CURIOSITA' - CURIOSITIES - CURIOSITÉS - KURIOSITÄTEN - CURIOSIDADES

From the moment we receive your orders to the time we ship them with our carriers, we are careful to put in this all the attention they require.

Processing and shipping them in 24 hours, a pocket size catalogue and a safe packaging.

Because we’re aware that when you receive something expected, expectations are not to be disappointed!

To start with, this traditional board game, of which a new version will arrive by the end of June on our site, is known by other names around the world. In Italian we also use to call it Royal Table, but we also hear it called Tric Trac.

Its birth dates back to 4500 years ago, thanks to the discovery of the Royal Game of Ur in the tomb of a Sumerian king in ancient Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. Other sources would like him to be even older and originally from Iran.

It certainly managed to spread to the West as well as to the East, thanks to the various migrations of peoples and tribes; of the original Backgammon began to create different variations, different ways of playing, depending on the geographical area. Some frescoes representing a playing field very similar to today's were also discovered in ancient Egypt, inside the tomb of none other than the legendary Tutankhamen.

Backgammon is also mentioned in the well-studied Odyssey, with the episode of suitors intent

"Mahjongg has had the power to be both a bridge and a barrier between different cultures," explains Annelise Heinz, a researcher who has dedicated an entire book to this specific board game.
Heinz has managed to trace how the popular game of Asian origin has always found a way to be community across various cultures and countries.

Mahjongg is a relatively modern game that developed around the mid-1880s, especially in large cities in China, such as Shanghai and Beijing. It was then in the early 1920s that he developed a truly international reputation. Exporters, shopkeepers and businessmen helped spread this new fashion all over the world, even in America.
In the new world, everything started anew from the elite and subsequently reached the entire population, especially as a tool to facilitate the transition into a new era, more globalized and deeply connected with the Asian world.

And this transition is also visible in women's lives.

In its origins, Mahjonng

You got it right ... today we talk about the Rubik's cube, originally known as the magic cube.

The puzzle was patented by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian designer and architect with a passion for enigma. The first curious fact, however, is that the inventor himself took more than a month to find the solution for its creation. Just think that when the cube was born, Erno didn't even know if there would ever be a solution!

There are several ways, however, to approach the solution of the puzzle. The most intuitive is the layered method: 7 steps to perform and a few algorithms to memorize. The method most used by professional speedcubers, on the other hand, is the Fridrich method, which allows you to solve the cube much faster, grouping second-third, fourth-fifth, sixth-seventh steps of the layered method in single steps.

The Rubik's Cube began to be marketed by Idela Toy Corp in 1980, winning the award for the best game and brain teaser of the year.
And if initially

The new secret box of our Leonardo Collection is inspired by the famous Medici family, central to the Florence of the Renaissance period.
In fact, on our puzzle appear elegant and refined inlays that could have to do with that historical and artistic period.

Florence, in honor of the Medici, has strewn its streets with the family crest: a shield with red balls on a golden field.
The curiosity lies in the fact that the shields are not exactly equal to each other ... the number of balls, in bisanti heraldry, can vary.

If at first, in fact, the spheres in the coat of arms were equal to eleven, Giovanni di Bicci brought it to nine, his son Cosimo to eight, and the latter's son, Piero il Gottoso, came to reduce it to seven. The last decrease occurred with Lorenzo the Magnificent, who brought the spheres to 6, with the top one loaded with the insignia of the Royals of France.

As to why, then, there are balls in the center of the Medici coat of arms, suppositions

In one of the past articles, we have already introduced you to Professor Hoffman's impressive book, "Puzzles, Old and New".

For those who missed it, this enthusiast of games and puzzles, decided to enclose in a single text any puzzle he could trace back to his days.
Some were newly invented, others as ancient as Noah.

And anyone who is lucky enough to leaf through the pages of the book is faced with barin teasers of all kinds, from the most traditional to the most absurd.
Brain teasers and more, because there are also sections dedicated to numerical and literary logic games.
In short, aiming at the idea of ​​solving them all, was a long long time project.

One of the puzzles explained and illustrated by Hoffman has to do, as you may have guessed from the title, with a spider.
The professor refers to it as "The Spider and the Flies", describing it as one of the cutest of the "dexterity and perseverance" puzzles.

The MOON puzzle is finally available on our site, a new challenge for all fans not only of puzzles but also of space, stars and cosmos.

You too will have a difficult mission to complete on the lunar surface, for which you can draw inspiration from the crew of Apollo 11, in particular the often forgotten astronaut who played, perhaps, the most important role of all.
We are talking about Michael Collins, who passed away last April.

We can start by saying that we also feel Collins a bit of an Italian hero, given his birth in Rome.

In 1963 he was selected as an astronaut and, after being a reserve member of the Gemini VII, he had the great honor of traveling in space twice: aboard the Gemini 10 and, subsequently, the famous Apollo 11.
266 hours in space.

Of Apollo 11, two names are often remembered, Armstrong and Aldrin.
This is because they were the ones who put their faces on it, they were the ones who descended to the surface

We don't know the exact moment. The first safe of which we have historical information, however, dates back to Ancient Egypt, precisely to the 13th century BC. And guess what, it was made from wood. Surely arriving at the exact burial place of the Pharaoh was not an easy thing. Pitfalls and traps to overcome without losing body parts or staying dry. For Ramesses II, all this was not enough. He encased his most precious treasures in a wooden safe with a lock similar to that of pin locks. A very ambitious mechanism for three thousand years ago! A further step was taken by the merchants of Ancient Rome, who invented a locking system with fixed flaps to prevent the goods from being stolen. Over time they also began to use flaps of different sizes, so that each safe needed a different key to open. During the Renaissance, a period in which sculpture and architecture flourished like never before, safes became not only more elaborate and safer, but also beautiful to look at. In the

A brainteaser from our Leonardo da Vinci collection is emblazoned on the imposing and famous basilica of Santa Croce in Florence.

Our wooden 3D puzzle consists of 6 pieces with an ingenious interlocking system and is part of the mini puzzle series ... great fun in a small format.

The homonymous Basilica, on the other hand, is anything but small. Indeed, it is the largest Franciscan church in the world, famous above all for its 16 chapels decorated by great artists of the Italian Renaissance and the presence of several tombs and cenotaphs belonging to famous people buried there.
So famous that it gave Santa Croce the name of Florentine Pantheon or our local Westminster Abbey. A temple of Italian Glories.
Some names? Michelangelo, Vittorio Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo.

The remains of Galileo Galilei were brought to the basilica 95 years after his death.

Few people know that even the square in front of the Basilica takes its name from it.

There is a massive text that we will often talk to you about from now on.
It is perhaps the largest written collection ever made in the history of brainteasers and puzzles.

In Puzzles Old and New, in fact, Professor Hoffman, already author of texts on magic tricks and card games, set himself the goal of creating a real illustrated story of all the puzzles to be found, from the past to his present.
After all, we know, starting from the ancient Enigma of the Sphinx, traps and riddles have always fascinated young and old.

Today we want to start from one of the first puzzles present in the pages of the famous text.
It is a thin wooden tray, closed above by a glass plate.
It is called the Planet Puzzle and, in fact, inside it you can see as many small marbles as the planets of the Solar System back then known.

The goal of the puzzle was to get each ball into the hole corresponding to its position with respect to the Sun.
As many