Amazing Value And Two Fabulous Resources For You

The CubeTwist Bandage Cube Set
Incredible value for money

Yes the 3x3 cube in the photo does look very easy - no stickers or tiles and all black. Even a 3 year old could solve that but above it in my nice little organiser is a complete set of tiles for it in all the usual colours. It includes tiles that are 1x2, 2x2, 2x2 and 2x3 cubies in size. The whole point is to make a bandaged cube of your choice.

I mentioned this puzzle many many years ago and feel that it is worth showing it off again because there is now something available for you all to help you with solving it and finding lots of challenges to be done with it. My friend Rline of the TwistyPuzzling YouTube channel fame has rebought this amazing set and has created a fabulous post on the Twistypuzzles forum where he annotates a method of describing the puzzles that can be created and also has produced an amazing spreadsheet that he has called CheckMakeSolve for allow you to visualise all the various puzzles that have been described so far as well as to make your own designs. The amount of work that has gone into this creation is incredible!

To go alongside this spreadsheet, Rline has been constructing and solving puzzles and posting videos on the approach to it. The whole point about Rline's approach is to use very simple methods to solve as many puzzles as possible. He showed off the "Ultimate solution" to the Rubik cube at the beginning of his YouTube career which uses just 2 or even 1 simple algorithm. The whole point of this sort of approach is not to memorise and fail to understand. The aim is to understand what simple things do and then use them creatively. I know all you non-twisty fans are shaking your heads and saying no, no, no! but it really is pretty straightforward for the basic twisty puzzles.

I had bought this set many years ago and played for a while but had been using the beginner's method for solving the Rubik cube at the time and found that this was rather hard with bandaged puzzles. I had set it aside and completely misplaced it. Now, with this new resource available I was determined to get back to it and bought the set again. Luckily it is a nice cheap puzzle and easily available (HKNowstore or Cubezz) - I bought it from Cubezz for a mere $11.99. How is that for value?

The cube above is the first one in the series that Rline is working through - it's the Block Built Cube. It's a very nice one to start with because the puzzle has 3 faces adjacent to each other that can easily be turned without becoming locked up. Having this set of faces available to move means that the top face pieces can easily be moved and rotated. Using the simple edge piece series once 3-cycles three edges but if you do it several times then you can use it to swap corners around and even rotate them. Remember, the edge piece series is nothing more than up, up, down, down. Using just a 4 move algorithm and using it creatively allows you to overcome a whole lot of bandaging. I was truly delighted when I was able to solve this challenge in just 20 minutes! I am a genius! Except, I'm probably not!

I have not had much puzzling time this last week and despite receiving some wonderful new challenges from Brian Menold (he sent me out a year of orders that he had kept aside for me until it was worthwhile paying the postage), I have not had time to play (I've not even had time to take photos!) I moved on to the second challenge, the Detour puzzle and my intelligence ran out (along with my luck). 

This one, as you can see, has only 2 faces that can be turned from this start position and even with the simple edge piece series system, it is hard to make this usable. I spent a whole week, on and off, trying to think of a way to solve it. In fact, it was even almost impossible to scramble the bloody thing! At the end of that week, I realised that it is possible to turn the blue and yellow faces 180º 3 times each which flips the pieces enough to free up a third face. From this position we are back to the same approach as before but just using it creatively. This was an amazing AHA! moment and having spent a week looking at it and failing to find anything useful, it then took me only another 20-30 minutes to solve it.

Just using basic techniques creatively is an amazing thing to be able to do and the sense of achievement is fabulous. If you can master a 3x3 Rubik cube and use the Ultimate technique and be able to think© a bit then this set will provide hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of fun and frustration. With the amazing resource from Rline (it has taken him hundreds of hours to create the spreadsheet and the ever increasing series of videos), this is a MUST HAVE puzzle set. If you truly get stuck then the video for the one you are stuck on is there to help and once you have understood one then maybe the next will be easier. Don't be afraid, just DO IT!

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MatchBox Playground Resource

MatchBox Playground from Pelikan in collaboration with Péter Gál

I had written about this wonderful (actually incredible) puzzle set from Jakub and Jaroslav back in February and they sold out within minutes. Luckily a whole new batch will be produced soon and those who managed to pre-order will get their hands on them and have a whole lot of wonderful challenges.

