- the most popular type. It connects to a Shimano Nexus non-cog gear hub. I got a 7-speed version. Mine is not a high-performance bike, but it has gotten me everywhere I've wanted to go -- without the hassles of a chain. This bike is no longer manufactured, but the Dekra Chainless is very similar, although it uses a different brand drive shaft (which I have not used).

Dynamic Chainless Bikes (which now owns Sussex) produces more sophisicated, higher quality, and more expensive ($600 plus) chainless bikes. These slick bikes have a lighter second generation Sussex dive shaft, an 8-speed hub, and better components. Dynamic makes chainless mountain bikes, which other Cool Tool readers have recommended, and I am tempted to try.

-- KK

Dekra Chainless Bicycle
$350
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Dekra Bikes

Dynamic Chainless Bikes
$600 and up
Available from Dynamic

Shaft manufactured by
Sussex Enterprises Co., Ltd.

Simple games are the best. Tangrams are an old puzzle based on a set of elemental shapes that can be arranged in thousands of different patterns. To recreate a given picture is challenging, yet not too daunting even for kids. Playing gently encourages lateral thinking. It exercises a geometrical logic, rather than words or numbers. The puzzles are almost like peanuts; you keep wanting just one more.

We use tangrams as an after dinner parlor game. Everyone gets a set and we compete to find the solution first. Since the shapes can be contained in one large square, you can easily cut your own version from cardboard or plastic (and we have). But I've found that this Tangoes model is precise, won't wear out, and crates up easily and tidily. Each Tangoes case contains two sets of tangrams (in two different colors) and a nifty set of puzzle pattern cards, all of which slide into a plastic case with instructions on the inside. It's a very nice package. We have several sets, to fill all the seats at a table.

-- KK

Ultra Tangoes
$15
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Tangoes