Sorry for the double post, guys. It's your fault, you should have posted after me

Anyway, I've finished all but the last two faces last night. Here's a few tips on what not to do when stickering:



1. (Circled in green) The brown and purple faces ended up next to each other on opposite sides. Not the best idea, as both pairs are very close and the resulting edges are difficult to tell apart.

2. (Circled in red) Same thing: don't put these two pairs next to each other!

3. (Circled in blue) Somehow, these four blue faces ended up around the same (fuchsia) face, resulting in a sea of similar edges. That was stupid of me Try not to do the same. The opposite side does not have this problem, since the other halves of this pairs are quite distinct. I should've switched a couple around...

All in all, it's not the choice of opposites that causes the problem as much as how they're put onto the puzzle. If you keep similar pairs (browns, violets, turquoises) away from each other and don't put similar colors around the same face, you should be fine.

It's not really tragic, though, all pieces are distinguishable under good lightning conditions.

I had a brainstorm the other week about how to sticker this puzzle. It seems that with 32 faces, the Tuttminx has well too many colors for the average person to easily distinguish in average lighting. This may eventually lead to extreme eye fatigue. So what about 16 colors, but with non-opposite faces? My understanding is that every color has enough stickers for two hexagons and two pentagons. I don't know if it is entirely possible or not, but the rules for a coloring scheme in which every part is unique, dictate that no two edges or corners can have the exact same color combination. This means that the color scheme would work equally well on a Fuutminx. The edges are a simple place to start: to be all unique, basically requires that no face of color "A" is permitted to contact any face of color "B" more than once. The sixteen colors are of no consequence and can be decided later. Two faces of every color, "A" through "P" are chosen. It matters not whether each pair is pentagon or hexagon. Any color can be any combination. This obviously means that any particular color cannot be edge adjacent to, or diagonally adjacent to itself. This leaves 30-1-6-6=17 possible faces remaining for hexagons, and 30-1-5-5=19 possible remaining faces for pentagons. So, mostly, each face's same-colored mate will be located somewhere within, or bordering the opposite hemisphere of the puzzle. Like I said before, I don't know for sure it if is possible with 16 colors, but if it is, it would make an ideal coloring scheme for the Tuttminx. I guess one could start by placing sticky notes for "A" through "P" on a soccer ball and seeing where that goes...

I do have a very simple proof that 16 colors would be the theoretical minimum for this type of arrangement. If less than 16 colors are chosen for the Tuttminx, than at least some colors must be present on three or more faces. If we place color "A" on three pentagons (the face type with the fewest neighbors), and one "A" pentagon shares a border with colors "B", "C", "D", "E", & "F", then the next "A" pentagon will share borders with "G", "H", "I", "J", & "K", and finally the third "A" pentagon must share borders with "L", "M", "N", "O", and "P". Since "P" is the 16th letter of the alphabet, this means tiling the Tuttminx with 15 or fewer colors (in which every piece is unique) is impossible.

Please post replies in this new thread in the Non-twistypuzzles forum:
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=20276&start=0

One tip on stickering: the stickers are quite thin. When applied to a black body they will look a bit darker. So fluorescent orange is not so fluorescent anymore (If you don’t like fluorescent, in this case it’s not a reason not to use them).

I used 32 colors, I did put aside the colors that were too close to others (in daylight), I left out the darker ones (including black, same reason as Alex). I used the saturated colors for the pentagons (really red, definitely blue, …) and the in-between colors for the hexagons. I tried to keep close shades as far apart as possible (no strategy, I just started stickering). I’m happy with the result. (there’s a picture of mine a few posts above)

Playing with it is best done in daylight, I do have some trouble keeping the colors apart when using a (yellowish) lightbulb.

In the end it’s just a matter of taste and perception (any color-blind members around?).

One idea guys is just to cut the stickers out like alex did, and then just stick a piece of tape on the backside of each and start putting them on to test your scheme. then you can see it before you apply it.

That's exactly what I did. But like maarten said, the colors look different when applied to the puzzle since some of the stickers are slightly transparent. This is particularly obvious with light green. You have to squeeze out any tiny air bubbles to get a smooth finish and on the centre tile the logo stands out on the light green side. That's an added bonus, really.

In my opinion the stickered version is much nicer than the test application.

Yeah that is a great idea. Your puzzle looks awesome!

white tuttminx is available now.

http://www.verypuzzle.com/index.php?rou ... duct_id=75

It won't let me purchase it. When I go to checkout it says the total is zero dollars

That is a super deal. I'll buy 3 at that price.