I have been chatting with Péter about this amazing creation and the work he has done for it. He offered me the full set of BT files for the puzzling community to look at and play with. It has every single puzzle that his analysis created and is a fascinating thing to peruse. I have uploaded the whole lot as a resource to my Google drive and it can be downloaded as a single zip file here. The individual xmpuzzle files are gzipped inside the main file but this should not cause a difficulty for you. 

Thank you to Péter for this - I hope that you find it as fascinating as I do.

An Icosahedral Puzzle for You Because I’m an Eejit!

Icosaminx with my own colour scheme

Don't they look great?

This is a fabulous puzzle - both in looks and in solving but I am writing about it with a heavy heart...I had not actually intended to write about it this weekend. I have to admit (yet again) that I'm not terribly bright! I have spent weeks on my solving odyssey of the Brass Monkey Sixential Discovery puzzle and really thought that I had it beaten (it took me 3 weeks to find the first step!) and whilst uploading my photos and looking at what I had done and the pieces I had found (OMG there are so many pieces!), I had this sneaky suspicion that I was missing something. I checked Allard's review and realised that I am truly a rubbish puzzler - not only had I taken an obscenely long time to get to where I was but I also had convinced myself that I had reached the end when I really had not and in retrospect it was obvious! Aargh!

As a result of this, I am having to discuss the Icosaminx which looks fearsome but is a minor challenge compared with the recently purchased sequential discovery puzzles that I am failing at. 

Most puzzlers seem to be geometry freaks (another reason that we are "not normal") and with a large number of tetrahedral, triangular prism, cubic, cuboidal, pentagonal prism, hexagonal and dodecahedral puzzles there is always room for something with another wonderful shape and yet more sides/vertices. Enter the Icosaminx...who can resist a 20-sided puzzle? Not me! I had to buy it as soon as I saw it on sale. 

As you can see, it's a corner turning puzzle which means that it is EASY to solve despite it's looks:

Corner turning makes for an easy puzzle

The effect of being corner turning means that the only parts that scramble are the face centers and the edges in triads. My usual approach to any twisty puzzle is to explore simple move sequences first and undo them and look at the effects to see how they can be used. Often I scramble by accident but within 5 minutes of performing an up, up, down, down I could see that those triads were being moved around like any edge piece series would. This is useful as the edges would be easy to place but what about the centres? Remembering the easy approach to commutators that I have learned many times I could see that with so many vertices, it would be easy to turn one and move a single center out of the triad and undo the up, up, down down which would make for a nice easy 3-cycle of the centres. 

Even this can be built partially by intuition

Hooray! within just 5 minutes of playing with the puzzle I had a beautiful solution approach. I would orient the corners, build up most of the bottom half of the puzzle by intuition and block building (this is easy because there is so much space on a 20 faced puzzle - I even was able to do this on the incredible Eitan's Star from many years ago.

Once half of it is built by intuition, I can then 3 cycle to place the edges and finally use my 10 move commutator with a few easy setup moves to rotate all the centres into place. I figured that taking 5 minutes to work out how to solve a twisty puzzle was pretty brilliant of me and then I failed the Brass monkey 6! Sob!

Time for a scramble:

It looks great scrambled and much harder than it actually is

Having admired the apparent chaos of so many pieces, I set to and am gratified to tell you that it really was as easy as I have told you. It's a bit laborious with so many pieces to place but a remarkably satisfying puzzle to solve. It took about 15 minutes to complete and left me with a big grin. I have taken it to work to show off and yet further convince my colleagues that I am a genius. They look at the puzzle with horror and then amazement when it is solved so quickly. At least some people think I am a genius whereas the puzzling world, my poor readers, well know the truth of my meagre skills.

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As a follow up to last week's blog post, I can tell you that the puzzles I reviewed from Pelikan went on sale and as expected the really fancy ones sold out very quickly. I have been told that Jakub and Jaroslav intend to make more copies of the MRI and Matchbox Playground (and maybe the Filling V) in the future. Keep an eye out for them.

I did manage to finally solve the MRI with a very big smile on my face. I had completely missed something in the week that I had it and when I found it laughed at the simplicity and beautiful implementation of the mechanism:

It took me over a week!

