I LOVE this. You MUST patent the mechanism before you disclose it. This is very mass producible because it has very few unique pieces and the perfect symmetry would be very appealing to the mass market. You will regret very much if you don't commercialize this yourself. This is your chance to create a great new business, please don't give up that chance.

I also think a pillowed version would look very nice, but perhaps that's what you are already thinking with Version 2?

Anyway, fantastic job, an amazing puzzle, well worth entering into IPP.

Wow! Very strange how I imagined it turned around the corners...



Sure... If my guess of the mechanism is correct, probably only around 7 unique parts:

- core
- megaminx-pyraminx crystal composite corner
- megaminx edge
- megaminx center
- pyraminx cyrstal-starminx composite edge
- starminx center
- starminx triangular piece thing

Okay, you can get a core from an existing mould but the composite edges and corners are pretty darn complex and will probably need to be moulded as separate parts. Either way, you're probably going to end up with a 10-20 cavity mould.

A mass produced version would be great, but I think it is incredibly unrealistic unless Uwe is feeling generous.

Ah, you may be right, I was assuming just 3 unique pieces (those you can see on the outside) plus one core. Probably I didn't appreciate the true complexity of the mechanism, but this raises the question of whether it could be simplified?

Well, you could simplify it to pentultimate mechanism 'simplicity' if that seems more realistic... Or magnets...

While, I would absolutely love to own one, I'm with TomZ here. It won't be produced unless Uwe is feeling very generous.


Although with all the "big cubes" (V cubes, Gigaminx) being thrown around, Uwe should go for it. I'd buy one for 60 or 70 bucks in a heartbeat.

This puzzle is so majestic!
Handmade masters? How did you even start on this project? I bet you are good with for planning in your head

I cant solve my FTO yet so this one gives me a headache just to look at!

Gets my vote for POTY no doubt WOW

Absolutely fantastic, Aleh! I've solved this puzzle on Gelatinbrain (very fun puzzle), but never dreamed I'd see one in reality!

It really reminded me of the pentultimate. The cuts are so deep. It must be pretty hard to design such a mechanism.

It can be played here: http://users.skynet.be/gelatinbrain/Applets/Magic%20Polyhedra/dodeca_f4.htm

Possibly ball and magnet? That or pyra crystal/megaminx type.

This is simply beautiful Awesome job

it looks like there's only 3 unique pieces... but I can't tell because when I try to think about where the center of rotation is, it kills my brain.

I absolutely love your work Aleh. Beautiful, beautiful work.

I still can't understand how this puzzle turns the way it does O_O

its amazing!

beautiful work! I cannot wait to solve this puzzle and look at its inner mechanism

I understand now...It's the midway step between a Pentultimate and a PYraminx Crystal! the face pentagons are the pentagons on the Pentultimate and the Pentultimate corners are then added on somehow!

Probably "floating" corners, like the edges on a Pyraminx Crystal(or the edges on this)

Absolutely, positively the greatest face turning dodecahedron I have ever seen.

Sure, some may top this in complexity, but WOW! I can't begin to fathom how this was made by hand .

Aleh, you are absolutely a master craftsman!

Great Puzzle!!! I would give an arm and a leg to see this produced!!!

And a question....

How many solved states does this puzzle have? Since the centers can move and there are no 3 color corners I'm guessing its possible to solve the puzzle to a state that appears to be the mirror image of the starting state. If that's doable there should be atleast 2 solved states to this puzzle. Are there any other colorings of the dodecahedron possible where each face has the same neighbors but in another order? I don't think so but I'm not sure I can prove that. Maybe this puzzle has more then 2 solved states.

And a challenge...

Assuming this puzzle has two solved states that are the mirror images of each other, what is the minimum number of moves required to get from one to the other?

Carl

Awesome! When i first saw it i thought that it turns on it's corners similar to a dino cube.

Nice observation. It looks like a mirror image would involve an even number of swaps of each piece type, so it should be possible.

