All About Twisty Puzzles

Introduction The AI reduction method is basically the reduction of a 4x4 to a 2x2. This way of reducing implies no parity. The basic AI concept and the reason for this lack of parity is explained in this article . There are actual AI Cubes on the market, but this is not necessary for this kind of reduction. You can use a standard 4x4x4 cube and reduce the first two layers using the layer by layer method or as 4 corner blocks. You can apply Step 1 four times to get the latter done. After this is done (if you don't have an AI Cube) you can start with the tutorial below.  Furthermore, the only 2 things you need to know before starting this tutorial is (1) how to solve a standard 2x2x2 and (2) these two algorithms:  Rotating corner block: ( R' D' R D) (R' D' R D) Corner swap: ( 2R U 2R U' 2R) U' D (2R U' 2R U 2R) D' These algorithms should be executed by pretending you're dealing with a 2x2x2, thus turning two layers. The cube used...

Concept The Bermuda Earth is the third puzzle in the Bermuda Cube series, produced by Dayan (after Mercury and Venus, in case you were wondering). It was produced in 2011 as a set of 8 puzzles, after the 8 (known) planets in our solar system. The Earth variant has 3 kind of faces: standard 3x3x3 faces on white, yellow and blue; big triangles on the green and red faces and a fisher face on orange. The big triangles result in bandaging, which gives the puzzle its unique look and solving strategy.  Personal experience Difficulty I don't consider the Earth variant to be that difficult. I don't have any other planets  in my collection yet, but I surely want to give them a go! I read some articles online and found that Earth is amongst the more easy variants, together with Mercury and Venus. The harder ones are Jupiter, Uranus... It seems like the puzzle becomes more complicated while moving away from the sun. Solving experience I solved the puzzle with the...

Concept The Tuttminx, desinged by Lee Tutt in 2005 and mass-produced by Verypuzzle 6 years later. Verypuzzle has made 3 designs so far, each one getting rid of a particular issue. The idea and geometric design of the shape can me simply put: it's the extension of a dodecahedron to a truncated icosahedron. (Maybe a bit easier: it's a football). Its surface consists of 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons, which makes 32 sides in total. But despite this massive amount of sides to wrap your head around, the puzzle isn't actually that hard compared to other puzzles which may seem easier at the start. It's a non-jumbling puzzle, which means that every piece lands into a spot it's supposed to land into, it doesn't get out of orbit  (although I find this term rather deceptive). The previous versions of the Verypuzzle production were able to jumble, although this was never intended. Their last design got rid of this problem, altough it's still possible with the rig...

Introduction The regular 3x3 has lots of different ways to be solved. With this in mind, it may sound logical that his big brother has even more ways to be approached! Therefore, I shall only discuss some unique aspects which are typical for a 4x4, compared to a 3x3. Parity, why does it happen? If you have solved a 4x4 before with the most commonly used method (the 3x3 reduction), than you've probably already encountered the concept of parity . In mathematics, parity literally means 'to be even or odd'. Applied to cubic puzzles: does it have an even number of layers or an odd number of layers? If you reduce a 4x4 to a 3x3, you're reducing an even-layered puzzle to an odd-layered puzzle. In other words, you're changing  its parity. This also explains why one doesn't have any parity issues when a 4x4 is reduced to a 2x2, since you're reducing from even to even. If you change a puzzle's parity, you're forcing it to change its 'settings...

Concept The Axis Cube (or Axel Cube) is a modification of a standard cubic 3x3. The way it's designed can be deduced from its looks and the correlation to a 3x3, but can be pretty tricky to people who see this for the first time. In short: it comes down to rotating the cube by 60°, cutting the faces and extending them to make the puzzle cubic again. With this in mind, you can easily see that this is just a shape modification of a 3x3 and is solved in exactly the same way. The concept was first introduced by Adam G. Cowan (the same person who designed the Ghost Cube in 2008). Solving Method Since this is essentially a shape mod of a standard 3x3, the way to solve it is exactly the same. Every method which is used to solve the 3x3 can be applied to the Axis Cube. But there are some difficulties. One way to approach the 3x3 is solving it layer by layer, working your way from bottom to top. This is, in my opinion, the easiest way to solve the Axis Cube as well. Speedc...