I Can See Why Elon Wants To Go To Mars...

Jupiter is MUCH too hard!

Crazy 2x2x2 Plus cubes

Thank you for your well wishes after last weeks' "too spaced out" post. I had completely forgotten how painful a hernia repair is and how long the pain lasts. I am recovering well and have stopped the stronger pain killers to allow me to think a little straighter (let's face it - my thoughts are never what one would really refer to as......ordered at the best of times). I had bought these Sengso Crazy 2x2 cubes a while ago and thought they could not be too hard and I was kinda wrong.

I reviewed the 0,0,0 variant at the end of October after spending quite a long time working out how to understand the odd way it moved. It should have been fairly easy as all the circles on the cube were zero faces (that means the inside is fixed and the outsides move around them - this means it is what is called a "circle cube" and should require just turning the outer faces and solving them having fixed the inner parts. The complicating feature was that there are ONLY outer faces and the inner circles are a sort of bandaged 3x3x3. Yes, my head hurts just typing about it!

I then scrambled the 0,1,1 version thinking that with only a single fixed centre then it should effectively solve like the Jupiter Crazy cube and Jupiter Crazy Megaminx which looked absolutely horrific but were surprisingly easy to solve as they needed only a tiny bit more than a standard cube and standard megaminx (which solves like a cube).

Crazy cube Jupiter

Crazy Megaminx Neptune reconfigured as Jupiter

The whole point of the Jupiter cube and Megaminx is that there is just one single face that will allow the inner and outer circles to be split apart. This means it takes a while to scramble the puzzle properly because all the pieces need to be moved to that 0 face and turned at least once before being moved elsewhere. But then it has the extreme solving advantage that "all" that is required to do to solve the puzzle is move all the pieces onto that 0 face and align the inner and outer parts before moving them off for storage elsewhere until all of them have been aligned with their partner pieces. After that solve the zero face before turning it to the bottom and solving the rest of the cube without moving the bottom face. If you know the beginner's approach or the "Ultimate solution" then it's pretty simple to solve the puzzle without having to move that bottom face again.

I set to the crazy 2x2x2 (0,1,1) thinking that this was effectively just a Jupiter version of the 2x2x2 crazy cubes and would involve the same sort of approach as described above. In my particular version all the faces were effectively turning as 1 faces with inner and outer parts turning together and the white face alone had the outer part turn leaving the inner circle unmoved. With my theory loudly bailing in my empty head, this meant that I scrambled it straight away without any preparatory exploration and stared trying to pair up the inner and outer pieces using just the white face. 

Oh dear, what had I done?

I suddenly realised that this was definitely not a Jupiter 2x2! It was MUCH more complex than that. The reality of this puzzle is that the zero face can change. 😱😱😱

The zero face is actually which ever face holds the white inner piece that is opposite the blue/red/yellow cube (which itself cannot ever be scrambled). OMG what do I do now? 

I have learned over many years from Allard that I mustn't just stop and give up, I must Think© - that's a pretty impressive thing to learn considering that he doesn't do twisty puzzles. Luckily, I was working on this before I had my little operation and started the mind-altering medication so think©ing was still possible. I quickly realised that, with a bit of "fannying around" (that's a twisty technical term!) I was still able to use my Jupiter face to pair everything up as I should and leave myself with what looks like a 2x2x2 cube to solve. 

This looks promising! Or is it?

Having done this, I tried the "simple 2x2x2 solve and quickly realised that it was NOT the same as the 3x3x3 Jupiter puzzle - I did not have the ability to move all faces apart from that 0 face. Any movement of a face that included the bandaged corner (blue/orange/yellow) would move the crucial white corner and move the zero face about. In reality, I had to solve the 2x2x2 using ONLY two faces - on the photo above, I could only move the front right and front left faces to solve the cube. This is a HUGE restriction and proved a massive problem. Almost every single approach that I know requires at least 3 faces to be movable. I was stuck! 

After a week or so of playing about and remembering the large corner bandaged 3x3x3 cube with one huge 2x2x2 fused corner and three movable faces, I did manage to solve the puzzle just once after multiple scrambles and failures and realised that this would be possible about 1 in 12 scrambles by just sheer chance arriving in the right solvable state. I needed more think©ing time and to work out a restricted way to solve the 2x2x2 this way. It is quite simple to solve the back 4 corners leaving just the front 4 using just intuition. At this point I realised that there was a very neat feature of this puzzle. I could not always solve that from 4 corners every time because they had been recreated incorrectly mismatching the centres and outsides. All I needed to do was use my two faces to rotate the faces correctly on that top white face and rotate out the incorrect pairing and put them back in again correctly. This then leaves you with a solvable 2x2x2 cube:

All corners placed but not oriented

Orienting the corners is a trivial thing to do when you know the SUNE algorithm - it only needs to move 2 sides. It's not quite trivial because some setup moves need to be done and undone but it is a fun thing to do (I need a notebook by my side to keep track of the moves). Using this technique, I was able to solve the puzzle multiple times - it was quite mind bending but did not require a lot more than standard cube techniques and the ability to warp my mind a lot. I was soooo pleased with myself until I did this:

All solved with 2 pieces to be swapped - impossible!

Anyone who solves cubes knows that a single 2 way swap is an impossible situation. What had I done here? In the end I had swapped out 2 pairs of pieces but one was not easily seen being the centres that move but not easily visible. 

With a little thought© and planning, I was able to move bits around (fiddly little bugger) and finally could say that I properly understood this puzzle.

These Crazy 2x2s were bought with the initial thought that they might be a little easy entry into the crazy cube series being only 2x2 cubes - I initially felt that this might a nice Jupiter solve. But in reality, having now solved 2 of them, they are definitely not a gentle introduction at all. The hidden internal bandaging makes these incredibly challenging and properly interferes with the ability to move pieces where you want them to be and use basic algorithms. If you are into Twisty puzzles then these are in the "MUST BUY" category.

Crazy Pyraminx Crystal

Crazily Logical Solve

Crazy Pyraminx Crystal

OMG! What have I done?

Having spent a good 10 days desperately working on the wooden puzzles from Pelikan, I decided to take a completely different puzzling track after that and play with something that scared the living daylights out of me but weirdly, enticed me as well. The Crazy Pyraminx Crystal looks absolutely horrific but the reality of it is that it is an entirely logical puzzle that can be solved by anyone who can use either the beginner's solution to Rubik cube or the Ultimate solution. Yes, it literally requires nothing more than a standard approach to a simple puzzle and a bit of thought.

I had absolutely adored the original Pyraminx crystal and even bought a shape modifications of it from Traiphum - the Hexaminx crystal. 

The most important thing I learned from the Pyraminx crystal solution was that, despite having so many pieces, it actually solved as 2 completely different puzzles which were solved one after another. Neither of those puzzles, individually, were terribly hard to solve. 

Hexaminx crystal 

My initial worry with this enhancement of that original puzzle was that the crazy centres which split all the pieces in half would completely confuse me and make it impossible to solve. Before I embarked on the odyssey, I did quickly have a look at the Twisty puzzles forum posts on it to see the general approach that others had taken. Everyone seemed to have worked out a fancy commutator to cycle 3 of the inner circle pieces around and I found one myself which was not hard to do in reality. As is usual for me, during my exploration, I inadvertently scrambled the bloody thing and in the end went all the way. As you can see from the picture above, it is really quite attractive when scrambled so would not be the end of the world if it stayed that way.

My memory of the non crazy version was that all the corners were solved as a Kilominx (i.e. a 2x2 version of the Megaminx) which can be done by anyone who can solve a standard Rubik cube. Then the  edges of the non-crazy version were solved independently of the corners using just the usual up, up, down, down algorithm to cycle them around. Maybe the approach with the crazy version would be similar?

Aha! YES!

There are a couple of wonderful Aha! moments with this puzzle. The first was that the 2 separate puzzle approach would work and the second, even bigger Aha! moment was that the crazy version is not based on the Kilominx - it is actually based on a Megaminx. If you can solve a Rubik cube then the first part of the solution to this is definitely possible for you. It will require you to alter your orientation when looking at it but certainly no worse than any other shape modification.

