Thinkfun Circuit Maze - Electric Current Logic Game

A product easy to use for kids. My youngest son is happy to have this kind of challenging games.

Fantastic puzzle game, teaches kids and all ages about basic circuits

Great fun, but ironically becomes less fun if pieces become lost.

Having watched my Rush Hour entertain, frustrate and focus all ages in all situations for over ten years now, I decided to get this for my son, who is only four, but a huge fan of puzzle and logic games. As with Rush Hour, there are two means of solving the puzzles, by using observation and logic, creating paths in your mind before putting the pieces in, or simply by continued trial and error. We all love it. Though it doesn’t come cheap, it’s worth every penny- Comparatively, it’s a lot cheaper than console games and will last a lot longer. My son is very young (it says ages 8+ on the box), but he has grasped the concept of a circuit path and can work out several of the beginner level puzzles. He also enjoys getting the pieces out and making up his own circuits. Hubby and I scratch our heads over the more complex one, and we all really enjoy it. Some of the pieces are a little tight-fitting and pop out a bit, so occasionally, a little holding in place is required. Like Rush hour before, it’s not an adrenaline-inducing game, but is ideal for puzzlers of all ages, enables focus through both logic and manual building, can easily be packed for holidays etc and for parents, it has the potential to keep children occupied for AGES. Simply love it.

My 9 year old loves this. He's going through the puzzles for a second time now. It's challenging enough, but he can worth through them.My husband enjoys using it too!So pleased with this. It was a birthday gift.

Given it as a gift to a 7 years old boy. He played it with my son and both loved it. thank you.

Hovered between three and four stars on this review. I would like to have given it five as it's a great product and I think there's plenty of learning that can be done through the play.Basically these are 'simple' electrical circuits, using LEDs in series and parallel (and sometimes both) to complete a circuit whose layout is shown on the puzzle card. The puzzle is both to illuminate the LEDs as shown and complete the layout with the pieces given. Usually there's only one right answer and there are a number of wrong answers where the LEDs won't light up as requested.Reading the instruction, although brief is recommended as there's a few things that you might miss otherwise such as the plus sign on the LED connects with the plus sign on the battery and not the other way around.The puzzles range from the elementary to very tricky. Puzzles with switches are normally and bit harder but a bit more satisfying when they work. How tricky? Well one of the hard puzzles too two people, one studying electrical engineering at University over an hour to solve.They also look good as well and I came away thinking that having a few more components such as resistors or transistor switches would make it even more fun.The big downside, and why it doesn't get five stars is the actual board. I'm not sure if mine was faulty. There seemed to be a rubber foot missing and I made a substitute that improved thing. But even with that there's a real issue that plug one component in and another will pop out. Once you had some practice this can be overcome, but I would consider that child - or even some adults - would find this frustrating and give up or return the product as faulty.I notice on ThinkFun's website, and in US reviews the issue with the board is mentioned a number of time and ThinkFun have responded by saying there's an updated board that solves the problem. I have no idea if this is the improved board or the old one. I did email, tweet and FB ThinkFun about this issue when it arose. But I have had no reply in two weeks.So my review is "brilliant, but flawed".

liked the interest in using a game for an educational purpose.