Thank you very much. It's OK now and I have added solid colored version.

NICE Soccer ball!! And for those of us that don't like the fudging moves on this puzzle I think this coloration is GREAT. This should make it immediately obvious if you make an accidental fudging move.

May I ask how this coloration is obtained? Are the corners actually 3 molded pieces and the edges two molded pieces? Or are these single molded pieces that have been painted somehow?

Carl

P.S. Could someone with the black or white version post a good picture of just a corner piece or one of the pentagonal/hexagonal edge pieces? If they are molded as single pieces what are the odds new molds would have been made for the soccer ball version?

I too would like to know, will there be a version where the hexagonal faces are black and the pentagonal ones are white (the opposite of the one shown)? If so, I think it would look great, and be much easier than having stickers printed with lines, markings, etc. to set the two apart. I'll have to get one of these soon. Great puzzle!

Chris

Thank you for your compliment. It's molded in a way that this soccer ball version is achievable. The corner splits into three parts, and edges split into two.

@cjgerik: They are all available. Footballminx series includes many football-like schemes. I'll update more pictures later.

Now THAT'S what I am talking about!!!
I was waiting and waiting and waiting, and finally, a REAL football puzzle is out!
(for those who don't know, football and puzzles are my two loves!)

Leslie and Lee, you are too cool.




Pantazis

I usually prefer black puzzles but, the white one is absolutely beautiful.

I'm sure I'll buy one before the Summer, it looks so cool

Just a curiosity: it seems an expanded Megaminx, so I guess it's solvable with the megaminx algorythm, right?

Mine arrived, I assembled and stickered it. The turning is great and is a great overall puzzle... then I let Monopoly play with it... worst decision of my LIFE! I'm pretty sure he has the pictures too, so you can just wait for him to post the pictures and video of this horror show.
He jumbled it and was unable to turn afterwards mid-solve so we had to disassemble and reassemble it... reassembly is probably the most painful thing I have endured, only the 17x17x17 or petaminx could be more painfull >.<

more to come tomorrow.
I have to say, there's no way I'm buying one of these things. Color recognition hurts my eyes!

Can we expect more detailed instructions on your site soon?

I solved it several times down to the last two or three faces (one pentagonal). All the edges were in their correct places, but two hex-hex edges were flipped. The corners were all over the place.

I sacrificed the already solved hex faces to try forming the triplets as you suggest, but accidentally jumbled the puzzle somewhere along the way and it jammed, so I had to take it apart.

Please no solving instructions on this forum. We have the "Solving Puzzles" forum for that. Thanks.

Some more pictures of the (terrible) [dis]assembly procedure. it took about an hour just to do the first two sides, and that was with one person looking for pieces...
also included, a concept picture of something I think should be made in real life. I think solving a 32-color Tuttminx is too eye-straining and boring, 12 (or 20) color I believe would be better.

By the way it should be noted that the edges and corners are split (I guess everyone found out after the newest pictures posted of the white ones), maybe a colored-plastic version is coming soon? (albeit with less colors, I guess)

In order to mix the puzzle without jumbling: What if you only ever mix by turning a side by 2 increments? Then it doesn't matter if you are turning a hex side or pentagon side. IIRC, WCA Megaminx scrambles work like that; the pieces get spread across the volume of the puzzle better if the scrambling moves are always 2 clicks.

Good idea for scrambling.
But for solving? Ok turning a pentagon once is like turning it twice by 2 increments each time the other way but who would want to stick to doing that when you are in a solving process and have an idea? I guess if you force yourself to keep doing it it would work though.

Leslie, with the Chinese holidays and all, if I ordered a Tuttminx now would you ship it now or would you wait until the holidays are over? I'd like to buy one now, but I would be worried if it was in storage for a long time.

Laslie told me that they will ship out at february 7th.

Maybe something had changed tho..

Hmmm... September is a long way away though...

lol.. my mistake - february.

Is there an chance the price of this puzzle will go down over time?

@Pantazis: Thank you for your recognization. It's our honor to combine two of your loves in just one puzzle.

@Monopoly: I'm sorry to hear about your terrible experience. Here's a suggestion that would probably reduce assembling time of a stickered tuttminx: use an unfolded map of tuttminx, e.g. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Truncated_icosahedron_flat.png/600px-Truncated_icosahedron_flat.png, then put parts in this map. Assembling after that could be much faster.