So what am I talking about? The corners are still the corners of a Megaminx. The edges that look like they should be part of the Megaminx are NOT! Just like the original Pyraminx crystal, you need to ignore the obvious edges just now. The true edges of the Megaminx are actually the inner circle corners.  When turning the faces, it quickly became apparent that the inner circle corners moved with the corners and the ones on opposite ends are effectively bound together. The edges of the Megaminx are effectively internal with only the very ends visible. Having realised this, I refreshed my Megaminx solve and started on it.

Top and middle faces solved all edges and corners

Final face to be solved

As you can see in the pictures above, the corners are solved everywhere apart from the grey face and the apparent edges (which are not edges) have been ignored. The real Megaminx edges are the inner circle corners. To help you visualise - in the left pic, the frontmost edge with the blue and red corner pieces on it has a red/pink edge which we are ignoring just now but the inner circle corners with a white at the top and the pink at the bottom is the real edge that I am visualising. It is hard to get your head around thinking this way but once you can do it then it is literally JUST a Megaminx. Just like a standard Rubik cube, the top face takes a bit of work but it is just standard cube algorithms (slightly altered for the pentagonal faces. The end result is solving the Megaminx:

Megaminx solve completed

Having solved your Megaminx and completely ignoring the crazy circle part of the puzzle you can see that quite a lot has been done. Time to focus on the true edges of the puzzle. I was not sure how best to go about it. I had a commutator worked out so I could just solve the outer edges like the original pyramids crystal and then move the inner edges later using that but it would require a lot of setup moves and could be fraught with the danger of inadvertent scrambling. Just for giggles, I thought I would try to reduce my edges one at a time and then place them. As long as I always just do my up, up, down, down algorithm and undo the setup moves then the Megaminx solve should NEVER be disrupted.

Focus on R/W edge

Twist to pair it with W inner

Move edge over and reset twist

Working systematically, pairing up inner and outer edges, flipping it over and then doing the other side

Move it to face with R inner

Pair them up

Place completed edge

Here I have reduced and placed one single Pyraminx edge. All that is required is to use my up, up, down, down sequence to move the edges around and then twist in place and move them back out and into place. Simple! Do this repeatedly over and over again being careful not to ruin what you have done before - luckily with a dodecahedral shape there is plenty of space for most of it.

The final few require a bit of thought and planning and will usually require you to break up some of your nice careful placement but nothing too catastrophic:

Final face of edges to reduce

Last one will need some extra moves

All reduced but placed ones moved

Once the triple edges have all been recreated and most of them placed then the end game is just like the original Pyraminx crystal:

In the end just have a 3-cycle

Re-solving the equatorial edges that had been dislodged will eventually leave you with just 3 pieces to be cycled. Yet again, it's just an up, up, down, down move to have it completed. Yesssss!

I have carried out multiple solves using this technique and there is nothing extra to it. The end-game occasionally needs a bit of fiddling to get to the last 3-cycle but if you can solve a Rubik cube and by extension the Megaminx then you can solve this puzzle without learning anything new. A truly wonderful puzzle design and puzzling challenge!

A puzzle progression

Can you solve the 3x3 Rubik cube using Beginner's approach? Then a simple progression through Kilominx, Megaminx and Pyraminx crystal is just a matter of thought and no new techniques.

A Cube Without Edges

Solves With ONLY The Edge Piece Series!

The Crazy 2x2x2 trio
They all look identical but the numbers on the face describe different turning

I have had a bit of a splurge on some twisty puzzles recently and have been exploring them this last week or two with some success (to my great surprise). Here I discuss the Crazy 2x2x2 (0,0,0 version) and how it looks ferocious but solves with the simplest technique and a lot of thought.

I pretty much always have a standard 3x3 and 4x4 Rubik cube in my bag at all times. Partly because people finding out about me for the first time always ask whether I can solve a cube and then I have to show them when they don't believe it. I also have it to make sure that I don't forget my basic techniques and it does make a wonderful fidget toy.

