Fellow twistypuzzlers, today I'm pleased to present a puzzle that has been in-the-making for a very long time: the Multi-Skewb!

Video

Carl (who else! ) first conceived of the puzzle in 2009 in this post and he produced two great images showing the internal pieces:



And pointing out that the internals of a Multi-Skewb shouldn't be a Dino Cube but rather a Compy Cube:



Carl wrote about it more in this post and made a nice animation:



Then, in early 2012 I was chatting with Greg and I expressed interest in the Multi-Skewb and much to my surprise, Greg generously designed it for me and gave me the STL. The initial design had a few minor issues that Greg promptly fixed. I printed and polished a copy and finally got it stickered.

It uses the same "window trick" that TomZ used on the Multi-Dodecahedron to show the internals: Most Skewbs are designed with tetrahedral geometry but to best support having pieces internally Greg used an octahedral design instead. This makes the puzzle very sturdy and provides a lot more freedom tensioning it to perfection. The turning is great. This puzzle has the following pieces:

• 1 Core
• 8 Compy Cube Corners
• 12 Dino Cube Edges
• 6 Skewb Centers
• 8 Skewb Corners
• 24 Master Skewb X-Centers

Another view into the inside: A Skewb turn: A Skewb turn showing the Compy Cube turn too: A Master Skewb slice turn showing the Compy Cube effect: Two slice turns: Partial slice and partial face turn: Olivér did a very good job designing a sticker template for the puzzle and cut the stickers. I'm surprised the stickers fit so well considering the terrible photo I took for the template. I'd say this puzzle was a lot of teamwork .

It's very nice to finally see this made! The puzzle looks beautiful and all of you did a great job.

One Skewb to rule them all.

What's next? Multi-Little Chop? Amazing work Greg, Olivér, and Brandon!

Nice!!!! I've known about this for a while and I've been waiting for this to become available. I WANT ONE!!! By the way Eitan actually posted the first picture of this puzzle back in February. See if you can spot it in the pictures he posted here:

http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopi ... 80#p315680

Carl

Wow.. awesome!! It rattles my brain alright (no.. rather, it just ran away screaming ), such a cool idea!

http://twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/puzzle.cgi?pkey=4888

Thank you for the already edited images.
Does anybody want to guess the number of permutations?

Andreas

Nice work! I love the look of this puzzle.

So, is it possible to have the inner parts scrambled and the outer parts solved (or vice versa)?

Yes, just like in the Multidodecahedron.

Andreas Nortmann wrote:Does anybody want to guess the number of permutations?

Hmm, I'd want to verify with GAP because octahedra are always a bit tricky...

• 8 Compy Cube corners with 3^8 permutations (twist)
• 12 Dino Edges with 12! / 2 permutations (no independent twist)
• 6 Skewb centers with 6! / 2 permutations (no visible twist)
• 24 X-Centers in two orbits and duplicates with (12! / (2!^6))^2 (no twist)
• 8 Skew corners in two orbits with strange interaction between them for permutation and twist with ((4!^2) / 2) * (3^2)^2 (twist and permutation)

For a total of:
3^8 * (12! / 2) * (6! / 2) * (12! / (2!^6))^2 * ((4!^2) / 2) * (3^2)^2
= 739215379334952847280701440000000

But, the Skewb corners are very odd and their orbits interact with each other and they also interact with the Compy Cube corners. My calculation is likely off by a factor or two of 2 and 3 so this is probably only within a factor of 36 or thereabouts.

EDIT:

I would like to revise this a bit. Each orbit of 4 Skewb corners can be though of as the vertices of a Tetrahedron. Normally they'd have 12 permutations matching each orientation of the Tetrahedron. Twists about a vertex of the tetrahedron is linked to the orientation of one of the Compy Cube corners as well as one of the Skewb corners in the other orbit. Therefor I think the term accounting for the positions of the corners should be ((12 / 3) * (3^2))^2

3^8 * (12! / 2) * (6! / 2) * (12! / (2!^6))^2 * ((12 / 3) * (3^2))^2
= 41067521074164047071150080000000

This is a factor of 18 smaller than my previous calculation.

It could still be wrong though.

Andreas, I broke out my most accurate scale (+/- 0.01 g) just for you. I leveled the scale and calibrated it and then tested the calibration with other weights and none deviated at all (but the display range only shows to 0.01 g accuracy anyways).

I then weighed the puzzle 10 times, weighing the calibration weight between each. All readings were 74.08 g (+/- 0.01 g). The temperature in my apartment is 26.5 C and the humidity outside is 86%.

I then put the puzzle in my dehydrator at 74 C for 15 minutes. I then weighed the puzzle again 10 times weighing the calibration weight between each. The readings climbed from 73.98 g (+/- 0.01 g) to 74.00g (+/- 0.01 g) from the first reading to the last.

In the time it has taken me to write this, the puzzle's weight has climbed to 74.02 g (+/- 0.01g) and I noticed that even though the scale is almost a meter away from my keyboard (on the same desk), each key press causes the reading to temporarily fluctuate by up to about 0.07 g on both sides.

Please accept my apologies for such an imprecise scale and noisy environment. Perhaps we can get Carl to weigh the puzzle in a vibration-isolated vacuum chamber inside of a clean room in a microprocessor fab?

Beautiful!

Would Carl Hoff call this the "Window RealMaster Skewb"?

Oskar

Simple solution: weigh it in zero gravity, you'll always get the same result

(Yes, I know there will be some postings after this to point out why this is stupidly wrong and I should immediately be sent to a corner to go and think about what I have done, but I don't care, it's Friday, I'm going out to the pub tonight, and nothing you can say will break my good mood. Bring it on!)

Oh I forgot, great idea and beautifully made. I can't wait for the video.

A must-buy for all Multi-puzzle fans!
And a beautifully tumbled example Brandon!

Oskar wrote:Would Carl Hoff call this the "Window RealMaster Skewb"?

You could call it that. Personally I'd prefer Multi-Master Skewb though over either "Window RealMaster Skewb" or "Multi-Skewb" The Skewb is what I call an order=1 puzzle and it already contains all the real pieces so its already a "Multi-" puzzle by itself.

The Master Skewb is what I consider an order=2 puzzle (two cuts per axis or definition 2 here). The Master Skewb itself is NOT a Multi- puzzle. It's Multi- version is THIS puzzle.

As for the "Window" and "Real" naming... I adopted them for 2 reasons. First... I have hopes of someday finding a mechanism which will allow me to make the Complex 3x3x3 first described in this thread from 2009. If and when I make it... it will of course be named the "Complex 3x3x3". Externally it will look identical to one of the Real 5x5x5's that have been designed before it. So my Real 5x5x5 is playing off of the Complex 3x3x3 that I hope will follow it. I don't expect to see the Complex Master Skewb in my lifetime as a physical puzzle. It has way way too many parts. I should dig some as I'm sure Andreas and I counted them years ago. So I'm perfectly happy sticking with "Multi-" as the naming scheme for anything more complicated then the NxNxN puzzles. Also I just picked "Window" as a naming scheme to differentiate between the two versions of the Multi-5x5x5 that I had made. I've made the "Double Circle" and "Window" versions and you now have a "Peak" version.

Carl

I believe one of these could be made with a LanLan master skewb, if large holes are drilled in the centerpieces, and stickers are applied to the dino cube core.

I may try this, but I only have the Master E-Skewb, which is also currently missing pieces.

P.S. I would love to see a driedel version of this puzzle

Wow this was such a long time ago I had almost forgotten about it !
It looks absolutely stunning, great tumbling work brandon !!

Also a question to the moderators: Why do we have to log on to be able to see pictures ? I would like to share this with my family and a few friends but it seems like I have to give them the password to my account everytime...

E-Cubes Designer X wrote:P.S. I would love to see a driedel version of this puzzle

Me too! It might even feel more "natural" because the internal Dino Edges would no longer be redundant with the external Master Skewb Edges (which would be hidden).

That's fantastic!

RubixFreakGreg wrote:
Also a question to the moderators: Why do we have to log on to be able to see pictures ? I would like to share this with my family and a few friends but it seems like I have to give them the password to my account everytime...

I'm obviously not a moderator, but I do know that the site had some problems with its ISP for using too much bandwidth not too long ago, so I assume it's to reduce the usage.

RubixFreakGreg wrote:Also a question to the moderators: Why do we have to log on to be able to see pictures ? I would like to share this with my family and a few friends but it seems like I have to give them the password to my account everytime...

One solution would be to upload the images to another site such as photobucket, and link them into the posts here so they show up for everyone.

benpuzzles wrote:

RubixFreakGreg wrote:Also a question to the moderators: Why do we have to log on to be able to see pictures ? I would like to share this with my family and a few friends but it seems like I have to give them the password to my account everytime...

One solution would be to upload the images to another site such as photobucket, and link them into the posts here so they show up for everyone.

Problem with that though is that photobucket images have a habit of disappearing from the face of the earth.

Wow!
When will it be produced???

Vadim wrote:Wow!
When will it be produced???

This does seem like the sort of thing Meffert's would love to pick up. It can't make use of Meffert's tetrahedral Skewb mechanism that they've used in so many variations though so the production costs would be higher than most of the puzzles they tend to produce.

Indeed some changes were made by Sandy to try to restrict images for those who don't need them (web crawlers) but it seems to affect non-logged in users at times as well. I have both seen and not seen pictures when logged out but I don't have a good answer as to why. Perhaps Sandy can clarify.
I have noted a large spike in applications since this change though.

Dave

martywolfman wrote:

RubixFreakGreg wrote:Also a question to the moderators: Why do we have to log on to be able to see pictures ? I would like to share this with my family and a few friends but it seems like I have to give them the password to my account everytime...

I'm obviously not a moderator, but I do know that the site had some problems with its ISP for using too much bandwidth not too long ago, so I assume it's to reduce the usage.

Amazing design work Greg, and what a brilliant tumbling job by Brandon, it looks beautiful!

Stunning work by all involved!

This looks like it has a really nice combination of pieces to solve, I'd love to give solving this a go!

This puzzle is cool, but don't you think that the stickers could have been a little less filleted?

RubixFreakGreg wrote:Also a question to the moderators: Why do we have to log on to be able to see pictures ? I would like to share this with my family and a few friends but it seems like I have to give them the password to my account everytime...

You can show them the entry in the museum. AFAIK the museum is not affected by Sandy's changes.

I want to thank Brandon for all his troubles he went through to weigh this puzzle.
And for his struggling with the number of permutations. Didn't you write a GAP-file for the ReX Cube?

Andreas

I updated the top post with a link to the video.

There's nothing in the windowed pieces that gives orientation to the square Skewb centres or specific positions to the Master Skewb X-centres, is there? Are there plans for Super stickers? I don't think the window parts need supered stickers, do they?

Burgo wrote:There's nothing in the windowed pieces that gives orientation to the square Skewb centres or specific positions to the Master Skewb X-centres, is there? Are there plans for Super stickers? I don't think the window parts need supered stickers, do they?

I want super stickers too. The inside edge of the square window in the Skewb center is a natural place for stickers that show the center's orientation. The X-centers also need distinguishing marks between the pairs of the same color in the same orbit.

I will ask Olivér what the best options are and make sure I get some super sticker sets with the rest of the sets I'm ordering.

If you guys come up with a good super sticker solution, please see about making them for mass-produced Master Skewbs too.