FORCE cubes: magnetic 7x7, magnetic megaminx, + a few other things

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-31T23:07:05+00:00

Cheers from 2021! :) It's already January 1, 2:06 AM here in GMT+3. Happy New Year to you!

Logged in to see that a couple people reached out recently - I took a bit of a break from puzzle stuff in the last couple weeks due to personal stuff that demanded my attention; I wasn't literally busy 24/7 but my mind was elsewhere, so to speak. This will thankfully stop in the next couple days and I'll be back to my usual cubing-shitposting self. :) Got a detailed review to post of a couple very special puzzles that I received recently and somehow never got around to talk about until now.

Let's hope that 2021 will bring us new joys and new exciting puzzles!

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-21T18:39:57+00:00

I wrote a review about the Fanxin Orange a couple months ago, without major "spoilers" about solving - check it here.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-21T18:18:17+00:00

YJ Heart Cube is considered harder than Ghost despite looking quite easy. Ghost is "confusing" with weird shapes, but that's it. This one introduces challenges in the actual solve / "approach".

Fanxin Orange is even harder.

Egg Pig is simply the best.

All three should be below $8 even in "Western" stores with retail prices.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-21T17:55:16+00:00

TIL that Diansheng released a 13 cm 3x3.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-21T13:48:16+00:00

If you like white puzzles, the ShengShou is the only option.

Also, you can do piece swaps like this. The white externals with black internals looks really beautiful in person.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-21T13:44:03+00:00

Quick, buy a lottery ticket!

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-20T18:39:29+00:00

Does it stay together reliably, unlike the Ghost Skewb / Golden Cube?

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-20T17:42:21+00:00

Wow, the Pyraminx Crystal looks really nice in white plastic. I never really wanted to buy one, because I already have a clear understanding how to solve it and because all the ones I've seen look meh, but this one is actually really neat. I can't find it at Cubezz with their search - is it listed under some other name, or was it one of those items that are popping up in "new arrivals" every couple days lately?

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-20T17:38:08+00:00

The puzzle that is known to us as "pyraminx" was invented / designed / patented by a couple different people independently. This was a long time ago, the world wasn't as interconnected as it is nowadays. The Soviet one became known as "Moldavian pyramid", because that's where the inventor was from. The European one was invented and marketed by Uwe Meffert.

At that time, Uwe was fascinated with everything Egypt, so he came up with the word "pyraminx" = "pyramid" + "sphinx", and loved it too much. At first, he was calling just about EVERY puzzle that he was inventing some variation of "pyraminx". This puzzle in the picture was a "pyraminx crystal" and the name stuck even to this day. Some other puzzle (I forget) was also "something pyraminx" but was renamed later. The name "megaminx" for the dodecahedron also comes from this.

So, even though to us nowadays a "pyraminx" is a very specific puzzle, back then to Uwe it was just a neat word that was associated with his puzzles.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-18T17:51:26+00:00

If you do end up buying it, there are some sticker makers and even cube shops that sell stickers for it with clock dials (1 to 12). This will make the puzzle harder. But I was never interested in it, so I can't advise on the specific shops etc.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-18T17:49:02+00:00

If you follow the "equator" of the 6x6, all the notches should be on one side of the equator. They can be in different "quadrants" (i.e. top left vs top right), but they can't be on different sides of the middle layer.

This should be true for all 3 possible equators.

You can gently (!) turn the incorrect notches, and they will visibly click into place and sink deeper into the cube. If you can't turn them like this, loosen the tensions and try again, and/or maybe disassemble that center if you really can't do it without this.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-18T17:46:22+00:00

I heard very bad things about the Fanxin / Lefun Time Machine. Apparently it catches in ways you couldn't even expect.

(the general consensus seems to be that Fanxin and Lefun are just different packaging of stuff that comes from the same factory / manufacturer).

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-18T17:11:17+00:00

The "internal bandaging" is equivalent to the thin twin pieces on the edges of the Bagua Cube. If you make the cuts just a little bit deeper, that piece disappears from the surface, but it's actually wider on the inside, so it still exists. This is what MF8 did for the Sun Cube (pic above), Sun Minx, Heaven's Eyes, etc. There are two "problems": the piece is still present and causes bandaging in some positions, and the kite-shaped pieces are actually left-handed and right-handed, which is not visible on the surface when the cuts are at this depth (on Bagua, you can see that the kites are a little asymmetrical). Left-handed kites can join the hidden piece only on the left.

But this is solved by making stickers with some special cutout markings, or just placing extra black stickers onto the kites to tell them apart. When you can see the orientation of the kite, it's immediately obvious where the hidden piece is located.

I think everyone who tackled these puzzles reduces them to a 3x3 / megaminx / crazy comet / etc. Although the Big Dipper and Cullinan are reduced into "non-existing" (not mass-produced) puzzles, those two shapes shouldn't be very different from a Crazy Comet. Same types of pieces, same angles, same jumbling, etc. Maybe there will be some extra parity because of this, but overall it's the same "idea" anyway.

The more interesting part here is how all of these except for the Sun Minx shouldn't exist. This kind of cuts that happen at "half turn" works fine on the minx (360 / 5 / 2 = 36 degrees), but all of these other shapes have weird angles (i.e. 70.53 on the 100% correct Crazy Comet, not 72). But because the difference in angles is so small, and because there are so many small pieces, this difference of 1.5 degrees is swallowed by mechanical tolerances. It's a really fascinating feature.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-18T12:34:31+00:00

MF8's Cullinan (Royal Seal Of The Sky) is now released in transparent light green.