One thing that a lot of non-puzzlers seem to think is that "there is a single magic algorithm that you can do over and over again" and the cube will miraculously get solved. I have to disabuse them of this idea but always tell them that it is possible to solve the entire thing using just one simple technique but it requires a lot of thought and planning. If I am to solve a cube quickly (ish - I have no interest in learning dozens of algorithms to discern and move quickly) then I solve layer by layer with a very basic system for the top layer which is obviously the hardest. Doing it this way, I average about a minute and I'm happy with that. Alternative techniques include the Rubik ultimate solution described by Philip Marshall and evangelised really well by Rline with his Twistypuzzling YouTube channel in which one solves all the edges first and then the corners. This technique relies on two simple algorithms - the 4 move edge piece series (EPS) and the 8 move corner piece series (CPS). It requires a bit of thought and understanding but is the simplest way to do it. I also use a block building solution, a corners first solution and for fun I do it using the EPS only.

YES! You can solve the Rubik cube with a single algorithm of just 4 moves!

Scrambled 

I was quite surprised when I started to investigate this puzzle which, as a 2x2, has no edges and I realised that it does have edges in a way and that it absolutely requires to be solved using JUST the EPS!

The 0,0,0 designation means that 3 of the 6 faces are 0 faces i.e. turning those faces leaves the centre circles unturned (the red, green & white), whereas the other 3 have 1 faces and the circles are fixed to the outer parts. The result of this is that the blue/orange/yellow corner never separates from its' circle and you can only really scramble it or solve it by turning the 3 zero faces.

Does this sound confusing? It is a bit of a mind-bender but is not that tough if you have mastered the EPS completely.

 So what is the EPS? It is a simple 4 moves (up, up, down, down) or the other way around. If done just once then it does what it says on the tin - it swaps three edges amongst the front edge and the UR and UL edges. It muddles up the corners but in Marshall's method we don't care about the corners yet. That does seem very simple but the fun this happens when you do it more than once. On a solved cube if you do the EPS three times (D, D, U, U) then it leaves all the edges alone and moves the corners:

Having done the EPS 3 times, the top 2 diagonally opposite corners have swapped and the two from corners have swapped up and down. 

This can be used to move corners where you want them to be using just a 4 move sequence and some setup moves - it's ingenious and devious!

This all sounds great - you can move edges around easily (and orient them) with the 4 move sequence, you can move corners around using the same sequence multiple times but what about orienting those corners? Yes, you guessed it, that same sequence can be used to rotate the corners without moving them. It is destructive when done once but if done 3 times or done in the opposite direction immediately afterwards then the destruction is undone:

EPSx2 starting L - destructive

Turn U face anticlockwise

EPSx2 starting R - undoes it

So now you can see how it can be possible to solve every part of a Rubik cube using just that 4 move algorithm. It's not easy the first time that you do it but it is fun. How can this be applied to the crazy 2x2x2?

During my initial look at the crazy 2x2 I realised that the blue orange yellow corner was the source of the craziness - it was fixed to the central circle and I effectively could not turn the blue, orange or yellow faces since doing so would move that fixed corner around and would prevent any useful moves on new faces. I needed to orient the puzzle with that corner bottom? back and then solve it moving just the 2 front and the top faces. This is an odd way to look at a cube - I had to stop thinking of it as having a front, left and right face as I normally do. 

Having scrambled the crazy 2x2 it became clear that the circle centres are effectively edges. The white and yellow opposite colours are attached to each other. If I rotate the white face then the white circle pieces don't move. If I turn the red face then it moves the white and yellow circle pieces attached to that side but moves them together, the same is true when turning the green face. Therefore the circle pieces in a pair are effectively and edge but marked by the colours of the face at either end. It takes a while to get your head around this but once you do then start solving edges first:

Pseudo-edges all solved

Opposite sides (corner block visible)

Interestingly, it is possible to get the same sort of parities with this one. The first happens to me almost 50% of the time:

2 pseudo-edges to be swapped

This is a "parity of false equivocation". Each of the faces' edges have the same two colours on them for each side (i.e. there are 4 white/yellow edges and the same for each colour pair) it is possible to place them in any of 4 positions on each face and all that is required is to take one from a top edge and place it in the other top position. It is, again, just a matter of the simple EPS.

Once the circles (edges) are solved then the aim is to solve the rest of the puzzle by turning only those front three faces. It sounds awful but it really isn't too hard. Using the EPS only in multiples of three the corners can be moved around into position until they are all in place.

