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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 8×8 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 3×3, 4×4, 5×5, 6×6, and 7×7.
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.
The first confirmation that indeed I had an original puzzle idea came in a letter from Games and Puzzles magazine in England. Later patent searches confirmed this to be a unique idea.
The complete letter is shown at the bottom of this page.
In 1994 another name was chosen for a market test in Edmonton, The CalmPlexTM, 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 MindBlockTM.
Here is the letter that really prompted my enthusiasm to getting this puzzle into the stores. Now, 3 decades later, the deed is done.
Who said 'build a widget and they will come' was easy 
A text version of this letter is available Here
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