Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

PantaCube was inspired by the Cubedron puzzle, which was designed by Pantazis Houlis. As a tribute to Pantazis' work, I call the puzzle PantaCube. The puzzle has five square tiles that slide around a sphere. The object is to scramble the puzzle and then to get the colors aligned again.

Watch the YouTube video.
Buy the puzzle from my Shapeways Shop.
Read more at the Shapeways Forum.
Check out the photos below.

Enjoy!

Oskar

Wow, this is really cool.

Alex

Easy version of the Cybedron?

^^

Really clean and perfect puzzle as always!

Greg

Very cool puzzle Oskar. It's like the opposite of a Cubedron, a cube inside a sphere.

I love how simple the mechanism for this puzzle is, but also how unique and original!

I was talking about the way to solve x)

Greg

Only because you do a 90 degree turn on this much easier.

What The?!?!?!?!?!?! This is why i joined the puzzle community

Another amazing piece from Oskar, I've been waiting for this to come out for a while now. It looks great!

so the faces can rotate like the babyface?

No, it moves just like a Cubedron, I think so anyways.

They can also rotate. You can twist a whole ring of 4 around the 5th, I'm pretty sure.

I wish I had a job so I could buy this.

Another incredible puzzle Oskar as always.

I'm still waiting for the dinobram. It looks amazing!

Oh okay, so it's just like his Cubedron, except with a mechanism. Clever!

LOL Oskar please stop twistifying the Cubedron!

During a time where I am trying so hard to lure twisty puzzlers
to other non-twisty mechanisms, you are ruining my plans!!!!

As I had said already, it is a nice twisty-simulation for the Cubedron.




Pantazis

bound to happend! Oskar you are just amazing....

ooolaalaaa O_O

Kapoofta wrote:


This post made me laugh. Yeah, this puzzle community doesn't stop being great. It even gets better and better.

Very good puzzle Oskar! You did really well as to "twistyfying the cubedron", like Pantazis said. No harm meant, Pantazis!

But say, Oskar, if since the inner walls of the faces only have conical/circular ... "elevation(?)" can't you also turn the faces around themselves? I guess that would make the puzzle easier instead of harder?

The spherical core has a double set of rails, keeping the squares aligned with the core. So, no, you cannot turn a square by itself. However, you can turn three or four squares simultaneously around the core, which Bram Cohen pointed out to me. This move is heavily impeded by friction, but a determined solver can do that with a lot of micro-moves. Similarly, a determined solver with a lot of patience and dexterity may be able to rotate a Cubedron square in place

Oskar

I practiced the cubedron 90 degree move for like, a whole day non stop. And then another. I must've put at least 18 hours into perfecting it.

How'd you assemble this thing?

It's possible to block the ring move and make this puzzle much harder by making some of the edges impassible to piece movement. There are two different ways of arranging five impassable edges which are interesting, which turn out to be isomorphic in a very non-obvious way. Here's a diagram of one of them, with the thicker bands indicating impassable edges. Oskar says he'll make one of these if anybody would like to order one.

I must be missing something... to block the ring move you'd just need 1 impassible edge in each of the 3 cardinal directions. Your example shows 3 blocked edges in 1 of the cardinal directions and 1 blocked edge in the other 2. Are the other 2 blocked edges needed to make it "interesting"? If we call your arrangement <1,1,3> and my arrangment <1,1,1> is your other isomorphic arrangement <1,2,2>?

Carl

I am assuming the friction is due to the rough texture of WSF, and that such a move would be easier if the puzzle was made of a smooth material such as infection-molded ABS.



If I remember correctly, this is the dexterity move that must be completed to shift between the Cubedron's two "dimensions" in order to get from one solution to the other. This raises the question: does the PantaCube also have two solutions or does the different sticker pattern eliminate this feature?

I also find the idea of blocking edges to modify the basic puzzle to be interesting.

They aren't necessary, but i figure that if you're going to block edges you might as well go whole hog and make it as difficult as possible.

I don't understand your notation. You appear to be specifying the number of blockages on each band, which very underspecifies the arrangement of the blocks. It is the case that the other isomorphic arrangement has 1, 2, and 2 blocks on the bands, but the exact spots need to be picked correctly.

Rechecking my old analysis of this puzzle, it turns out that there are four interesting ways of blocking five edges, not two, and they aren't all isomorphic. They do all have the property that there are exactly to faces which give you three options of where to go and the rest only allow two though. That's similar to Bram's Rocket.

Split core + screw.

Oskar

You understood it exactly. <1,1,3> would indeed be the family of such arrangements with that number of blockages per band, not a specific arrangement.

Are any of them isomorphic? And if so I'm very curious how you'd prove that they are.

Carl

I'm pretty sure that at least one pair is isomorphic. To prove it, you generate a mapping of faces and orientations on one to faces and orientations on the other which remains valid if it was valid already.

Excellent question!

This configuration is the one found on the Immortal Poseidron, and has only one solution.



i.e. one dimension has one soution and the other one has none, depending on the
chosen color order for each pyramid... eeerrrr... I mean for each face!!!!

Now, adding more colors and/or making hybrids of configurations can create
all sorts of new combinations and number of solutions.




This can be done using external and internal spikes on pyramids. I have a prototype
but I cannot say more.




Pantazis


PS. Good morning to all, from the sunny Greek island of Rhodes!!!

OK, here is the PantaBram, a bandaged PantaCube. The puzzle is named after the two men providing the inspiration for this design.

Oskar

Brilliant! Now I cannot wait for the OskarPanta!




Pantazis

By the way, the arrangement of edges which I believe is isomorphic to this one is to have them on the up front, back left, back right, down left, and down right edges.

So if we put pictures of soda on the puzzle instead of colored stickers, could we call it the FantaCube?

I've been meaning to ask you. Are you using the 4x4x4 mechanism ball for the core? Because it looks like it. I know how we could make it look solid(I meaning have no opening(I mean if you want to)). We would have to ball bearing and spring in each center some how to have it click into please some how.

Look at the cross-section and close-up below. You are correct that there is a grooved ball as core, but its is a proprietary one, not a 4x4x4 core.

I do not understand. Are you proposing to turn this into a regular twisty puzzle instead of a sliding-piece puzzle?

Oskar