Story by MAUREEN HARMON
Photos by LANS STOUT

At 40, Andrew Blakeslee (MBA '04) needed a heart transplant.

A rare condition called sarcoidosis - the same disease thought to have killed comedian Bernie Mac earlier this year - had ravaged his heart. He was bedridden for nearly three years as he waited for a new one.

Three years of Sudoku puzzles - the logic game that places numbers in boxes - got old. So Blakeslee began to envision a more challenging puzzle involving multiple layers of triangles.

Trizm puzzles were born.

Based on the same principles as Sudoku but in pyramid form, Trizm consists of mini-pyramids of numbers. Players must fill in the mini-pyramids, the sides and the colored crossbars without repeating a number.

Blakeslee received his transplant in October 2007, and within a month of his hospital release he had founded the Trizm Puzzle Co. he's already working on his second book, "The Trouble with Trizms, Volume 002."

There's a point to the books besides puzzling - 50 percent of the profits from Trizm Puzzle Co. help fund research into heart failure, sarcoidosis and organ transplants, including an endowed research fellowship at UF's College of Medicine.

Although Blakeslee's sarcoidosis is in remission, he knows there's a chance it could come back and attack again. So he's fighting it the best way he can. He figures in Trizm takes off the way Sudoku did, the sky's the limit as far as what it could do for researchers' bank accounts and for patients like him.

Support heart research at http://www.FloridaTomorrow.ufl.edu/medicine.

Want to try a puzzle for yourself? Check out the daily puzzles at www.trizmpuzzle.com.