Think solving the Rubik's Cube puzzle is a piece of cake? Don't worry. Professor Erno Rubik, the inventor of the cube has something new for you - only this time it's a sphere and even more challenging.

Unveiled recently, at a toy industry fair in Germany , the sphere comprises of six colored balls trapped inside three transparent spheres. Players have to try move the colored balls from one of the inner spheres into the matching slots that are present in the outer sphere. However, in order to do this, they have to travel via the middle sphere, which only has two holes.

While the Rubik's 360 will not be available in stores until August this year, two-time Rubik's cube British Champion, Dan Harris (pictured) was lucky enough to get to try it out, and this is what he thinks.

'The main difference is the absence of mathematics. With the Cube the quickest solutions are based on formulas and you can remember the fastest way to reach the solution from various starting points. The 360 requires no maths, it is more about physics.' Also

'My personal quickest time on the Cube is about 10 seconds. It took me two days to solve the 360 the first time, a couple of hours the second time and now I could do it in a few minutes. As with the Cube, a lot of practice helps. It is very addictive and engaging – once you pick it up it is hard to put down – which is one of the reasons why the Cube was a success.'

Sure sounds like Professor Rubik has come up with another winner. While you wait for the 360 to hit the stores, here are some fascinating facts about the original Rubik's Cube that you may or may not know.

  • While there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations on the cube's six faces, there is only one solution
  • Since it was invented over 350,000,000 cubes have been sold world-wide.
  • The current Rubik's Cube champion is a Dutch teenager, who can solve the puzzle in 7.08 seconds
  • The record for the person who took the longest time to solve it is thought to be a 45-year old man, who solved the puzzle recently, 26 years after he bought the Cube!

It will be interesting to see if the Rubik's 360 can break this impressive record!

Source: Telegraph.co.uk.