Currently however, we are unable to produce full colored version due to diseconomy. All answer I got from factories say, changing 32 colors will be very, very improvident unless I'm going to produce 10,000+ full colored tuttminxes.

@SEBUVER: Shipping will start from 10th Jan. First orders first is our primary policy, so if you managed to finish ordering a tuttminx, your tuttminx will be reserved even if we ship it 15 days later.

@X-TownCuber: Yes if we managed to start another run.


VeryPuzzle has updated a few articles and descriptions. And we have combined shipping fee into price. The shipping fee was calculated linearly against the net weight of each product.

Leslie

I got mine yesterday and haven't stickered it yet. I notice that if I tighten the screws so that the jumbling moves are prevented it becomes really hard to move. Because of this I'm considering taking the puzzle apart and lubing it with a silicone spray lube. Has anyone done this? If so, did it make a noticeable improvement on movement if you have the screws tight so that you won't accidently jumble?

Leslie,

Am I correct in assuming that the Footballminx version does not come with stickers?

As someone else had mentioned, the black-white plastic background coloring would make it much easier to avoid jumbling while solving a fully stickered puzzle.

Thanks,
Doug M.

@Volitar Prime: Congrats! Finally.
I suggest not lubing it because it is very smooth indeed. After playing with it for several days(like most new cubes), it will get alright. Accidental/intentional jumbling can be viewed as a necessary solving procedure, getting familiar with some common jumbling situation is highly recommended(i suppose casual jumbling is not quite difficult and player that don't want jumbling remembers 120 degree restriction on hexagonal faces). Also, we are actively finding suitable new stickers for pentagons. In this case, recognizing jumbling configurations of single colored(black/white) tuttminx should be much easier.


@Doug M.,

Thank you for your suggestion. I have updated the description to include a section "Package includes: ...".

Footballminx comes with a set of stickers which is identical to tuttminx /black or /white.

Best regards,
Leslie

Is someone still waiting for his/hers?
I ordered mine on January 17th.
I got an email by them with a tracking number on the 18th.
Since than I have checkered every now and than and it still says: Export direct closure sealing of the total package.
This is from the google translator.
I know it's chinese new year and all but shouldn't they have been proceeding orders somewhere between these days? Or does that line mean that it lies on some post stop?

I'm still waiting for one. I have ordered on January 18th. Shipped on 26th.
The tracking http://www.track-chinapost.com/ says (in English) :
xxxxxx 2011 departure from outward office of exchange GERMANY SHENZHEN 2011-01-26
This has never been updated.
It does NOT seem unusual to me.

Although it is counterintuitive, I believe that the best color scheme for this puzzle is to do it in a rainbow formation, with similar colors close together, lighter colors towards the white pole, darker colors towards the black pole, and a color wheel about the equator. While this may seem counterintuitive at first, it is much easier to differentiate very close colors when they are next to each other as opposed to opposite ends of the puzzle. It would be very frustrating indeed to maneuver a red piece halfway around the puzzle before realizing it is the wrong shade of red. With the rainbow scheme, all a person has to do is maneuver the red piece into the red area of the puzzle, then figure out exactly where to place it. I believe this would also be a very beautiful puzzle in its solved state.

As for the tightness of the puzzle, when the puzzle arrives in the mail, it is notoriously tight. After having some difficulty turning the faces, I sprayed Silicone spray all over it, then wiped it down with a rag. I then proceeded to attempt rotation of all faces to break it in, until I started to get blisters on my fingers

Here is the secret to fine tuning this beast: Out of the box, the puzzle is very tight. Get a Phillips screwdriver and rotate every screw on the puzzle one quarter turn counterclockwise to loosen it slightly. Do not loosen it any further! Place the caps on as you rotate the screws to remember which ones have already been loosened. I'm assuming the screws have large threads, because just one quarter turn makes a huge difference. As the Tuttminx arrives, each face turns but gives a lot of resistance. Jumbling moves are impossible. After the quarter turn loosening of every face, each face turns freely, but also gives considerable resistance whenever a jumbling move is attempted. So with the puzzle properly tuned, if you even feel the slightest resistance when attempting a turn, stop and back up. With one quarter turn of screw loosening on every face, the difference between a freely rotating face and the hard-to-turn jumbled face should be immediately evident. One other note, at this properly tuned state, while the puzzle will never pop or explode, but it is now possible to open the puzzle by performing a 1/10 or 1/12 face rotation and prying up and edge with a flat tipped screwdriver, ala Rubik's Cube style.

