Every galactic hitchhiker needs two essential items in his backpack - his towel and his cube.
The Hitchhiker's cube is something almost, but not quite entirely unlike a cube. It's made on Earth and is very hard to find and extremely expensive, but it can save your life by keeping your mind occupied if you are forced to listen to vogon poetry.
If you own the cube and happen to pass by the Crab Nebula you can become very rich. The local slug like creatures live on a planet where the sand is made of pure gold particles. Outsiders are not allowed there but you can easily hypnotize their small brains with the magic of the cube.
But the most important function is the secret level of difficulty only a true hitchhiker can unlock. The fake hitchhikers are very dangerous, because they will try to trick you to smuggle dirty socks on the black markets of Aldebaran and that will most probably cost your head.
There is also a legend this cube holds the real question of life, universe and everything. After all the cube is made by the computer designed to find that question - the Earth.




Video

Don't panic!

funny, the words 'Donia Pn'tc' are what's printed on the cover of my copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide.  the publisher says this is a misprint, but my Babelfish tells me it means 'my hovercraft is full of Hingefreels'.

by the way, that stack of puzzles in the video looks like a star cruiser passing by.  ...well, at least like the ones i've seen.
 

Puzzle excellent, and the story along with it: sublime!
(and for anyone who thinks that the story is a myth, I can confirm it is actually true)




Pantazis

Great, this is a solid puzzle!

I hope it costs less than thirty Altairian dollars! I beleive there's nothing a human (okay, okay - every more intelligent species too) can't cope with if he always carries his towel and his cube, although sometimes a glass or two of Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is strongly recomended.

There is a legend that the first version of this cube was invented by white mice living in the basement of a Dutchman called Oskar in an attempt to confuse the humanity. But the shape of a cheese wheel gave away their plans.

Any chance this will give Earth a longer entry in the guide than "Mostly Harmless."?

Also, anyone mind describing this thing for those of us without properly functioning sensory organs for the interpretation of photon patterns?

The solve so far: In the beginning, a U' turn was made. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Great puzzle!

cubeguy314 wrote:The solve so far: In the beginning, a U' turn was made. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Oh that is hilarious. And Oskar being in league with the pandimensional mice certainly explains alot. LOL!!!

Very cute story and puzzle. You selling any of these?

Carl

I wanted the thread to be a Hitchhiker's themed game and I got great answers from you guys, thanks
The real story of the puzzle:
I saw this video by JackRTully https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9v9jl9eMr8&t=20s of a junior version of Oskar's Cheese Block. And the next logical step is making the junior version of Vladimir's Cheese(well sort of). I think I got exactly what Oskar was doing because it has exactly the same justice factor as Oskar's if we don't count the core - 28,57% visibility.

That shape came naturally when I deleted the stuff from a pentagonal prism that is in the way of that cool move of petals diving inside the core of the puzzle and I loved it. So the shape is made by mother nature, not by me The problem was if it had to be any challenge I had to use two color stickers and I hate that. Then came the idea that the phrase "Don't Panic" is exactly 10 letters and I can make this a sort of picture cube. So now it has two levels of difficulty: easy - solve the colors(many solved states i tried) and hard - solve the phrase.

The solving has a surprising twist to it. It is a 10 segment cheese with half the grips deleted BUT you need the missing grips to perform the algorithms for the 10 segment cheese, so you have to invent new algorithms and that makes it even more fun.
I found out that by just moving a single line in the drawing it revels 5 more pieces making it 3 layers

If it is in a ball shape it looks like this

The ball I imagine can be colored with the most used colors on flags and the challenge is to create as many country flags as possible.


Stats for Andreas
Diameter - 85 mm
Heght - 65 mm
Weight - 205 gr

I challenge anyone to solve this in exactly 42 moves, with 42 different scrambles, 42 times in a row.

Dahson wrote:I challenge anyone to solve this in exactly 42 moves, with 42 different scrambles, 42 times in a row.

I will need 7,5 million years for that

I played more with the drawing of the 3 layer version and when I uncurved the cuts it became Greg's Prisminx Crystal

But it is different from Greg's because internal mechanism allows it to make cheese moves on every apparent cut so it shapeshifts and is equivalent to the pCubes' virtual puzzle "Prisminx Crystal 1"

It is worth printing but I have done enough cheeses so I'll print it only if anybody else wants to own it. I use FDM printing so it is not very expensive

Here is a render of the internals of a 3 layer version I am printing for a forum member. Looks beautiful as it is

jiroscop wrote:Looks beautiful as it is

Gorgeous!

Carl

Looks great!

the internal view of the 3-layer is really cool.  i'd love to have a poster of compiled mechanism images like that.

A quick solve of the easy setting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT2E41jEuWs

A thought just occurred to me:
Ignoring Color and just paying attention to the letters, is it possible to have both words in the correct order, but the N's swapped? And except for a possible N-swap, is any state with both words in the correct order just an equator turn from solved for color?

Jeffery Mewtamer wrote:A thought just occurred to me:
Ignoring Color and just paying attention to the letters, is it possible to have both words in the correct order, but the N's swapped? And except for a possible N-swap, is any state with both words in the correct order just an equator turn from solved for color?

Good question. I have to try it. But it might take a while since I have not solved the phrase yet.
My hunch is that you can't solve it with swapped "N"-'s because when I have a case of swapped pieces in one of the layer, the other layer have swapped pieces too so the swaps must be even.

Jeffery Mewtamer wrote:And except for a possible N-swap, is any state with both words in the correct order just an equator turn from solved for color?

Oh, I didn't read the second question.
The stickering job I did is as follows:
First - I applied the colors in correct order, second - I scrambled the puzzle, third - I applied the words in the correct order. So now I know the phrase is solvable, but if you solve it the colors are scrambled.
The next puzzle I am printing is requested to have the third step on solved colors. So after solving the phrase you will be only one equator move away from solved colors.
That will add another challange to the puzzle. If you first solve the colors then the puzzle is reduced to the 1 layer version of it. I assume it will be a hard step. That is imposibble on the current version.

Hey, Jeffery, amazingly I managed to swap two "N"s
So we found a new solution to the hitchhiker's cube. And if a single swap is possible then any swap is possible. Can we find another solution witch is an anagram to the phrase "Don't Panic"?

Edit: I tried "Antic Pond" and it worked

Here is a solving video of the phrase "DON'T PANIC".
Sorry for the off-center camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njbbM1IgZIk

And pictures of the new found solved state