Back in 87 I was doodling in class and came up with what I thought was the next rubik's cube. Today, 14 years later, I see that it has been built and is a rare find known as a DinoCube.

I think I still have my sketches and old balsawood models. In fact they may even be dated and sketched on old envelope backs and such.

I modeled it on my MAC in super3d too.

Anyone have a Dino cube?
I really want to play with "MY" puzzle!!!

I may be forced to build the darn thing. Now that I have resources and money to do it for real.
-miket

This is very exciting news. Please tell us more about how you came up with the idea and how you got it produced. How many pieces were made? Did your production run include only the dinosaur stickers, or did some have solid color stickers, too?

I, for one, hope that you do produce more of these puzzles.

I think he was indicating that he has sketches, and a balsa mockup of one from a time possibly before it was "produced" but that he is not responsible for the DinoCube puzzle that is on the market.

Am I mistaken?

Thats the way I took it Cubologist. Still, it would be very interesting if Miket would make a few. I would like to see some pictures. Do you have any Miket?

I came up with an idea and made some balsa models but Along came child number one and my toy was shelved.

My old MAC is now gone. I do not know where the floppies with the old mac3D diagrams are.

I only wish I had completed it and patented it.
Could of been neat.

I think my balsa models are still in my folks house but I have no idea where. I will take some time this weekend to look for them.



Some origins of the design:

I was drawing railroad track designs and planning an HO scale layout. I started messing about with how to do the corners of a modular system kind of like N-Trak.

In my history class I was wasting time and started drawing hypercybes and optical illusions like the box that has the corners overlapping.

after a bunch of drawings I came up with a unit that would allow me to rotate the corners and swap the colored faces. like a rubik except you turned the corners. number of moving pieces was 12 but they were all the same wrapped about an 8 point core.

I even went to a sort of Hyper Cube as I called it that did an extra set of cuts. It followed the same rules as the first except there was an extra level of differently shaped pieces that turned.

This would be the combo skewb/dino that I see on http://www.org2.com/jaap/puzzles/ideas.htm

The combo cube is neat because it has a 24 piece puzzle with a 12 piece puzzle embeded inside of it.


However after having taken apart many rubik I could not for the live of me figure out how you could do the opposing cuts to get the rotations of the skewb

So, I simply opted for corner rotations.
If I can see how the skewb does it maybe the whole thing can come alive for me.

I picked up some plastic modeling sheets from hobbytown and tried to make the parts but with my money and the crappy materials I did not get very far.

All I really had was drawings and balsa models.
Enough to patent sure, but not enough to make a rubik killer.

Heck, at 16 I didn't even think of trying to patent it.
I suppose I should have.

Looks like the DINO is just a three piece fake puzzle
I may have a chance yet!!!

http://www.chrisandkori.com/dinocube.htm

Nope, it's not fake. I don't have one, but the mechanism is rather simple.

The patent can be seen at: http://www.delphion.com/details?&pn=US06056290__

The internal mechanism is a "stella octangula" or octahedron with tetrahedrons decorating each corner. Each tetrahedral tip can rotate around its attachment point on the core octahedron. This core would not be a sequential movement puzzle, but with the appropriate coloring would be a nice permutation or arrangement puzzle.

Now consider one pair of tips - the region between them is two triangular sides back to back along a fold. Add a rod connecting the two tips, and you've got a 3D shape with four triangular sides.

Still with me?

Now get this new piece to attach to the core puzzle by giving it a small foot at the base and a corresponding "notch" at the junction of the two tetrahedrons. When you rotate a tetrahedron the piece
comes along with it - the "notch" conveniently continues around the base of the neighboring tetrahedrons.

At this point, words fail me and I have to tell you to go look at the patent.

However, if you have an Alexander's Star, it's exactly the same mechanism. On the Star, the core shape is a dodecahedron decorated with 5-sided pyramids to make a small stellated dodecahedron (http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/vrml/small_stellated_dodecahedron.wrl) and the same - connect-the-tips-and-fill-in-the-gap to make it into a great stellated dodecahedron (http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/vrml/great_stellated_dodecahedron.wrl).

A more impressive union of the Dino and 2x2x2 cube was patented in 1982: http://www.delphion.com/details?&pn10=US04474377

I know this isnt what many people want, but if youre like me and just like playing with the puzzles, you can play with a dino cube at the following page.

http://www.byrden.com/puzzles/MainFrames.html

I dont think its very hard, but it is fun anyway. Good luck to anyone trying to make a dino cube. Im still interested to know how its going.

on second thoughts, i just tried playing with it and its extremely easy! possibly the easiest rubik type puzzle ive seen - there is no orientation of pieces, but its fun because its so wierd.

Just because we can't see the mechanism in the photo does not mean the puzzle is a fake.

Even so, you would certainly find a market if you produced them. The question is: could you make a profit?

I took a few turns of the java dino puzzle posted here. and was surprised that anyone could have solved it considering that it has (at least on my computer) bugs causing it to display bogus pieces after scrambling. ( two blue/gray, one green/green, two orange/red)

I sent a note to the author. hope he fixes it.

The dino cube is real, I used to own 3 of them. They appeared in 1995 and I bought them from a company called Gametrends which may be out of business now.

Rubik himself noted that the pieces didn't change orientation back in 1982, and didn't think it was a very interesting design.

Many people have kindly pointed out that I jumped to the wrong conclusions from the photos and descriptions of the DINO. I hope some day to hold and twist this puzzle. I have not found any of my sketches or models so I am left with just memories.

Just mess it up yourself. There is noone to mess up your puzzles in real life.