adventures in cubing

I’m not a big megaminx solver, as you can tell from my walk-through post. But I do find it a fun break from cubic puzzles. I prefer Dayan megaminxes (with ridges). Like all things Dayan, the stickerless version is excellent. I also have a black one at work, but have never liked the look of the cheap OEM stickers — with their darker shades and poor contrast between like colors. The greens, for example, always seemed too similar, as did red and orange. And cream is just a nasty color.

So, when The Cubicle added Megaminx stickers to their totally awesome sticker picker series, I ordered replacements for the OEM stickers Here’s an overproduced video showing the before/after results (complete with explosions!):

The Megaminx sticker picker offers 35 colors, many of which look awfully close to one another on the web. So, I did what anyone with a bit of OCD would do: I ordered a sheet of every color! I replaced each face one by one, looking for good contrasts between similar pairs. I temporarily left on the original center stickers to allow comparing the old and new.

Here are the stickers I wound up using:

With one exception, the quality and contrast are so much better. Refusing to use cream, I replaced that face with dark yellow. In the right light, there is substantial contrast between that and the fluorescent yellow in the bottom half; in low light, not so much. Unfortunately, The Cubicle doesn’t offer a brown. That would have been perfect. I also wish there were a brighter purple; the only one offered matches Dayan’s exactly.

With so many colors to choose from, I thought the Floyd tune “Any Colour You Like” would be an appropriate soundtrack. I started with the Flaming Lips’ version from their cover album of Floyd’s seminal Dark Side of the Moon. But for youtube blocking it on copyright grounds, it worked better than the version in my final video, from Easy Star All Star’s excellent dub version of the same album. (Check out their mind-blowingly good take on OK Computer, styled “Radiodread.”)

Well, I think I’ve now milked this re-stickering non-event for about all it’s worth. I’ll stop now, but not before encouraging you to head over to The Cubicle for your puzzle needs. Great service, great turnaround, and great selection (especially with stickers).