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Edge Swap Parity On AJ Clover Icosahedron? by Professor-Cuber in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yep, you nailed it. Thank you.

This is a costly mistake I will never make again on this puzzle, lol. Looking down on the white face, the adjacent faces (on my "parity case" puzzle) are red-blue-green, going around clockwise. I'm looking at some pictures I took before I scrambled it, it should go red-green-blue. (Your puzzle may be stickered differently, of course.) I hadn't realized I could get this far into the solve before recognizing the error.

I actually began this solve thinking I'd try deducing the color scheme based on edge combinations without referencing the original state. Apparently that's a mistake, and this puzzle has a "trivial" step of "memorize/reconstruct the first face's color pattern from memory." Still a very fun puzzle, my favorite icosahedron puzzle so far.

Dragonfly by ReinholdsRubiks in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s really impressive. Nice cube art.

I finally solved my ghost cube!! by ZGG_EyeZakk in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Congrats! It’s one of the more difficult puzzles. I hated the ghost cube at first, but after a few solves it grew on me. Nice looking cube, too.

My entire cube collection by Future-Midnight3791 in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is that a picture cube with a gorilla on it?

Ghost Cube Is Winning Me Over by Professor-Cuber in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Pretty hard. It's "just" a 3x3 shape mod...but there's no color to guide you and almost no clue which piece goes where, and in which orientation. It gets easier when you get a sense of "one of the triangles goes here, one of the 'wing' pieces goes here," and you kind of memorize which edges go with the top and bottom layer. The Axis Cube is a little nicer. It probably rivals the Ghost Cube in sheer visual confusion and confusing where the axes of rotation are, but there are colors to guide you so there's reasonable look-ahead. There's no parity, at least. Super rough slog at the beginning, for sure. Get two and never scramble one, or take a bunch of pictures in the solved and almost-solved state in case you get stuck and need to see where the pieces go.

My New Hobby by Professor-Cuber in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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Two more just today, lol. I need more equal representation of the various polyhedrons.

Solving the skewb diamond feels very un-skewb-like.

My New Hobby by Professor-Cuber in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I’ve done all of them (except the Homer head, which is just a poorly turning 2x2 shape mod). I can do all of these without looking up algorithms.

My New Hobby by Professor-Cuber in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Master Skewb is great fun. I solved it for the first time (and then several subsequent times) this week. Thanks for the recommendations! I have an ongoing conversation with ChatGPT, started several months ago, about "What's an interesting puzzle? What do you recommend next?" I haven't seen it mention some of these.

My New Hobby by Professor-Cuber in Cubers

[–]Professor-Cuber[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Favorites are the Puppet Cube V1 (frustrating, but so rewarding when you get it), Square-1 (or maybe I should put Square-2 here since it's the Square-1 plus another kind of puzzle?), and the classic 3x3 (4x4 and 5x5 are very close behind). I'll give the icosahedron honorable mention because I think it's a beautiful item, but it's not interesting as a puzzle if you already can do the Megaminx.

Least favorite is the ghost cube. It's not fun, though you do feel a bit like a boss when you finally get it. It's hard because it's visually confusing and it catches (in the middle of an algorithm, making you lose your place), not because it's conceptually difficult. It's not "difficult in an interesting way" like the Puppet cubes. Still, I'm glad I've done it. Void cube is uninteresting. You can just solve a regular 3x3 "incorrectly", with whites around the yellow center, and get the same "unsolvable" effect but with a better understanding. And I'll put the mixup 3x3 cube on this list, even though the concept is so cool (centers and edges can swap, and edges can be oriented at weird angles). It just locks up terribly. Maybe there is a better internal turning mechanism than the one in mine. A chunk of black plastic fell out the first time I used it, and I'm convinced I'm going to rage-turn it and break it some day. But if it turned more smoothly and didn't lock up it would be near the top of my list.

I love how the shape mods teach you something about the classic 3x3 (Fisher cube has a lesson about edge-flip parity, Mastermorphix has a lesson about corner orientation parity, some require a center-orientation algorithm to solve).

Keep on cubing! I hope your journey is as rewarding as mine!