A friend just sent me email about a new (to him and to me) puzzle
called "masterball". Anyone know anything about it? Is it worth
getting?

Haym

I saw a Rubik's cube variant today called "Masterball." Have you
seen it? It is a sphere with 32 faces. If you consider the sphere
to be a world globe, there are 8 longitudinal slices each going
through the axis of the globe, dividing the sphere into 8 segments
like a sliced orange (sorry for starting to mix my metaphors [actually,
I guess I was mixing similes, but I know *you* wouldn't bring up
such a trivial point]).

Oooops I guess there are only 4 longitudinal slices, each through
the axis, to divide the globe into 8 segments.

There are also 3 slices of latitude, one through the equator one
each in the northern and the southern hemisphere parallel to
the equator.

Resultant 32 faces. Mechanism has some similarities to Square One.

Two different versions of Masterball are available. One has eight
different colors, corresponding to 8 segments. The other has only
black and white. I don't remember the home pattern of the black
and white sphere, I presume it is a degenerate case of the 8 color
sphere with black and white alternating slices.

Cost: $24.95 each. My source is the same store in San Francisco
(Stonestown mall) that provided the Rubiks Tangle, Rubiks Dice, etc.

Games magazine seems to like the puzzle. They included Mastermind Rainbow
(the polychromatic version) in this year's "Games 100" listing. Their
write-up isn't very informative, but there's a picture. It appears on page
59 of the Dec. '92 issue.

By the way, they indicate that the puzzle is available from Baekgaard at
1-800-323-5413.