Thursday 26 February 2015

How do You Solve a Problem Like the Cube?

Created as a piece of art, smuggled out of communist Hungary and sold as a toy for children, the Rubik's cube is one of the most engaging artifacts of contemporary pop culture. 

With a simple, yet complex, six-sided design of fifty-four squared coloured tiles, the cube is anything but a child's toy. It is a portable mystery that can baffle adults and take hours to solve. It is the pop puzzle that continues to delight over 25 years after it was first introduced to the world.

Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian sculptor, created the cube in 1974. Rubik made his first prototype out of wood. The original cube was a much heavier and far less colourful version of the cube we have all grown to love. It was coined the 'magic cube' and patented in 1975.

By 1979 Rubik's puzzle was a hit in Budapest, but the cube was destined for a bigger stage. A friend managed to get one out of the country and brought it to the Nuremberg Toy Fair. Here the cube landed in the hands of Tom Kremer, a toy specialist who immediately saw the toy's potential as a mathematical puzzle for people around the world. After acquiring the rights to distribute it, the cube was renamed the Rubik's Cube, after its original inventor.

In three years, Kremer's toy company sold over 300 cubes, as the world fell in love with the handheld puzzle. It is now the world's best-selling toy. It is also a symbol of the inherent human desire to solve the mysteries that are placed before us.



As makers of puzzles, the Krakit team admires Rubik's pioneering spirit. It takes a special person to create such a tangible riddle, a riddle that has touched the hands of one in every seven people on this planet. Crazy….


Our escape games are slightly less ambitious, but they do offer a similar intellectual challenge. Try your hand at one of our theme rooms this week and relive the delightful innocence of solving a puzzle.


Sunday 15 February 2015

The Ten Greatest Berlin Wall Escapes

On November 9th, 1989 the famous wall that divided East and West Berlin was finally removed, reuniting families, friends and countrymen that had been apart for 28 years. The wall had gone up almost overnight, isolating a small part of West Germany inside the Soviet run East Germany. The wall was a 155 km in length and included segments of concrete dividers, wire mesh fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, 20 bunkers and 302 watchtowers.

For 28 years, defectors of East Germany sought to escape to West Berlin by making their way over, under and even through the blockade. Once they arrived in West Berlin, they were able to fly to other democratic states in Europe, effectively escaping the Sovietization of East Germany. The daring few that made it across were seen as escape heroes, with many having their stories immortalized on film.


This week Krakit, Vancouver's Escape Game, would like to highlight ten, incredibly brave, successful escape attempts made by East Germans defecting to West Berlin:

10. End of the Line
On December 5th, 1961, Harry Deterling drove a passenger train across an unused portion of track into West Berlin. His immediate family and a few friends accompanied Harry. The railway line was blocked the following day.

9. Water Bed
Ingo Bethke used an air mattress to make his watery escape across the River Elbe. To get to the river, Bethke and a friend had to navigate a minefield, a metal fence and a trip wire installation. Sounds like the mattress rafting was the least dangerous element to their escape.

8. Love in a Convertible
Heinz Meixner, an Austrian working in East Berlin, came up with a plan to get his girlfriend out of the country. He rented a small convertible and removed the front windshield. He then lowered the air on all the tires. With his German sweetie beside him, Heinz drove to the Checkpoint Charlie border. At the inspection point, Heinz was briefly detained before he stepped on the gas, sliding easily underneath the lowered gate crossing and into West Berlin. Part of the deal to get his girlfriend out was that her mother accompanies them. His future mother-in-law was smuggled across in the trunk of the car. 


7.  Guard Duty
1,300 guards skipped over the border in the first two years of the wall's existence. One of most famous guards to do so was Conrad Schumann. He jumped the wall on its third day of construction, when the wall was just a line of razor wire. Peter Leibing immortalized Schumann’s jump. The iconic photograph is now a part of the UNESCO Memory of the World program. Sadly, Schumann, suffering from depression, took his own life nine years after the fall of the wall.

6. Tank You
Wolfgang Engels used a tank as a battering ram to facilitate his escape to West Berlin. Unfortunately, the wall was too much for the tank. But Engels wouldn't be stopped. Using the tank as a stepladder, he scaled the wall, only to get stuck on the barbed wire crown. After being shot twice, Engels passed out. After being helped by passer-bys on the Western side, Engels woke up in a bar and immediately noticed the Western liquor bottles on the shelves; He had made it!

5. Zippy
Holger Bethke followed in his brother's footsteps (see #9), when he escaped in 1983. But instead of a watery getaway, Holger took to the skies. Using a zip line, he descended from one of East Berlin's taller buildings to the ground in West Berlin.

4. Retirement Tunnel
In 1962, a dozen senior citizens escaped through a tunnel that they had dug themselves. The group was lead by an 81-year-old gentleman. The group had spent 16 days digging the tunnel that covered a distance of 160 feet. One of the impressive features of the escape route was that the entire tunnel had a height of six feet. When asked about the height, one of the escapees quipped: "(we wanted) to walk to freedom with our wives, comfortably and unbowed."



3. Playboy
Hugh Hefner was responsible for the freedom of more than a handful of East Germans. Apparently the Munich's Playboy Club issued membership cards that were incredibly similar to the passports used in West Germany. A quick flash of the Playboy membership often fooled border guards.

2. Balancing Act
One of most death-defying escapes was made by Horst Klein in 1963. Klein was an East German circus performer who used a high-tension cable to cross the expanse. Horst dangled 60 feet above the ground and moved hand over hand until he was over the wall. Unfortunately Horst had nowhere to properly dismount. He was forced to drop to his freedom.

1. Balloon Ride

Hans Strelczyk and Gunter Wetzel built a hot air balloon to carry their two families over the wall in 1979. The balloon portion was made of canvas scraps and bed sheets and the engine portion of old propane canisters. The balloon reached a height of 8,000 feet before sailing over the border. The flight lasted thirty minutes and was immortalized in the Disney film, Night Crossing.