Month: April 2012

Pyraminx Restickering

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As I posted last weekend, I’ve enjoyed the distraction of my QJ Pyraminx.  It’s a fun puzzle, and the QJ turns easily with just the right amount of clickiness.  My only complaint was that the stickers, while good quality, were pretty drab.  The red was very dark and the green and blue were hard to distinguish in low light.  Enter cubesmith.

I re-stickered this morning with a set of bright/flourescent stickers, and am really happy with the results.  (Strangely, the iridescent orange appears red in the video.)  As long as I had the GoCam handy, I set it up and captured the process in time-lapse. Fifteen minutes compressed to 90 seconds:

music: Thom Yorke‘s chilling solo rendition of, fittingly, “Pyramid Song” (from October 26, 2002 Bridge School Benefit, an amazing cause!)

46 seconds

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Just got a new 3×3 personal best (non-lucky) solve:  46 seconds.

OLL #22
(Pi)

(R U2′) (R2′ U’) (R2 U’) (R2′ U2′ R)

Only a half-second better than my last best time, but it definitely felt smooth and easy.  I’m starting to believe the much-preached truth that consistent, slower turning is better than rushed turns punctuated by long delays of hunting for pieces.  I was excited to encounter and easily apply a newly-learned OLL (#22) during the solve.

This was with my black Dayan Zhanchi (favorite cube, by far), restickered with a Cubesmith bright-set.  The very excellent new Big Gigantic album played in the background.

Family Guy / Rubik, the Amazing Cube

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Huge Family Guy fan here. Who isn’t? Bad, mean, wretched people. That’s who. So color me terribly amused when I just happened upon an interview in which the show’s creator, Seth MacFarlane, goes on a rant about an ’80s Saturday morning cartoon called…wait for it…Rubik, the Amazing Cube:

They did an animated series in the ’80s that was based on the Rubik’s Cube, which was popular at the time. The premise was — I’m not making this up — that these three Hispanic children find a Rubik’s Cube, and every time they solve it, it flies and helps them solve crimes. I swear it’s real. Look it up on YouTube. It’s ridiculous.

So look it up on youtube, I did. Continue reading →

first timed pyraminx solve (31 secs)

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My QJ pyraminx arrived last week. So far, I’ve spent a couple hours with it and a few good youtube tutorials (this one, especially). It’s a far easier puzzle than a 3×3 cube — not only because it has only four faces, but also because (disregarding the “trivial tips”) each face has only two solvable layers.

Hence, my 31-second solve after very little practice:

music: Nero’s remix of Deadmau5‘s “Ghosts N’ Stuff,” from The Art of Flight soundtrack

Continue reading →

adventures in pyraminxing

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With all the talk of Passover and Egypt of late, I decided that it was time to shake things up. Enter the pyraminx. I just ordered the QJ one from amazon. It should be here on Tuesday (thanks to Amazon Prime).

Here’s the wiki summary:

The Pyraminx is a puzzle in the shape of a tetrahedron, divided into 4 axial pieces, 6 edge pieces, and 4 trivial tips. It can be twisted along its cuts to permute its pieces. The axial pieces are octahedral in shape, although this is not immediately obvious, and can only rotate around the axis they are attached to. The 6 edge pieces can be freely permuted. The trivial tips are so called because they can be twisted independently of all other pieces, making them trivial to place in solved position.

Judging by youtube videos, the pyraminxes are more intuitive and easier to solve than a 3x3x3 cube. We’ll see….