To let people know, with the exception of one rotated corner piece, all of the parts in my puzzle were properly oriented. I had to lift out an adjacent edge Rubik's Cube style to realign this single lone disoriented corner. I recommend placing dots on the pentagon faces with a marker, or some similar system to easily identify pentagons from hexagons. For my Tuttminx, I plan on using a silver Sharpie marker to dot the Pentagon colors, and a black Sharpie marker to dot the Hexagon colors. Use of such a simple procedure will immediately identify potentially jumbled parts before they wreck the puzzle...

The official holidays may be over via the calendar, but the holidays ARE NOT yet over officially I'll need some help here, but The lunar new year holidays last for 2 weeks. Many factories shut down during this time. Offices that are back at it with full staff right after the calendar holidays are few and far between.

HK follows old Colonial ways. Our holidays are only 3... The mainland-not so!

Expect to wait at least another week before your packages start shipping out and stop bothering Leslie about the shipping date. He can't control holidays any more than Meffert's can And I'm fairly certain he'll make good on your orders. Just give him time!

I had that same idea a couple of days ago and thought about stickering mine like that as soon as it arrives. You could also instead of using one line that goes from a light to a dark pole kind of create colorareas on the puzzle. So you start with white and go over to yellow, orange, red and so forth with the only difference that when you arrive at purple you go into pink into one direction and blue into the other. Also read leads to orange and dark read and than brown. that way you are not forced to put all colors in a row to create one perfect rainbow which won't be possible.
Additionally you even might have 3 blue faces adjacent to each other. So at one piont during the solve you will go over to the "blue area" and there you can easily distinguish all blues because they are directly next to each other.



I have thought about this in the last few days/weeks a bit. I think this will change. Even though in Europe and America New Year is also celebrated you must admit that even though kids might get like 2 weeks off of school or so factories will not shut down for that whole period!
You can also still send letters or packages over the schoolbreaks. I mean it's not like there are 14 sundays in a row to everyone who has a job.

And now comes my conclusion: With the new China being globalized and more and more economically developed and internationally engaged it won't be able to afford this time period. I prophesy and I am really serious and certain with this that in the next 5 to 10 years max China will drop this tradition.
These holidays will be abolished. At least in a way there will be only a couple left. Maybe there will be others over the year but it's impossible for such a country to have everything stoped for this long.

A lot of US companies shut down for the period starting on Christmas Eve running through New Year's Day. And depending on what day of the week these fall on in relation to the weekends this time off can approach 2 weeks.

Back on topic. I finally received the lube I want to use, Cyclo Heavy Duty Silicone (I had to mail order it as I was no longer able to find it at a local store) yesterday. I'm going to apply the lube tonight and allow it to settle for a day or two before I assemble the puzzle and sticker it. I'm considering using stardust4ever's suggestion for the "rainbow formation". I am going to cut out the stickers while on the backings and tape them to the puzzle (like what Alex did above) and see how this looks.

China has already gotten rid of (well sort of) the "golden week" in October. It used to be a week long holiday, and many companies closed during this period in the past. The number of places that do this is getting fewer and fewer, but some still do.

Chinese New Year-Until people start finding work that is lucrative in their home towns-and there are a lot of undeveloped rural areas in China still, I don't see this holiday ending any time soon. It's like our Christmas. That's not going away either...

The HK post office was closed from Thursday to Monday. Yes, it was over the three days of calendar holiday, but Last year it was closed from Wednesday to Monday-they got an extra day!

And yes, there are factories that keep running during the holidays, but they MUST close for those Calendar days, and as many many employees return to their homes at this time of year, it isn't viable for many to stay open...Do you know how hard it was to get a massage and pedicure yesterday!?! We had to wait an hour on the nail clippings (yes, I know I'm spoilt, but my toenails are ingrown so I can't really do them myself now can I? ) And the massage was another 45 minutes wait. That is not normal practice, except at CNY.

I'm not arguing the point with you, I'm just stating the way things are. I realize people are impatient to get their puzzles-i am too. But we can't do anything when everything is closed.

My favorite wholesale street on Sunday afternoon. All closed! They had been that way since 5 pm Wednesday. The signs on the door said opening again on the 5th day of the new year, which would have been Tuesday...