There can't be any other solutions than the mirror image, though. Consider the colors adjacent to yellow -- these include white and red, which also must adjacent. That means there is effectively a yellow, white, red corner, though it can have either parity. But once you pick a parity for that corner, the whole coloring is forced. E.g. blue is also adjacent to yellow and white, which means the parity for the yellow, white, blue arrangement is fixed. Which fixes yellow, blue, green. Etc.

Cool... I'd LOVE to see a solve from one state to the other.

Thanks for the proof. I suspected that was the case.

Carl

Sweet robot monkey Christ, somebody actually built it.

The name is a bit misleading though, since it doesn't really have anything to do with a megaminx

Neither does the Pyraminx. I think "minx" has become the accepted suffix of most dodecahedral puzzles (eg: Dinominx, Circleminx, etc). Pyraminx just happened to be made before this became the norm. I think the name is perfect.

- Billy

It's arguably more appropriate for the Pyraminx, because that sounds like a variation of "pyramid". Dunno where the "nx" came from. But from there "-minx" came to mean basically "Meffert non-cubical twisty puzzle".

I never spoke of the origin. I was just explaining to Percy why Starminx was not misleading.

I remember reading somewhere on this forum about how "minx" came about. I can't even begin to remember where, though. I believe it did have something to do with pyramid...which I think everyone could have figured out on their own.

You know, I really hate the name of the Pyraminx. It's not a pyramid, therefore, its name shouldn't reflect that. Oh well!

- Billy

I used to feel that way... in fact I started to point it out in my previous post, then deleted it. Technically it is a triangular-base pyramid. It's just that without qualification, "pyramid" generally implies a square base.

What bothers me more these days is referring to an NxNxN cube as an NxN. It's not so bad when done informally, as it is often done here; everyone knows what is meant. But when the 5x5x5 is actually *sold* as "Rubik's 5x5"??? Come on!

I am one of those people that consider the square pyramid to be the shape meant when the word pyramid is used. I call triangular pyramids by their common name, tetrahedrons. That has always been a personal preference.

I can't agree with you more in regard to the NxNxN vs NxN problem. I don't even like it when the people on here use the NxN wording! We live in a 3D world people! We have length, width, and height!

I like the way you think, Bob.

- Billy

I think this may be one of the only puzzles on the entire forum that I have absolutely no concept of how it works!
You guys have mentioned it as a cross between a megaminx and a pyraminx crystal, but although that's how it seems to turn, it doesn't seem to explain the internals in any way.
Overall, all I have to say Alleh, is congrats, you've confused me!

Elijah

This one took me a while to figure out how to make. Absolutely wonderful work.

If I had a guess,
I'd say the mechanism has a bunch to do with (spoiler?): Face Turn octahedron -> dodecahedron

please correct me!

naw, it couldn't be that, it has 12 turning axes and a FTO has 8.

I'm pretty sure that monopoly is correct:
viewtopic.php?p=177422#p177422

Well he's correct that the Starminx can be seen as halfway between a Pyraminx Crystal and a Pentultimate, but I'd be very surprised if it used a "knucklehead" mechanism.

magnets?

I quite agree. I'm pretty sure it's a buildup from a pyraminx crystal NOW WITH MORE FLOATING PIECES!! (a la Billy Mays)

Rest his soul...

It's about the same size as a pyraminx crystal by the looks of it, so I don't see how it could be built up... plus this still doesn't explain how it works to me... I'd really like core pics if alleh would be willing to take any before the puzzle is sold. (not trying to be rude here, just asking)

I'm pretty sure that this is a buildup of a pyraminx crystal, though not necessarily a mefferts pyraminx crystal.
Aleh did make the brilic after all.
The floating edges on a brilic are analogous to the edge pieces on the starminx. This thing really doesn't have to grow in size all that much for this extra functionality.

hmm... I'll ponder this...

I see! thanks!

now to explain what I meant. I meant that he could expand on the idea of the face turn octa, into a Dodecahedral core. Not use fto as core
I failed anyway! I see now.

