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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!)

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

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another AIC reader conquers the cube

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Another Adventures in Cubing disciple conquers the cube. A week ago, “Rhino” couldn’t solve a cube. We chatted, he spent some time with my Beginner’s Method tutorial, and he ordered a speedcube. Eight days later, he’s got a 2:21 1:27 on-camera solve (cheat-sheet free!) under his belt:

Congrats, Rhino!

OLL 6 (Sidewinder / Tetris)

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I feel like I’m starting to hit a new groove. After mastering the Beginner’s Method a couple months ago, I’ve slowly embraced more complicated techniques (read: time-savers). First, it was the advanced cross technique, which I learned quickly but at which I’m still slower than I ought to be. Then it was a month of intuitive F2L. I’ve got that mostly down, with a couple non-intuitive cases still a challenge. Lately, I’ve been jazzed to learn a few more OLL/PLL algorithms. Each expands the toolbox and introduces more efficiency. Last week, it was H and Z PLL perms. This week, it’s OLL 6 (aka, The Sidewinder).

OLL #6
(Sidewinder / Tetris )

(R’ F) (R B’) (R’ F’) (R B)

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learning the H and Z perms

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A few days ago, Deadesq (AIC’s first guest blogger) mentioned to me that he was looking for a more efficient solution to the four-headlight situation. By four headlights, he meant the situation in which, after applying the Beginner’s Method PLL corner permutations, you’re left with all four faces having headlights — with no fully solved side face.  As I described in my tutorial, in that situation, the Beginner’s Method requires applying the PLL edge permutation algorithm twice in a row.  Although I can do that quickly, it’s still not as quick as a single permutation. Enter H and Z perms…. Continue reading →