A mysterious thinking marble found by Amazon in New York City?! What would Herodotus say?
The Priestess at the Oracle says, "There is a peak at the bottom of the valley."
Huh? What does all of this mean?
OK, in drier terms, here's what's going on:
The modular Q-BA-MAZE marble maze is composed of three types of cubes. The mystery marble action happens in the double-exit cubes (see video). A double-exit cube has a spherical interior (concave up) which is intersected by a torus (convex up). The torus (donut shape) is lower than the sphere within the cube. A marble entering from a side of the double-exit cube has momentum which causes it to rock back-and-forth on the concave-up sphere (think of this as a valley) as energy is lost due to friction and wind resistance, the marble slows and eventually comes to rest at the bottom of the sphere. But the actual "bottom of the sphere" has been replaced by the "top of the torus" (think of this as a peak). The marble is now precariously balanced on the torus and will randomly fall to the left or right. So, paradoxically, there is a peak at the bottom of the valley.
Still doesn't make sense?
A video is worth a million words (so here is the link again). At the end of the video there is a demonstration of the "mysterious thinking marble." This took place at the Toy Fair in New York City. The Toy blogger for Amazon.com, Laura McMullan, stopped by the
Q-BA-MAZE booth and conducted this impromptu video
interview on the spot.
(Stay tuned. We will soon be announcing a new Q-BA-MAZE game called Moose! Lucy just designed a Q-BA-MAZE moose from one 50-pack and it inspired a two-player game. Lucy and I play tested it this afternoon -- already a big hit in the office! : )