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New MOSI exhibit designed to bend your mind
Staff photo by RYAN BAUER
The Mindbender Mansion at MOSI offers many games and puzzles to challenge your brain.
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Published: October 2, 2009
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Have you ever wanted to navigate a hot air balloon over treacherous terrain? Test your assembly line skills in a frozen TV dinner factory? Strap wheels to your dining room chairs and tear through your kitchen?
These are a few of the 45 brain-teasing activities you will find at Mindbender Mansion, a new 6,000 square foot exhibit opening Saturday at MOSI.
In the exhibit, the expansive mansion, "owned" by the wacky and eccentric Mr. E, is filled with rooms upon rooms of perplexing puzzles. Completing a puzzle nets you a new clue, which you can eventually use to open the mansion's secret vault. Visitors that successfully complete all the riddles can get their picture posted on the Wall of Fame near the end of the exhibit.
Some of the riddles are relatively simple — make a square using the puzzle pieces provided, align numbered pegs in a Sudoku-like grid — others only appear so and require you to tap into the mind-power and muscle of a team.
"There are a lot of team-building activities, so the whole family can participate in solving things; even the real young kids can appreciate and participate in these activities," says Anthony Pelaez, MOSI's Director of Education.
One of the more physical challenges, Spelling Fever, features a floor full of giant, back-lit letter tiles that you must hop through to spell out answers to questions from a variety of categories.
Think "Jeopardy" meets Scrabble meets Dance Dance Revolution.
In Feeding Frenzy, you will find yourself in a frantic race against the clock as your team attempts to fill TV dinner trays on a fast-moving conveyor belt. It's not unlike the classic "I Love Lucy" candy factory scene.
The Mindbender Mansion exhibit was originally designed and constructed at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's production shop in Portland. It arrived to Tampa in giant crates, which workers spent all week unpacking and building.
Pelaez says that "To be a good educator, you have to make things fun; the two have to go hand-in-hand. That's what we pride ourselves on here at MOSI — really creating these experiences that people will take with them the rest of their lives."
You can test your puzzle-solving skills in the Mindbender Mansion through Jan. 3 at MOSI in Tampa.
The exhibit is included in the museum's admission price, which is $23.95 for adults, $19.95 for children.
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