Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Cube Bouchon is a stop&go puzzle. Opposite pair of faces are connected by gears, such that sometimes one face is blocked, sometimes the other, and sometimes they gear together. The gearing ratios are 2:0, 1-1, 0-2, and 1-1. The inner mechanism is demonstrated here.

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

Enjoy!

Oskar

I like the concept !

I like the way you used the stickers to indicate the orientation of the gears.

Fantastic puzzle!

-Eitan

Reminds me of a standard 3x3x3 that hasn't been lubed properly (where the middle layer randomly catches and turns with either one of the two outer layers), but with infinite and non-random friction.

Nice!!!I see how the stickers turn the centers into super centers by giving them orientation but I'm confused by the ways the gears are drawn. Let's look at the red face for example. The yellow portion of the gear is truncated. But the motion of the red face is tied to the orange face. So assume you couldn't see the gears inside and this cube was scrambled into a random position. How do this stickers tell you where you are in the gearing ratio sequence 2:0, 1:1, 0:2, then 1:1 again? I think you'd have to look at the orientation of two opposite stickers because the state of the yellow face shouldn't have anything to do with the state the red face is in. For example, in the video your first move is the green face and it turns by itself. Should one be able to determine that this face will turn by itself from the information contained within the stickers? If so how?

Looking at the pictures a bit more I see the orange face sticker has the white portion of the gear truncated. So does your solved state have the face center gear truncation in an opposition direction for each opposite face? Ok... by closely watching the video I can see that they do. In the video all 6 face centers can be seen.

Which leads me back to my first question. If one notes the green face has its gear truncation in the opposite direction of the blue face I believe that tells you the green face will turn by itself based on what is seen in the video. But this rule can't be universal as the blue face also has its gear truncation in the opposite direction of the green face yet that face does NOT move by itself when turned. So I'm just confused by how the center stickers are drawn.

Carl

They do not. Bob Hearn's statement for Variomatic Cube is equally true for Cube Bouchon: these puzzles need to have an identifiable canonical state. For this puzzle, the canonical state is having red, yellow and green midway their 2:0 turn. This is not indicated by the shape of the stickers, only by the colors. Now all my puzzles of this type (Slice Gear Cube, Paso Doble, Variomatic Cube, Cube Bouchon) have different center stickers, so I can more easily identify the puzzle.

Oskar

I think this is fantastic.
It seems almost like magic that it works so well and turns so well given what's going on inside.
Very nice, Oskar, as usual!

Thanks for clearing that up. This whole notion of Twisty Puzzles where one needs to talk about canonical states reminds me of multi-state mazes. It certainly brings a new element to Twisty Puzzles. I'm curious, what was the first twisty puzzle where solving was (or would have been) aided by thinking about canonical states? Would it have been the Latch Cube? Or could this also be applied to some of the Bandaged 3x3x3's? It may not be as near a new concept as I'm thinking.

Curious,
Carl

This probably isn't quite as hard as it looks at first blush. In the appropriate configuration you can do (RF-R-F)2U(F-RFR-)2U- to reorient two corners.

Wonderful looking puzzle as always.