I hope Aleh will be willing to release mechanism pictures once its sold.

If that's true shouldn't it be possible to buildup a Starminx into a Pentultimate. Just extend the face centers and have them hold on to new corner pieces. Actually it may be easier to buildup a Starminx into a Pentultimate then it is to build up a Pyraminx Crystal into a Starminx. The Pentultimate just adds one new floating piece... where as the Starminx adds two.

Carl

I was looking at the progression from shallow to deep cut face turns on the Dodecahedron and noticed something interesting...

Megaminx
Hybrid Megaminx-Pyraminx Crystal
Pyraminx Crystal
Hybrid Pyraminx Crystal-Starminx
Starminx
Hybrid Starminx-Pentultimate
Pentultimate

They ALL have 3 color corner pieces except the Starminx. If the Starminx can be solved in its mirror state it would be the only one of these that could.

I'm not that familiar with using these applets... if the Starminx can be solved to its mirror state would the applet recognize it as a solution?

Carl

It is actually quite a bit larger than a Pyraminx Crystal. The v2 is smaller, but still larger than the crystal. Aleh has large hands so it can be deceiving to see a puzzle's scale in his videos

Dave

hm, well, that makes it more obvious that it was built up from a pyraminx crystal then... Somehow I always thought that a pentultimate was the dodecahedron analogue of a skewb. I now realize it is in fact face-turning.

I thought that too, but I later learnde that the real Dodec analogue of the Skewb is actually a Skewd Megaminx. (Is it possible, Aleh, that we see this next? )

Asuperversion (center orientation matters) would be perfect. Sticker variation obviously!!
Sweet puzzle

Per

I worked it out in my head mentally:



As you may well know, the Pyraminx crystal (PC) uses a megaminx core (MM). Just like the rube cube, the MM centers hold in the MM edges, which in turn hold down the MM corners. The MM centers and edges are rounded out like a sphere to give shape underneath the PC. The MM corners are extended to the PC corners. The PC edges are wedged underneath the PC corners. The Star Minx (SM) would likewise use an extended PC edge as the SM edge, which would hold it's other parts in. The SM edge holds the SM star points in place underneath them, which in turn hold the SM center in place. The SM face centers move exactly in the same manner as the pentagons on the Pentultimate (PU), so naturally, we extend the SM faces out and PU centers, but we cannot connect the PU corners without them falling off, as any grooves or notches we cut into the PU centers / corners to hold in place will be incompatible during mid-rotation (only reason this works for the Skewb is due to the even-sidedness of the square and the duality of the triangles). To alleviate this, grooves will be etched into the walls of the PU parts, and interlocking hidden tabs will be embedded into the grooves to lock in the parts and still allow PU corner/corner and center/center to glide together durning rotation. The SM edge pieces will have additional "spokes" that extend into the PU laters where the grooves iteresect, to prevent the interlocking PU tabs from colliding. Finally, for a fully functional Pentultimate, you need to prevent misaligned midsections in the SM region; this is easily attainable by simply locking six of the axes within the core in place, essentially blocking an entire hemisphere of the internal 12-axis.

Working outwards each layer starting from the MM: parts of the PC are trapped beneath MM parts; parts of the SM are trapped beneath PC parts; parts of the PU are trapped beneath SM parts; so that each layer locks in the layer outside itself.

So there you have it, a fully functional Pentultimate without the infamous "knucklehead" mechanism of the original (the twelve fully redundant floating layers were a bit convoluted ), though I dare say the number of moving parts required to achieve this is probably even greater

Cubic analogs:
MM (6 axis) <--> 3x3x3 (3 axis)
PU (6 axis) <--> skewb (4 axis)

Since their cubic counterparts don't even share the same number of axes, thus proves the intermediary stages of the cube version cannot exist

There's an easier way.
From 2006:
viewtopic.php?t=4229

Thank goodness. That part about...



Had my head spinning. Were the tabs sperate free floating pieces? This level of geometry NEEDS pictures.

Carl