@alaskajoe: I'm sorry to hear about your frustration. There are quite a few packages in this state so you are not alone. Also, there are several customers reported receiving of their tuttminx while the tracking information of their packages were still in very delayed state. Some of those states are identical to yours. I'm not sure if it is due to Chinese New Year but there are possibilities that the information was just delayed. The package, however, was on its way to you. I asked my logistic proxy and he told me that for registered air mail, a shipping time longer than 30 days is not quite rare. And they also can't track detailed information of sub-sites immediately. Could you please send your order number to verypuzzle(AT)gmail.com and let us see what we can specifically do for you?

I was not totally off even on New Year's Eve but sent packages are truly out of my control. Hope you will understand conditions on my side and thank you for your support.

@katsmom:
Thank you for explaining those weird things. I am in a city of migrants, there are very few people around during the New Year Holiday. This is my first year staying in SHENZHEN during the Spring Festival, quite lost indeed. Good news is that I've prepared new samples and they'll be online in days -.-

@To buyers before 11 Jan, 2011:
All orders before this date have been sent. This time I have inluded an unpacking instruction table to avoid potential chaos. Still there are possibilities that the tuttminx comes jumbled because it is very likely to be inspected, even detained, by customs. You might imagine an X-Ray shadow like this:





Leslie

Don't get me wrong. I am not really frustrated. I can't wait for my tuttminx but I am not angry at anything or anyone that it is still taking time. Don't worry.

hurray its there! I will post the first pictures of a rainbow like sticker arrangement soon. It looks quite cool but is not as much of a help as I thought. In some cases it's easy but in others it isn't. I have lots of purple next to lots of blue and when the pieces are in their area they can easily be identified. However I still sometimes move the wrong purple blue edgepiece over the puzzle and than figure that it wasn't the one I was looking for.

Today I have picked up my Tuttminx at customs. I had to drive 50 km to the customs office (As a sidenote: This has happened a few times in the past, mostly if the sender address had been written in Chinese signs. It does not help declaring the parcel as a gift. A declaration as a toy with a value around $30 is the only way to avoid 19% VAT. The official limit is €22, but a tax below €5 is made to zero, because it is not worth the effort.)
The parcel has been unopened and very well packed. So, I know for sure that customs had not played with it

The puzzle is a tiny bit jumbled. It seems that two edges have been swapped at assembly time.
I can understand that this happens very easily, because the two types of edges look so similar.
I think it will be no problem to exchange the two swapped edges. (BTW there are two spare edges included.)
Otherwise, the puzzle looks very impressive, even without the stickers.
I'll take my time and watch carefully this thread, before I decide my colour plan.
Turning is good (I mean the unjumbled faces). Not to tight, but casual jumbling moves seem to be blocked.
That was the intention, right?
Thanks Leslie Le!

Be sure to double check the orientation of the corners. All 3 sides are not the same and it is easy to overlook the difference.

@Konrad
I'm very sorry to hear about that. I'll sign UK packages using English instead of Chinese and if declaring the package as a toy valued around $30 can avoid this problem in UK in most case, I'll do that. Usually our shipping proxy will recommend by default a 'gift' with nominated value around 5$.
Also, I saw a few packages in the state "arrival at inward office of exchange, GREAT BRITAIN". Was your package in this state before you get it?




VeryPuzzle update information:
I have updated the original post to include several new models in the footballminx series.

Here are they before stickering.

Footballminx I: standard and inverse


Footballminx II


Footballminx III


Enjoy!

I really like these football Tuttminxes. I'm not sure I'd want to solve one, but they're certainly nice to look at.

Alex

Konrad is German, not English. Although that would be helpful for me, as I am English.

Those football Tuttminxes look great! Although due to the fact that for me football is the most repulsive sport, I will not be buying one. I will be buying a white one in the near future though.

Footballminx I and II make much sense. Solving wise the 60° hexagonface turns which should not be done won't happen anymore because they are easily detected.
Footballminx III however makes it even more deceiving! Those can be scrambled on their own without stickers.

It is Germany, not UK I have not noticed any change of the tracking information, before arrival.
The money was not so much of a problem, but the customs office is not really close to my home.

As far as I know the rules are identical for the whole European Union (but the limits may vary, because e.g. UK has a different currency):
- value not higher than € 22: no import tax, no VAT
- €22< value < €150: no import tax, VAT (depending on the country, 19% in Germany), but if the VAT calculation is below €5, they forget about it. That's why I wrote "~ $ 30".
- value > € 150: import tax for toys (small percentage) + VAT

The declaration as "gift" does not change anything, at least not in Germany.
This is just for your information, I'm not complaining at all.

The Footballminxs are really cool looking.