The original idea came from a checkerboard puzzle produced in England by Theydon Games, circa 1950 (a firm about which there is now little record). It was a very simple cardboard cut-out form that made a basic 8x8 chessboard. Games and Puzzles magazine published the pieces and a solution in issues #67 and #70.

I received this puzzle in the early 60's as a gift and had the idea of making the puzzle pieces from wood to produce a more substantial puzzle. I realized the possibility of a cube form due in part from the SOMA cube. These early pieces would not form a tessellated cube and during the 70's I produced many 3 dimensional cardboard models to find a cube shape and consistency with other puzzle shapes, notably the 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, and 7x7.

In 1981 the puzzle was completed and was called The Snowie CubeBoard. By 1985 my brothers were helping with both a new name and a patent search. The name chosen was, The Tesserec, for both tessellating and erecting.

In 1994 another name was chosen for a market test in Edmonton, The CalmPlex^TM, for both calming and perplexing as well as a play on the word complex. This did very well and the name carried through until 2004 with internet online sales starting in 1998.

In 2004, A marketing company was hired and the final name chosen for world-wide distribution in stores was, The CalmPlex MindBlock^TM.