exactly! why are you still making what are essentially just toys?! go save the world!

Funny you should ask that--I get that quite a bit. It mostly has to do with my personal politics and priorities at the end of the day...

As well, you can probably now see that the design was no afternoon affair, either

If you think that picture is insane, just remember that you can only see the outer layer of the core...

and how many layers are there O_O

cross section pic please!!!!

Ok, that's enough! Confess now! Which planet are you REALLY from?




Pantazis

I agree with the.drizzle's earlier suggestion that you have to try to design a mechanism to appreciate how intractable a problem it is. Even if you don't expect to successfully design one, the endeavor is so enlightening that it's worth the effort.

I've been trying for years, yet my efforts don't look anything like this. But I see some very familiar graphs, lines, and relationships; that gives me hope. Maybe I can be the first to insert one more layer!

Even if I never build a successful design, my efforts have given me an appreciation for what each of those parts accomplish. That mechanism represents an elegant solution to an intractable challenge. But don't just take my word on that...try it!

Counting the outermost (visible) 24 piece layer, there are basically 8 layers.

Cool, huh?

Coming up with the layers is actually the easy part. Figuring out how to have the thing move in such a way that successive turns don't become blocked by the mechanism not lining up is the real trick. That is, consider an eastsheen 222, cube which is basically a corners-only 333 cube. How does it manage to not have the (hidden) middle slices jam up? And then how would you accomplish the same trick here?

Oooooohh! Tricky!

Buy the kit, learn the secrets! It will be ready by the end of the week...

Cheers!

speechless.

(dont listen to them fools the World will save it self. DO NEVER ever think about quitting puzzle building!)

Who said anything about quitting?

Anyway, just a quick bump to mention that I have almost finalized the "kit", and have also completed the design for the octahedral variant. To see what it looks like, check out the 3D .pdf file I've posted in the marketplace section.

Or, for a less interesting 2D view, it looks like the attached.

Cheers!

8 layers?!?!
sounds like there was some over engineering there. could you maybe show some of the inner layers too?

quinblz, you should take a bit of time to try to come up with a mechanism for this puzzle. I agree that it's probably the only way to appreciate what a difficult task it is. For me, this puzzle's in the same league of difficulty as the Pentultimate. Just getting it working is an astounding feat.

maybe if someone else takes the effort to build it, it could be 7 layers and there could be like a "God's mechanism"

like, "i can do it in 200 pieces"

"well i can do it in 175"

"i can in 150"

and the closer amount of pieces to the total amount of visible parts would be the God's mechanism

I can do the entire puzzle in one piece. I've already design the mechanism, and the stickers.


...


It just isn't able to turn at all

You can build this puzzle with a knucklehead mechanism with only 24 parts. But I wouldn't expect it to move nearly this well.

"Knucklehead mechanism" I like that
This sounds like that old game show "I can name that song in 3 notes"

Knucklehead mechanism in this context means the same way he made his Pentultimate: With a ton of work and a mechanism others had roundly discarded as completely impractical (12 interlocking layers per piece, hundreds of laboriously machined pieces). The term was coined (by Bram) at a previous Berkeley Meet up. Something along the lines of "Only a knucklehead would actually *try* that method...".

Dave