Again, every other solve there seems to be a parity - I am left with 2 corners that need to be swapped. If you know the Rubik cube then you know that swapping 2 pieces is impossible - there is ALWAYS another piece or pair of pieces that need to be swapped...even if you cannot see it. In this case, the parity is caused by the edges first solution to the cube. If you try to solve edges first on a 3x3 then it frequently turns out that all the edges are in place apart from 2. The reason for this is that when solving edges first, it is possible to have the top face turned 90º without realising it and the solution is to turn it that 90º and then re-solve those edges. It is very easy and the end result is all the circles (edges) solved.

Equivalent 2 top edges swapped

All edges solved

In the crazy 2x2 it is impossible to discern this scenario until we find 2 corners alone needing to swap. Unfortunately, the solution is to go back and resolve those edges/top circles again with the top face rotated 90º in either direction. Having done that, the next time that the corner positioning is done, all the corners will be placed correctly.

Corners ready for orientation

In the beginners method we would use the down face but cannot turn that here. We need to orient those corners using just movements of those 3 faces. Easy peasy! Remember what happens when the EPS is done twice? It rotates a corner and destroys a bunch of stuff. Turn the top face until the next corner is at the front and do the EPSx2 the opposite way and it undoes that destruction (see the pictures at the top of the post).

If the rotated corners are on the bottom face then rotate the cube about that fixed corner until the required corners are on the top face and do it all again. This is continued until all the corners are done.

Solved it! Effectively, you have solved a 3x3 with hidden edges and used just the EPS. It is great fun and a lovely, not too tough, challenge. I urge you all to go back to your standard 3x3 and learn the EPS only solution. It is not hard and just needs some thought and planning.

An Edgy Puzzle - But Still Intuitive

Son-Mum 4x4 cube (v1)

The Son-mum 3x3 cube was released back in 2018 and I loved it for the challenging thought processes it required and the nice parity that I had to think through. It was even mentioned in my puzzles of the year as one of the best challenges.  Then a few years later, those evil twisted men and women at MF8 decided to create a new "harder bigger" version and the 4x4 version was released. I bought it at the end of 2021 and had a little fiddle and shied away from it as impossibly difficult and likely to end in tears for me and laughter for Mrs S. I kept looking at it lying on my desk where it taunted me for nearly 2 years and upset Mrs S because she couldn't stand the mess that my desk was in but I could not bring myself to pick it up. I spent a bit of time on holiday in Scotland 2 weeks ago and having limited space to pack puzzles for the journey, I brought a couple of twisties with me as likely to keep me busy for a while. When I finally got around to pick them up, I actually realised that I had not solved any twisties at all for a very long time and was a bit rusty. I needed to play with this as a 3x3 and a 4x4 a few times to remind myself of the very basic techniques (you really should all try to learn how to think about the basics - it really is NOT difficult to solve basic cubes once you have an understanding about the simple edge piece series and corner piece series and how they can be used - I have discussed them previously with multiple other puzzles and Rline has a wonderful set of video tutorials here.

So what is special about this puzzle? First off, you can quickly see that the centres are formed from 16 pieces instead of the usual 4 and it looks impossible to separate many of them. Here is where the fun starts - of course you can do a standard 4x4 scramble but then it is possible to do a 45º turn of the middle layers and then continue to turn the faces - this not only splits up the centre pieces but it also allows the edges to be swapped with centres and the outer edges to be tilted. Here is the puzzle after just 3 turns with a 45º turn done:

This is why I kept picking it up and putting it down

Interestingly, there appear to have been no English language solution videos posted on YouTube which may have given an indication of the extreme difficulty of the puzzle - at least that was my thought process. 

As usual with any new twisty puzzle, I experiment with the edge piece series and the corner piece series to see what they will do when you add in the fancy moves that each new puzzle allows. Interestingly, the corner piece series was absolutely no use to me whatsoever! It either did nothing and the puzzle just remained solved at the end of the simple sequence or there was no real pattern to what it did (in fact one attempt was blocked by the bandaging caused by the 45º turn). Then, as usual, sob, I lost track of what I had been doing and ended up with a partially scrambled puzzle that I could not back out of. Damn! Oh well, I had better get on with it...

OMG! That was probably not a good idea!

