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Megaminx Re-Stickering (Cubicle Stickers)

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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!):

(music: Easy Star All Stars, “Any Colour You Like”; puzzle: Dayan Ridged Megaminx)

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Maru CX3 / 60-Second PLL Time Attack

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It’s been a little while since my last post — that monster parity article that still has my head hurting.  I’ve got a couple things in the works, but I put them aside when I got a Maru CX3 the other day.  I’m really impressed with the cube, and I found my turn style and speed improving with it.  On a whim, I thought I’d give a sub-60 PLL Time Attack another go with the CX3.  I came awfully close, at 60.65 seconds.  Here’s the video (with apologies for some of the out-of-frameness):

(music: Lettuce, “Outta Here”; cube: Maru CX3 w/ stock stickers)

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More OLL Dot Cases (##18-20)

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Generally, I find the OLL “dot” cases frustrating — there are a bunch of them, they’re hard to identify/distinguish quickly, and their algorithms are long. A few months ago, I worked on a couple OLL dot cases that I had previously two-looked. Those came rather easily. Then I got side-tracked by the Megaminx, 4×4 modding, and PLL time attacks.

I decided to work on more OLLs last week, after stumbling onto Ottozing’s very good Cubing World video showing all of the dot cases. Specifically, these three:

OLL #18
(Crown)

oll-18

(r U R’ U) (R U2′) r2′
(U’ R U’ R’) U2 r

OLL #19
(Bunny)

oll-19

M U (R U R’ U’)
M’ (R’ F R F’)

OLL #20
(Checkerboard)

oll-20

(r U R’ U’) (L2 l2′) (U R U’ R’) U’ M’

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Megaminx Beginner’s Walkthrough, ECE Trio Tutorial (no last layer)

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I’ve been on a Megaminx kick for the past 10 days. After posting that 10-minute (plus) non-last-layer solve, I practiced a bit more and finally did learn the last layer (beginners’ tutorial coming soon). I’m down to about 6 minutes now for a full solve. With one exception that I’ll point to in my upcoming last layer post, I couldn’t find many good Megaminx tutorials online. Instead, I kept bumping into statements that solving a Megaminx is just like solving a 3×3 — but with a bunch more F2L steps. Yeah, that is basically right. But not entirely.

On a cube there are just 4 F2L slots. Except for some incremental efficiency gains, there’s really no magic to the order in which you fill those slots. On a Megaminx, order does matter — at least, I found that certain face/slot orders flows more smoothly, with a lot less potential for accidentally destroying already-solved portions.

I also found that there will always be one tricky V-shaped slot formed by an edge-corner-edge (ECE) trio. In the end, it turns out that’s it’s not that hard to form and insert the trio without breaking up the solved neighboring faces. I just wish someone would have created a clear tutorial one it, since it’s not entirely intuitive. Having figured out a technique that worked well for me, I decided to do a quick walk-thru video showing the face/slot order I use and then explaining the way I fill that ECE trio:

This is a beginner doing a beginner’s work; there’s some inefficiency and excess hunting throughout. Continue reading →

Adventures in ‘Minxing

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megaminxA friend and I have a unspoken tradition of buying gag gifts for each other off our Amazon wish-lists, which amounts to us placing a bunch of random stuff on the lists to see what the other orders. Traditionally, it’s been music or movies, but we’ve definitely had some weird things come up — digital home thermostats, drill bits, and the like. Long ago, I placed a stickerless Dayan Megaminx (a dodecahedron shaped puzzle) on my list and forgot about it. I had no real interest in it, had no expectation of ever being able to solve it (I was a 2-minute 3×3 solver at the time), and, more than anything, thought it would be a funny item for the wishlist. Lo and behold, it arrived at my house last December. I messed with a few times, got frustrated, and stashed it on my shelf.

A couple days ago, my 19-month-old brought it over to me, having scrambled it on his way. My OCD thusly challenged, solve it I had to. Which meant learning how to solve it.

I approached it entirely intuitively after realizing through a couple web searches that it’s essentially a complicated 3×3 — with 12 faces (rather than six), each with 5 edges and 5 corners (rather than 4). I experimented a couple times and then, on my third, decided to give it a go on video. Here is the result — a 10-minute solve (excluding the last layer), presented at 3x speed: Continue reading →