Aside from its awkward title, LetsTans is pretty flawless, and a new favorite game of mine.

I’ve been a huge Tangram fan ever since I received a Tangram puzzle set as a stocking stuffer when I was 8, maybe 7. Unlike most tangram sets, mine wasn’t multicolored, with glaring reds and yellows, greens and blues; mine was clad all in black, the case and shapes both, and a tiny slot in the case let me prop up a puzzle card for easier viewing, of which I had 150 to solve. My parents always had a sense of style when it came to games. My brothers would play sometimes, competing with me to see who could solve the puzzle faster, but they would quickly tire of the “monotony” they viewed it to have. They were really into Legos at the time. So was I – the three of us would build cities together – but I appreciated the beguiling mystery of the Tangram puzzle – on the surface so simple, but endlessly complex. There were no step-by-step instructions for the mysterious silhouettes I had to mime with those seemingly incongruous pieces, so solving each puzzle was an act of mental dissection. Over time, and any tangram enthusiast will boast the same, I developed a kind of sensory, deduction perception, able to just see the shapes within the puzzles, memorizing all the different rotational alignments for each tangram piece. I lost that tangram set a few years back, in one of my many moves, so I’m thrilled the Grabarchuck Family requested a review of LetsTans – I probably would never have stumbled upon it.

LetsTans offers three modes of gameplay, two of which – Replica and Arcade – are incredibly and giddily challenging. The Classic mode is the typical Tangram game: a silhouette image is given and you must figure out how to contort the shapes given to create a replica of that image. The shapes provided for all play modes are the classic pieces that comprise a Tangram puzzle, which includes 2 large isosceles triangles, 2 small isosceles triangles, 1 medium isosceles triangle, 1 square, and 1 parallelogram. The shapes are congruous in such a way, that the short side of the parallelogram matches the length of the small triangles’ sides, and the long side of the parallelogram matches the sides of the medium triangle, and so forth. If pieced together a certain way, it’s possible to create a large square – the tangram default position, if you will (like Downward Dog in Yoga). I tend to prefer the Classic mode, because I like having a blank slate to work with, but both the Arcade and Replica play modes are challenging and fun in their own right. In fact, they’re vastly more challenging – I’ve solved all 60 the Classic Puzzles, but between Arcade and Replica I’ve only solved 9. In Arcade you have a white outline of a shape set among a colorful background cluster of tangram pieces wedged against one another, and you must find the cluster that fits perfectly within the outline. In Replica, the same cluster background appears, only you have a white silhouette in the lower right corner of the screen, and you must individually tap on the cluster of shapes that create that image. Go ahead. Try it and weep at your seasoned abilities gone stale.

The one problem I have with this LetsTans, or any tangram app I’m sure, is it’s ever so slightly easier than using physical pieces. With my original tangram set, the cards I used bore much smaller images than the one I would create with the tangram pieces. The disparity in size was something I had to take into account when solving, another mental contortion I had to grapple with, since being able to estimate size properly was tantamount to a correct end result. Also, in LetsTans the silhouette acts as a puzzle board, giving you concrete boundaries, so you can simply lay the pieces inside and extrapolate the solution from there. Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with this – it only makes sense, after all, for such a tiny playing field as the iPhone’s – but in LetsTans, you’re only able to rotate the pieces at 90 degrees, or flip them. This greatly diminishes the complexity of the puzzles, and greatly diminishes the player’s abilities to make glaring mistakes. The square, frustratingly, is forever facing you in a diamond shape, with axis pointing up and down, and I know I’ve definitely come across tangram puzzles where the square rests on its side. But, these are petty quarrels, and the limitations of LetsTans still make for a good game.

Hints are provided for those scratching their heads in confusion, and you may adjust the amount of hints given in the Options panel. Tapping the diamond shaped symbol with a cross in the lower left of the playing field lets you access the main page, or to restart a puzzle if you feel you’ve reached the point of no return. When you solve a puzzle, a gray banner appears with the elated words of “You Win!”, often accompanied by that stock sound clip of children cheering, as heard in a few kids apps by gdiplus. Hearing that random sound effect, of children cheering, is so out-of-place for such a purported “game of logic” that I can’t help but admit it grates my nerves a bit each time I hear it. But, once again, this is a minor quibble, and isn’t significant enough to hold any negative impact on the game. I’ll definitely continue playing this game. Who knows, maybe I’ll never be able to solve all these puzzles, or it will just take me a really, really long time.

Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be great?