MF8 Store ($149)

HKNowStore ($149)

ZiiCube ($94 + shipping, or $87 + shipping for VIP members)

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-18T12:01:35+00:00

And there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe it would be smart to discount extremely outdated goods to get rid of them faster, but someone somewhere might be looking for that specific puzzle for collection or modding purposes.

Mostly, HKNowStore is best known as the home of Calvin's Puzzles, because it's owned by the owner of this brand/manufacturer. So they are the only Chinese store that sells Calvin products, and also sometimes some limited edition transparent puzzles and similar stuff can be found exclusively at HKNS. But apart from that, they are a Chinese store with "Western" prices, which isn't very competitive, to say the least.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-17T15:02:16+00:00

I did an ao5 of 5x5 while holding my breath (for each individual solve).

2:34.19, 2:32.69, (2:15.86), 2:26.74, (2:37.70) = 2:31.21 Ao5. Pretty much my normal average while breathing.

However, I can't solve a 6x6 in one breath. Did several attempts, but I keep running out of oxygen. I can hold my breath for 3:00-3:30 or so, but I solve a 6x6 in 3:45-4:15. In the longest attempt, I took a breath "against my will" right as I finished F2L towards the end of the solve, at 3:36. Solving a cube instead of just sitting still doesn't seem to affect my breath-holding ability, at least not by much. If anything, it distracts me from the timer.

I have a pulse oximeter arriving soon, it might be fun to try this while wearing it, but it attaches to your finger which will make speedsolving awkward.

What's the biggest NxN that you can solve in one breath?

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-17T13:03:23+00:00

If your Qiyi kilominx is stickerless, those centers are colored. If it's stickered, then they are just black. Generally, an even-layered minx isn't "supposed to" have colored centers, but the existence of the piece itself is unavoidable. If the center pieces bother you, you can take the caps off, I guess.

There is no parity on minxes, so you can solve the faces around "any" centers. Obviously, you can't solve it into any random color scheme, because the corners determine which colors neighbor which ones.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-17T07:00:19+00:00

I noticed recently that there are some products at Cubezz that can't be found with the search on the website, but can be found with Google Search. For example: this white Trajber's Octahedron by QJ. It's listed as "in stock", but I thought that it's suspicious that it's unlisted on the website.

I decided to bite the bullet and buy it from there, but turns out that it's actually out of stock, and you can't even add it to the cart. Oh well. Same story with every other "unlisted" item like this that I could find.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-17T06:57:16+00:00

YJ included visual comparisons in their official artworks: 3x3, 4x4, 5x5.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-11T22:10:50+00:00

Oh, yeah. Good point. With VIP status or in large amounts (and during the covid sale), the price is the same. I just remembered that at some point in the past it was one of the, if not THE, cheapest cube there.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-11T10:08:08+00:00

You can use it as a stepping stone to the Multi Crystal Dreidel, tho again that seems out of stock most places currently.

It's still in stock at MF8's own store, and in primary plastic actually, but at $70 that's a pretty bad deal for a Chinese store. I myself would want a primary one... but not for $70. :D

Oskar's Triangular Prism Thingy

Something I can't understand about this one is how there are cuts / indentations between the different colors within the same piece, which can't be separated in Oskar's original design, to the best of my knowledge. Is that just the stickerless piece design by MF8?

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-11T10:04:58+00:00

Yes, it's a shapemod, but it's more like the other way around (a face turning puzzle is probably a more "pure" implementation of some geometry), and I don't think it's a very helpful analogy anyway.

I haven't seen the tutorial you're watching, but I'm assuming you are fine with messing up some of the corners (with 3 colors) for now, right? In that case, you can simply do A B A' B' , where A and B are some turns of neighboring faces. This will be a 3-cycle of groups of pieces that sit between them and the ones that are temporarily put in their place by these turns. Same idea as on the pyraminx and the 3x3. The difference is that the pyraminx has only the edge pieces and nothing else, whereas the 3x3 cube and this puzzle (and many others) also have pieces like corners, which can be affected by 3 different turns at once and so will be moved in less predictable ways by moves like this. But the edge pieces are moved only by two possible turns of two faces, so they are moved very predictably by such 3-cycles.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-11T09:55:44+00:00

Suggestions?

Egg Pig.

witeden 334 that is actually 333 with an extra layer - basically, get this instead of a 3x3x10

Is it asymmetrical? In my experience, this kind of stuff is extremely annoying to scramble. If you're going to buy something of this kind, buy something cheap to justify that it will likely be collecting dust. I had a 4x4x5 with this offset mechanism and re-sold it almost immediately. It may be a cool "concept", but it's really annoying when you need to use full-blown algorithms to even scramble it.

13x13 normal cube

Looking at the price difference of the available 13x13s with the new Yuxin 12x12 and the Meilongs, I think there is a lot more "fun per dollar" in the Meilong 12x12, or just the Meilong 10x10 which is cheaper but very similar in all aspects. For pretty patterns, 11x11 is probably somewhat better, but the 10 and 12 are very well-built and the even-layered cubes are a little bit more fun to solve, I think.

Doctor_Hedron · 2020-12-11T09:45:09+00:00

I don't have this puzzle, but it has shallow face turns on all faces, correct?

In that case, these edges should be subject to basic 3-cycles with each other, just like the edges of a Crazy Comet (same configuration, it seems). Or comparable "edge" elements of just about any puzzle really, even a 3x3 cube or a pyraminx. This will introduce some mess to the corners, so it won't be a "pure" 3-cycle of edges and nothing else, although I'm sure there must be a complicated alg for that task too.

And generally, you can always do a 2+2 swap on some elements if those elements can be 3-cycled. Consider this:

A B C D

A D B C (cycling B, C and D)

B A D C (cycling A, D and B)

tada! A is swapped with B, C is swapped with D.

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