Mind benders for old (and young) at heart.

• Position: Gear Ball, Brainstring Advanced, Great Minds Set of Five - What's New? - Brief article

Sure we love video games. (What choice do we have with three teenagers in the house?) However, sometimes we like to revert to form and go old-school with these new wonders:

Gear Ball. Challenge your puzzling skills with this brain meltingly difficult circle of confusion. Slightly larger than a baseball, Gear Ball is like a Rubik's cube morphed into a sphere. Your goal is to twist and turn Gear Ball's surface until you form six solid faces of color. Completing the solution, however, requires more than just positioning nine pieces of matching color per side. You also must align and orient the bordered gear pieces correctly. Gear Ball's high-quality construction ensures a velvety smooth spinning action for high-speed solving. Available at Target, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon ($24.99; www.recenttoys.com).

Brainstring Advanced.

This knotty little puzzle is all about thinking inside the box. The brainchild of Dutch inventor Guido Lap, it uses simple elements to stretch your spatial reasoning to new limits. Elastic bands connect colored buttons on opposite sides of a clear, plastic case. The challenge is to group the buttons by color, sliding them along the slots cut in the clear plastic...