This thing would now barely move - so many of the turns were now blocked by either a twisted edge piece lying across a face (see the red/blue edge above) or by a pair of tilted centre pieces lying across a face (see the green centre piece at the top right). What the hell do I do now? There were no instructions anywhere so I guessed that I had better figure it out. First step, get it back to cube shape - so blocked up that no algorithms are possible so just use intuition. To my huge surprise, it was just intuition to achieve this up to a certain point. Once a few pieces had been aligned either properly in a centre or on an edge then more faces would turn and it was time to try and put the edges where they should be. Here we just have to use the edge piece series aka "up-up-down-down". Yes, it's just a 4 move sequence - it cycles 3 edges around. I realised that if you can do a 45º turn to put an errant edge pair back and then cycle a centre pair out then gaps start to be filled:

Errant edge pair in a centre

Edge pair turned 45º onto an edge

Edge pair now front left & centres in place

If the centre stripe is turned back that 45º then then one edge part and centre set are in place. This will need to be done repeatedly and where there are single edge pieces out of place they will need to be turned and moved until they can be lined up in a pair and then rotated into an edge using the edge piece series. It is surprisingly fun and apart from the frustration of the bandaging forcing a bunch of preparatory moves to clear the way, it doesn't take long to get a near cube:

Sort of cube shaped

Here is where I have really struggled. I have edges and centres where they are supposed to be but a bunch of the centres are tilted. I have not managed to find an algorithm to easily flatten them and had to make something up. If there are 8 or 16 of them tilted then that makes either 4 whole faces or 4 half faces on a layer out of kilter and all that is needed would be to turn the slice 45º, use the edge piece series to place an edge in it and then turn another 45º to place the centre that came out into the next position along. If you do this 8 times then you have broken and recreated every edge and centre in a slice. Sounds awful but is, again, entirely intuitive. What I have not worked out how to do with ease is what to do when there is not a multiple of 8 tilted edges. I can fiddle with my 45º turns and break up the flattened centres and with some thought I can make it so that a multiple of 8 are left tilted (I either add some or fix some). It works but I don't really know a definite sequence. Either way, it is, yet again, mostly done by intuition. Once the centres are flattened it looks less horrific:

Nice and flat
Now it's time to recreate the 2x2 centre pieces

To most puzzlers who don't do twisties, it still looks awful but from now on, it is actually really simple and fun. All that is needed is to pair up the single cubies. In the picture above, there is an orange pair top right of the centres and another pair bottom left but inset a little. Another 45º turn and a face turn will allow them to be linked together:

45º slice turn

After turning the front face and replacing the slice

Once each centre 2x2 is formed then it is moved out of harms way and another one worked on until they are almost all done. There is plenty of leeway here as there are only ever four centres that are affected by that simple sequence and when you are down to just a few then placing two identical colours in opposite faces is trivial and means that 2 centres can be worked on in isolation.

After that...you just have a 4x4 cube to solve which, if you are working on one of these, shouldn't be any difficulty. I had been expecting some sort of parity like I saw with the 3x3 version but this does not seen to occur with this puzzle. The 4x4 parities are still a possibility but nothing new.

All in all, I was rather surprised at my ability to solve this monster. I had been frightened of it for nearly 2 years and the lack of anyone on YouTube showing it off made me think it was impossibly tough. However, it is surprisingly a lovely process and requires nothing more than intuition and the Edge piece series. Thank heavens to Rline for showing that sequence to me all those years ago and making me truly understand the power of those 4 little moves! If you can solve a 4x4, then you should buy this puzzle.

After this one, of course I couldn't rest and I went to work on another monster! the Master Mixup type 1:

30º mixup turns will lead to a monstrous challenge!

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I have been a very lucky boy - Mrs S got very angry with me! Yes, that is lucky. She got so fed up with the state of my desk that she "forced me" to go online to Ikea and buy some more bookcases. Whilst on annual leave I have been arduously constructing and mounting them and am just about ready to start clearing my desk into them.

Puzzle room number 2 is ready
All nice and level no thanks to Barratt homes!

In the process, I discovered that my house was built by 14 year old apprentices with no skills! The floor is horrendously off level! It has taken a lot of effort to get these cabinets level. Lucky me has 3 double Billies on the opposite wall and now 2½ on this wall plus a closed one for less beautiful toys.

Thank you to Mrs S! 😇😇😇