Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Swap Cube is a set of five 2x2x2 Rubik's Cubes in a pentagonal frame. You can not only scramble and solve each individual 2x2x2. You can also turn the big pentagon and swap pieces between the 2x2x2's. This makes it a much harder puzzle.

This puzzle has an interesting mathematical basis. How many ways are there to color a corner piece with three different colors from a set of six? Selecting three colors out of a set of six can be done in "6 over 3" ways. There are 2 mirror images for each selection. So the answer is "2 times (6 over 3)", which equals to 40. Indeed, this puzzle has 40 pieces, one of each type. Fundamentally, there is only one way to build five solved 2x2x2's from this set (and its mirror image). However, there are many ways that you can build four solved 2x2x2's, but then the remaining 8 pieces cannot make the fifth one. This makes the puzzle very hard to solve, even as a put-together puzzle.

I am still not too happy about the mechanism. I added "lamp posts" to hold the pieces together in the second prototype. The first prototype did not have these lamp posts, and the pieces could be wiggled out with some dexterity. The pieces remain well in place by the lamp posts. Still, the movement of the pieces is not as smooth as one would like.

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

Enjoy!

Oskar

It's funny how this puzzle was already prototyped over a month or two ago. Was there a problem ?

This is one of my favorite puzzles after the mixup cube!!

Well done!!!

Greg

P.S: I love the spider look to it

This is amazing. It reminds me of those spinning thingys they have on playgrounds.

Oskar, your puzzles never cease to amaze me. The fact that you continually introduce radical new ideas into twisty puzzles as often at you do inspires me to become a better puzzle maker. This puzzle pushes the boundaries for what is possible, and it does so in a spectacular fashion. Congrats on another great puzzle!

--Eric Vergo

I had the honor to try out the swap cube at the IPP two weeks ago.

And in all seriousness, I need to say that this puzzle resembles the closest thing
I have seen to the 3x3x3x3 4D cube. This one uses 2x2x2 parts instead of 3x3x3 parts,
and has a pentagonal face instead of a square, but I am sure you all know what I mean.

By enabling the same movement in the other dimensions then spectacular things will happen.




Pantazis

This puzzle has the same problem my fully functional Siamese cubes have except ten times worse... How can you sticker it so that there is only one solution?

EDT: I should of watched the video first

As usual, great work again, though I'm a little skeptical about rotating the big circle: By looking at the mech, it seems if just one of the cubes is not in perfect alignment with the big disk, the puzzle would jam up. A "clicky" mechanism should fix that however.

Needless to say, I am amazed. One logical question for all of those combinatronics geeks, is whether or not all possible solved states, including mirrors, can be reached from all other solved states. It will be possible to swap only two pieces, as with any Jr cube, however, parity orientation across all corners must be observed?

Pretty cool puzzle! I always love the way your puzzles sound when they turn