Magnetic Tantrix Tips

Magnetic Tantrix, developed by Tantrix UK Ltd with the agreement of the Tantrix inventor, was launched in the UK in August 2005.

We hope you enjoy your Magnetic Tantrix set and would welcome any feedback you may have.

If you are looking for the loop colours for the Discovery puzzle loops in Magnetic Tantrix, please go to the bottom of this page.

The rest of this page is devoted to helping you to get the most out of your Magnetic Tantrix set and expands on the tips that are in the set itself.

We would be fascinated to hear about where and how you play with your Magnetic Tantrix set and any tips you might want to pass onto other users. Feel free to leave a tip on our making contact page, where you can leave a public comment or send us a private message and we will publish a selection of your tips and stories here.

Making the most of Magnetic Tantrix

Magnetic Tantrix's strength is its versatility, so why not make the most of it! To get you started, here are a few ideas to make your life easier:

An alternative to drawing tiles from the bag:

When playing the multi-player Tantrix game or Tantrix Solitaire on the board, you may find it easier to take each new tile from the back of the board rather than from the bag. Put all the tiles on the back of the board before you start and pick them off one by one (without looking) as you go along. When the game is finished you can turn the board over and just start again!

Have you had your free move yet?

When playing the multi-player Tantrix game on a fridge door as a 'delayed' game, with each player only making moves if it is their turn when they come into the kitchen, you can use the colour-indicator discs and the arrow as described in the rules leaflet. If you find it hard to remember whether you have already made a free move during your turn or not, you could turn the arrow around to point at your opponent's tiles immediately after your free move instead of at the end of your turn, then continue to fill forced spaces. That way, even after a long run of forced tiles, you will still know who is the next person to have a free move.

Preparing to do the Discovery puzzles:

When doing the Tantrix Discovery puzzles in this set, it can be helpful to first find tiles 1-30 in the bag and lay them out in numerical order at the top of the board before you start. That way, you won't need to check through all the tiles to find the next one you need every time you complete one loop puzzle and want to start the next one.

Using Magnetic Tantrix at school:

Glynn Ridley, a teacher from near Newcastle, tells us that Tantrix can be used on a whiteboard. He also suggests that Magnetic Tantrix is great if you want to play at breaktimes but never used to be able to finish a game in a single break when you played with real tiles - with Magnetic Tantrix, you can just put the game back in the plastic wallet and continue it next break!

The Rainbow puzzles in Magnetic Tantrix

In the Tantrix Game Pack, this set of five puzzles is created by splitting the 56 tiles into five sets according to the colours of the numbers on the back of each tile. The white numbers on the back of the Magnetic Tantrix tiles (see below) mean that it takes a bit more effort to split the set, but you can do it, so if you would like to have a go, here are the tile numbers you need and a description of each puzzle:

Green puzzle: Take tiles 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 45, 46 and 47 and make a green loop running through all ten tiles.

Yellow puzzle: Take tiles 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 31 and 44 and make a yellow loop running through all twelve tiles.

White puzzle: Take tiles 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55 and 56 and make a loop running through all nine tiles. Only one colour can be solved - but which one?

Blue puzzle: Take tiles 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 39, 40, 41, 42 and 43 and make a 10-tile pyramid whilst building a continuous blue line (not a loop) that passes through all ten tiles.

Red puzzle: Take tiles 4, 5, 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30 and make a 15-tile pyramid whilst building a continuous red line (not a loop) that passes through all 15 tiles.

The Discovery puzzles in Magnetic Tantrix

The numbers on the back of the tiles in the Tantrix Game Pack are colour-coded so that when you are attempting the Tantrix Discovery loop puzzles in the set, you know which colour you can make a loop with each time you add a new tile.

Conversely, the numbers on the back of the Magnetic Tantrix tiles are white, so when attempting to do the Tantrix Discovery puzzles with magnetic tiles, you have the extra challenge of having to find out which of the colours you can make a loop with in the first place!

If you do not already have a Tantrix Game Pack and are finding this a bit daunting, you can make loops of the following colours with the numbers of tiles shown:

3 yellow - 4 red - 5 red - 6 blue - 7 blue - 8 blue - 9 yellow
10 red - 11 red - 12 yellow - 13 blue - 14 blue - 15 red - 16 red
17 yellow - 18 red - 19 red - 20 yellow - 21 yellow - 22 yellow - 23 yellow
24 red - 25 red - 26 red - 27 red - 28 red - 29 red - 30 red

In fact, a few of the puzzles (e.g. the puzzles with 7 and 10 tiles) can be solved in more than one colour - maybe you can find those additional solutions yourself.

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