Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Anisotropic Cube is an unbandaged Gear Cube. Four of the geared edges are replaced by plane edges. This makes the puzzle much harder to solve, as one direction allows quarter turns now. A funny aspect is that you can restore the shape to a cube with one gear turned by 60 degrees. I think this makes it a true Gear Cube Extreme for twisty puzzles solving specialists.

The word "anisotropic" means directionally dependent. I thought this would make an appropriate name, as the way of turning this twisty puzzle is indeed directionally dependent.

This puzzle is relatively cheap, as you only have to buy the four plane edges from Shapeways, whereas you can reuse the other pieces from a commercial Gear Cube.

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

Enjoy!

Oskar

This puzzle is much harder than the regular Gear Cube and probably a good thing for people who complain about how easy that one is.

I like how you stickered it a lot like Tony Fisher's sticker mod. Great puzzle!

great addition idea! anything else?

Very Nice. This looks much scarier than the Gear Cube. I want one

It has the 622080-fold number of permutations of the GearCube.
Sadly this is true only when you ignore the rotation of the edges.

First off Oskar, Bram your my heroes. This is an awesome addition to a huge list of amazing puzzles.

So if you place these four replacement edges in a middle layer I think they would have to say there. Trying to split the middle layer by turning one of the side faces 90 degrees, still wouldn't allow for any other turns.

Kinda like how you can't move the middle layer of a sq-1 out of the middle layer. This leads me to believe that you could use some of the same algorithms that you use to solve a sq-1 on this.

Either way its still got to be move of a challenge then a normal gear cube, and I would love to get this once i have the money, it's officially on the top of my wish list.

Quick question: What is a safe way to dismantle the gear cube to apply the mod?This looks simply awesome. You've nearly convinced me to go out and order a second gear cube from Mefferts just to try out this new mod

Don't try to do partial turn and pop pieces like a normal 3x3x3. Pop off the center cap and unscrew the center piece from the core.

Dave

I may have to get another cube and do a poor man's version of this by just removing the gears.


Cool to know. Do you have the raw number of states calculated? I'm curious how far behind standard 3x3 this is for possible states.

That's very cool. I've been waiting to see this for a while now.

6144 for the GearCube
3822059520 for the AnisotropicCube
are the total numbers of permutations without orientations of the gears.

Me too. I considered making one but I decided against it when I realized there was no easy way to do it. I like how you can just order the extra pieces from Shapeways.

Cool, thanks. Yeah, this definitely kicks it up several notches in difficulty.
I wonder if/how much harder this is than a normal 3x3. Fewer states doesn't always mean easier.

With respect to the four plane edges there are still no orientations for the corners and the traditional edges. But there are the gear edges which orientation is no longer trivial.
I wish "difficulty" could be measured / calculated.

Ditto. I tried coming up with a few ideas but nothing seems to pan out.

As part of my quest to find a topic for my masters, I first tried looking at trying to calculate the difficulty of sudoku puzzles. One interesting thing I found is that people look at rows and columns differently even if the logical reasoning used is exactly the same (I forget which one people prefer). Rotating the puzzle 90 degrees changes the "difficulty" because the rows are now columns and columns are now rows. This seems to imply that a persons perception of a puzzle could at some level can play a big role in difficulty so it's not just the puzzle itself.

Exactly. It could be

1. personal experience (some people acquire technical or intuitive skills),
2. knowledge (e.g. algebra can help to solve the 3x3x3),
3. ability to create new ways (though there is no way to measure creativity),
4. the level the puzzle is appealing to that person (e.g. if the puzzle looks ugly, they won't bother with it),
5. the concentration level of that person,

and many other factors that include vision, moods, personal circumstances etc etc etc.

Last Christmas we organised an event which included puzzles at Sunwing in Singapore
(a place were children with special needs are hosted) and all kids could solve some easy
puzzles, but the timing was different from person to person. So maybe the "needed time
to understand the solution" over some sort of general population could be used as a standard.




Pantazis

I realized the other night that the 45 degree U-turn/edge pop method doesn't work. The gear disallows the vertical displacement. Problem with unscrewing is there's a little bit of guesswork involved in getting the proper tension to match the rest of the puzzle. Not to mention a slight risk of stripping the threads if you are careless and over-tighten it, but usually that only happens with cheap puzzles made from inferior plastic.

Anyways, I placed an order on shapeways for the parts in WSF, and ordered an extra white version Gear Cube from Mefferts. My black one will remain unmodded while the white one goes anisotropic. Oh, and I got the "Fisher Style" sticker sets from Cubesmith

I was trying to wrap my brain around what production puzzle the Anisotropic Cube currently best emulates. At first, I wanted to say the 3x3x2 Domino, since quarter turns are allowed only on the horizontal layer, but quickly realized that's no good, because the side faces can't rotate independently, and doing LR will align the modded pieces vertical rather than horizontal. And all that without reorienting the core.
I'm not so sure this would work. The adjacent corners may collide with the emtpy space and jam up the puzzle. You might try gluing the gear in place and simply grinding the outermost cogs off with a Dremel drill.

Unrelated, I also came up with a concept for the lamest Gear-Cube mod ever; if you ground down the edges and centers, you could extend the corners to make a jumbo 2x2x2 that only allows half turns - and waste a perfectly elegant Gear Cube

Update: The parts came in. Here is my cube: