Have you ever had an idea for a toy or game that you thought could make you a million bucks? West Windsor resident Ronghao Chen has. He calls it “Super Pentominoes,” and for the past seven years he has been working to perfect and market what he believes could be bigger than the Rubik’s Cube phenomenon of the early 1980s. Unfortunately making a million bucks is not so easy.
Chen says that Super Pentominoes is a game that improves the player’s logical thinking ability and math scores and increases I.Q. Furthermore, he says it is the perfect antidote to the brain-deadening effects of popular electronic toys like GameBoy. With over 5,”000 possible three dimensional and two-dimensional patterns and solutions that range from the not-too-difficult to the genius level, Super Pentominoes is designed for ages eight through adult.
“I call it ‘King of the Puzzles,’” says Chen, who will demonstrate Super Pentominoes at the Plainsboro Library, 641 Plainsboro Road, on Friday, April 15. “It is a fun way to improve your thinking flexibility. Why can one guy find a solution in 30 minutes and someone else can’t? This will help you improve your cognitive skills in a way that very few things can.”
He says that he has spent years working on the concept of Super Pentominoes, including researching articles and countless hours developing solutions to the puzzles. “I would get up at 4 a.m. and work on the game before I had to catch the 6:40 train to New York in order to go to work,” says Chen, who works for the New York City Housing Authority as a contracting project manager. “This my hobby. There is no way anybody is going to be able to do this for a living, but I am starting to market the game in the United States and Canada, and I want to eventually sell it worldwide.”
Based on pentominoes — a century-old game originally created in England — Super Pentominoes is played with 12 colorful pieces, each representing one of the 12 ways in which five flat squares of the same size can be connected edge to edge. “I didn’t invent the shape,” says Chen. “That is a part of pentominoes. My invention is finding a lot more new patterns — from the simple to the very complex — that other people don’t know.”
The game offers practitioners the opportunity to develop discipline in their thinking processes and to improve their ability to think in terms of three dimensions. Young players start off with two dimensions and move on to three dimensional challenges of ever-increasing complication. “One question has 128 possible solutions,” says Chen. “Most people get 110, 120, and a few smart people can do 125. But reaching the top number is very difficult because it is very complicated.”
Included with Super Pentominoes are 14 puzzle illustrations and solutions as well as 30 additional special challenges without solutions. “I want you to think about it, spend some time, and really improve your I.Q.” says Chen. For those who are stymied and want help or are just ready to compare their solutions with Chen’s, a separate solution manual can be ordered. “Some problems can take three or four hours while others may take a year or two,” cautions Chen.
For each of the 30 challenges, points are assigned. Complete them all and you get 100 points. A rating of “excellent” is achieved with a point total of 90 to 100, “good” is a score of 70 to 89 and “fair” is 60 to 69. Passing is over 50. “If you are of average intelligence, I think you can probably only get to good or fair,” says Chen. “That’s because as you get into level nine, it gets very complicated.”
Originally from China, Chen’s father worked as a chemical engineer and his mother was a pharmacist. He has lived in West Windsor with his wife and son for the past three years. They have one son who attends Grover Middle School. A licensed civil engineer, Chen came to the United States in 1984. He earned his bachelors degree in engineering in China, then came to the United States in 1984 to work toward his masters degree, earning it in 1986 from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.
Chen has been selling Super Pentominoes for $40 each. It is available at Jazams, 15 Hulfish Street, in Palmer Square, Princeton (609-924-8697) or through his company, Wisonet Inc. (609-799-1624).
While some consumers may balk at the cost, Chen says that the quality of the product makes it worth it. Constructed in Hong Kong, each box of Super Pentominoes costs Chen approximately $16 to produce. “There was only one company in China that could make these games with the quality I need,” he says. “A decade ago I saw a similar item in a store that was made in Mexico. But the quality was very bad, the surfaces weren’t even, it was smaller, there were no colors, and the instruction sheet was only one page. They sold for $28 each, and that was 10 years ago.”
In addition, Chen says that the cost of marketing Super Pentominoes is so high, and his profit line so small, that he cannot afford to sell it for less. “I went to Jazams, and the owner asked me how much she could sell them for,” says Chen. “I told her $40 a piece and she told me that was too expensive. She thought it should sell for $25 each. But I have to pay her 50 percent (on each sale). So I only would have gotten $12.50 when it costs me $16 to make. So I told her no.”
Chen has discovered that there are myriad other costs in trying to produce and market a game that the novice inventor may not have anticipated. “I applied for a U.S. patent and paid a lot of money,” says Chen. “A lawyer wanted to charge me $6,”000 for preparation and patent application. In total that would have cost around $10,”000.”
In addition, Chen says that if he wants to sell Super Pentominoes worldwide he must apply for international patents. “That would cost more for each country I want to sell in,” he says. “It’s impossible for me to apply for so many patents. I have a family to support.”
Ultimately, Chen is hoping to find an investor. But so far that has been an elusive search. “I need a lot of money, not just $10,”000,” he says “For what I’ve done so far I’ve used my savings. Costs include computer software, printing, packaging. I get nothing for my time, my management. The shipping fee is $4 from China, and that’s not by air, but by ship. I have to go to the port. Then I have to pay import tax. Also, there is a storage charge and a United States Custom charge. And all distributors want to charge 50 percent. Some want me to ship the games to them and still give them 50 percent.”
Chen believes that parents who are eager to see improvements in their children’s math abilities would do well to invest in his game. “In the United States the math scores are not too good,” he says. “I read in the newspaper that the United States is only rated in the middle of international testing. Some students are below average. The top countries were Hong Kong, Korea, and the Netherlands while the United States was around 19. I want to sell this in the United States and that will help high school and even college students improve their math.”
But while Super Pentominoes has yet to achieve the worldwide success of GameBoy or Monopoly or even the Pet Rock, Chen says that he is undeterred. “They tell me everyone wants electronic toys,” says Chen. “But I’m trying and will never give up.”
Discussion and demonstration of Super Pentominoes by Ronghao Chen, Plainsboro Library, 641 Plainsboro Road, Friday, April 15, at 7 p.m. Free. 609-275-2897.
