Yes, it’s Friday afternoon and it’s been a long week. I can offer up no other excuse for what I’m about to do to you, all I can suggest is that if you’re currently experiencing a particularly productive period at work you’d be advised not to read this blog post.

Still here? Good.

At one point yesterday one website occupied the screens of no fewer than nine journalists across Pro and our neighbours at MacUser (sorry guys). It’s called Fantastic Contraption and, I really can’t emphasise this warning enough, it’s more addictive than crack.

It’s simple yet incredibly complex, if that makes sense. You start in the light blue zone, and all you have to do is get the pink object into the target zone; all you have at your disposal are rotating cogs, wooden rods and watery “string”.

Roll the object on home-made caterpillars; catapult it with a trebuchet; construct your own terrain-mashing death tank if you have the imagination for it – it’s entirely up to you. The only laws that matter are those of physics, with everything interacting exactly as you’d expect.

Try it if you dare. Even after completing all 20 levels you’ll be going back to try them in different ways. And the ability to view other people’s wierd and wonderful solutions online just emphasises how much freedom you have in your methods.

Don’t click these links until you’ve completed the respective levels for yourselves, but here’s a few we came up with when we really should have been busy writing a magazine. (Just click the green Start button in the top-left corner to set them going).

Level 17 – Handling

Level 19 – Back and Forth

Level 20 – Unpossible

Be creative, try your own methods and post the links to your best contraptions in the comments below – we’re sure you can do even better than us.