Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Polo Cube is an invention by Alex Polonsky. Alex' novel design combines a sliding 7-cube 2x2x2 within a hollow twisty 2x2x2 exoskeleton. Most of us can probably solve each of those puzzles separately. However, I expect their combination to be extremely hard. This is because each of the 7 cubes can slide to 8 positions and turn to 24 orientation. Whereas Twist & Slide can be solved by (almost) one square at a time, that approach would not work with Polo Cube.

Watch the YouTube video.
Buy the puzzle from my Shapeways Shop.
Read more at the Shapeways Forum.
Check out the photos below.

Enjoy!

Oskar

P.S. Alex' design is patent pending.

Sweeeeeettt

I just LOVE that puzzle!!!

The combination is just a great ide, and the look of the void outside puzzle is definitely great !

Greg

P.S: When are you posting a video of the illegal cube? ^^

What a cute idea.

Of course, the next logical step is to add some slicing to Bram's Rocket or Bram's Black Hole.

Cool combination!



Interesting, but I think there may be issues with the way the pieces are all tilted when in their rest states. The 2x2 doesn't have that problem, since it's all 90˚ angles, but the cubes in the Rocket and the Black Hole don't sit nicely in their rest states, which may cause problems when trying to cut it.

But if anyone can do it, Oskar certainly can!

-π (Eitan)

For solving, I'm pretty sure the best way to approach this one is to first orient the cubes so that the whole thing is in the 2x2x2 only motions subgroup, and then solve from there. The first portion can then be done by viewing dives as reorientations, and using the 2x2x2 moves just for maneuvering. There's a very simple trick for fixing parity at the end - you can do a 2x2x2 sequence which rotates one corner clockwise and one corner counterclockwise, and make one of the reoriented corners be the missing one. That makes the whole puzzle mostly like solving a 2x2x2 with a few twists added.

Nice! I like the different mechanism. And although it looks similar, it has
a different algebraic group when compared with the Octedron.




Pantazis

If you orient Bram's Rocket pointed upwards, then the cut in it will be horizontally through the very center.

For Bram's Black Hole the core could be a pyraminx which causes slices where a whole face rotates at once, or more simply only have one face which can rotate.

The perfect fusion of sliding puzzles and twisty puzzles. A simply marvelous idea.

Any chance of seeing other cubes and even cuboids like this?

I think this should be the next mefferts puzzle .If you want to make it even harder you could dye it like your minimal twist.

Patent pending eh? I think this means we will see more than just the Shapeways printed version

I love the concept, but I think it needs to be capped. The openings of the pieces don't match the overall look.

Tell Meffert!Ask Alex why he patented it.Huh? I do not understand your suggestion.

Alex suggested that the frame could be thinner (e.g. made of steel), or the exoskeleton transparent (e.g. injection molded polycarbonate) in order to better expose the seven cubes.

Oskar

Those are black stickers.

I think that he means theses pieces need to be caped.Sorry having trouble posting image.

Are you ever going to stop amazing us Oskar!

Those black pieces are in fact not openings, they're black stickers.

I think this puzzle could have commercial potential as a toy if it had the right colouring. With the exoskeleton moulded in coloured plastic (4 colour 2x2x2?) and some simple sticker variation for the inside cube, it think it would have good appeal.

Attached the look of the first sketch of this puzzle-toy, in the first sketch i colored the inner faces in two colors:
The hidden inner faces are black, and the visible inner faces -> (Any face between a cube and the "emty cube") was colores with additional color. -(yellow in the pic's).

Which way do you think is better?


Alex.

I think it would look better if instead of yellow, the colors matched the side they face.

I really love combination of ideas like this. wonderful puzzle!

I agree, if your meaning like the Super Floppy Cube or The Floppy Domino.

It would be helpful to have the exposed interior faces be a different color, but it should be a dark color, to make clear that they're interior, otherwise it will just cause lame confusion.

Also, I am fairly confident that if the color matched the face that it was facing, then all of the cubes would be the same.

Beautiful design.

I've been trying to develop this exact same concept on and off for years now, but with a completely internal mechanism (i.e., no outer cage). I came to the conclusion that this is not possible*, but your external mechanism works much better than I could have imagined.

*Now there's a challenge for you, Oskar.

I actually also tried to develop an internal mechanism as my first step, but thank to god it didnt' take
me several years to find the right solution,

My advantage was that at that point of time the outer cage mechanism was already existed.

Alex.

I just had the best idea for this puzzle.Make the the internal cubes smaller and cover the holes with clear plastic and it would be a gravity puzzle.

I think the outer cage should be colored like a 2x2 to increase difficulty

Only the three faces visible when it's solved. Otherwise you'd be 100% right

What do you say about this one?

That's a cute variant, and much more difficult to solve. Given the difficulty level of the first one is a bit more than a 2x2x2, and a 2x2x2 is too hard for most people, I'd say this should be viewed as analogous to having center orientations on a 3x3x3, but it's still the variant I'd prefer to have

The outer corner which doesn't correspond to an inner corner shouldn't be black, it should have colors which match the other faces. I suspect having that gives the puzzle as a whole a very deep mod 3 parity flip.

Nice!!! Another Twisty/Slidey Puzzle and it appears the 3D puzzles can have voids too.



I'm not sure what is meant by a mod 3 parity flip... but I don't think adding colors to that corner would change anything. It's not possible to rotate a single corner on a 2x2x2 so when this puzzle is solved you know its in the correct orientation even without the colors. Actually colored as is may be a bit harder as it would appear a single corner had rotated when it was paired up with this corner that doesn't show its orientation.

Carl

It would make more sense to sticker the exoskeleton, and not obscure the view inside. Personally, I feel that identifying the outer 2x2x2 removes some of the attraction of your very elegant design concept. I'd rather see a very thin or transparent exoskeleton.

Oskar

Really interesting combination.
Also, it is good to see Alex' efforts in protecting designs.

There would be 3 identical pieces, IDK how this would change anything though.

Oh, right, umm... On reflection, I think the outer coloration actually makes it a lot easier, because the outer portion by itself has a parity restriction which can't be violated, and because it strongly hits to the person playing with it that they should first get inner and outer pieces to correspond, and then solve it, which is a technique which works quite well.