This is the glowing version of QiYi’s tiled Mirror Blocks: the same 3x3-based shape puzzle, made from a translucent blue plastic that charges with light and glows when the lights go off. Instead of stickers it has tiles, thin plastic pieces fitted into each face.

• BrandQiYi
• TypeMirror Cube 3x3
• Size57 mm
• MagnetsNo
• FinishTiles, luminescent blue plastic

How it works

It’s a shape mod (a puzzle that keeps the mechanism of a well-known one but changes the shape of its pieces): inside it works like a 3x3, but each layer has a different thickness. When scrambled, the cube loses its shape and becomes an irregular block; solving it means restoring its cube silhouette. As all the faces are the same, you have to recognise each piece by its height and volume rather than by colour, which completely changes the way you look at the puzzle.

Materials

The plastic stores light, whether from the sun, a lamp or, better still, ultraviolet, and gives it back in the dark. Tiles stand up to use better than stickers, which peel over time. QiYi makes the same model in other versions: with non-glowing tiles, with magnets or with stickers.