A few days ago I wrote about a homemade block puzzle that seemed to resonate with readers. So I thought today I'd share our favorite storebought puzzle, and a whole series of them made by the same company. Like block puzzles, these introduce a level of complexity to puzzle-making beyond simply adding more pieces and making them smaller.

Belgian educational toy company Beleduc (get it? Bel-educ?) has a series of cleverly-designed multi-layered puzzles, by which we mean they are actually a sequence of puzzles completed from the bottom up, with pieces fitting only in their layer. This intriguing idea allows them to demonstrate a variety of concepts:


Stages of development: Their Frog Life-Cycle Puzzle shows the transition from a tadpole into a frog. The base shows a cluster of eggs, and each multi-piece layer illustrates a stage of the amphibian's development. They do the same with the caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation.


Periods of a cycle: The four seasons are also presented in a "forced sequence," with puzzle layers completed in order that reinforce their chronological order. The only thing missing from this demonstration is that the first follows the fourth - layers cannot really represent a true cycle as well as some other toys might. Also, there seems to be at least a partial missed opportunity in not allowing parts of layers to be interchangeable in this particular puzzle - I'm sure Z would get a kick out of being able to show kids in summer gear in the dead of winter.

But our favorite of these puzzles, and the only one we've actually used, is the one we bought Z for Christmas.


Layers are, in order of depth, clothes, skin, muscles, and organs, with the skeleton printed on the bottom layer. All we could have asked for is a circulatory/nerve layer and a bit better differentiation between the girl's head in the "skin" and "clothed" layers.


The puzzle comes in a boy and a girl version, each a bargain at $20 on Amazon.com. It is one of the best Christmas gifts we bought her, and has sparked innumerable conversations about how her body works.

This post from the ZRecs Archives was originally posted on February 27, 2008.