Hey Twisty Puzzlers,

It is with a heavy heart that I present two failed puzzles:
The Disguised Meson and the Unbandaged Disguised Meson
Video



The Disguised Meson and the Unbandaged Disguised Meson are what you get when you transform the helicopter cube in its meson state back into a cube. Unfortunately, since some of the pieces were extended out to make the transformation, the puzzles exhibit severe overhang bandaging, making jumbling turns impossible. Thus it is impossible to get the puzzle back into the original non-meson configuration. I thought that it would be possible to fix this by unbandaging one level, but it didn't work.

Oh well. These things happen. Here are more pictures.



Where the helicopter cube could jumble, these two puzzles exhibit overhang bandaging:


This was a joint effort by Carl (wwwmwww) and myself. We had some good conversations about why we thought it would work, but it was my fault I printed it without checking thoroughly enough whether or not it would work.

-Eitan

Edited from the original teaser thread: "Eitan's Helicopter Cube"

Interesting... it looks like, from the last picture, that the normal Helicopter jumbling move is not possible.

Looking forward to details!

Chandler

I've been wondering when this was going to pop up.

Carl

I kind of want you to reply tomorrow "No just joking guys, it's a regular helicopter cube. Would've been pretty cool if it wasn't though, huh?"
But I doubt that will happen, so I look forward to seeing what this really is.

I'll venture a wild guess and say it's a Helicopter Cube in a meson state transformed back into a cube.

Ding ding ding! Well done Brandon!

Unfortunately it was a dud. I cut down most of the pieces to the original cube shape, but other pieces I had to extend out to the cube shape. As I feared, the extensions caused massive overhang bandaging, so the only moves possible are 180˚ turns of the free edges. No jumbling is possible. Thus it is impossible to get this back to the normal helicopter cube state.

This was a joint effort between myself and Carl. I'll update the top post tomorrow night.

-Eitan

Oh man, I wish that had worked! What a cool idea. Looking forward to more details. Nice job regardless!

Things like this are illegal.
If not I will pass an appropriate law.

I'm not following what exactly this is, but a helicopter cube which can make 180 degree turns but no jumbling moves is an interesting puzzle in its own right, and a hard one to make.

There's an interesting pattern you can put the helicopter cube in where it looks like the 2 opposite corners are twisted. In reality, the corners aren't twisted and the other pieces are the ones at an odd angle. More details in the link below. There's a few other meson/mezons it could be in that are slight variations.

viewtopic.php?p=245173#p245173

What I think pirsquared has done is shape modded it while it is in this form back into a cube. I'm a little confused because I would think the cut lines would look different.

that is insanely awesome!

The one you have pictured is the correct one.That is EXACTLY what he has done. You have two choices as to which cube to pick. He has not modified the 2 twisted corners and forced the other pieces back into the cube defined by the two twisted corners. If you do this the surface cuts look EXACTLY like the original/unmodified Helicopter Cube. However now the corners look like face centers. And some of the face centers now look like corners. If you had forced the 2 twisted corners into the cube defined by the other pieces then yes the surface cuts would have looked different. Eithan are you going to post a video? I'm curious just how much needs to be removed to allow proper turning. For example if this puzzle has no volume and was just the six 2D surfaces would the turning still be blocked? It not then I think some well placed hyperbolic cuts which don't intersect the surface might make this a functional puzzle and still not mess up the surface patern. If some of the surface does need to be removed. I'm curious how much would need to be removed.

Carl

Another possibility for allowing jumbling / more turning would be undbandaging of the centers so that they can be separated from the corners. I'm not sure if it would help in this case but in most jumbled states the unbandaging cuts open up a huge number of moves so it'll probably help here too.

Hey everyone,

Sorry for not posting more this weekend. I will try to get a video up today.

Thank you Carl for answering questions. Brandon, you'll see when I post the video that unbandaging unfortunately does no good.

-Eitan

Looking forward to the video. BTW I love your signature picture. I wish I could buy the lot!

Me too but I wish I could solve those two scrambled puzzles!

OCD, it's not to be trifled with!

I just updated the top post with a better description, more pictures, and a video.

I think I'm going to blame SpaceChem and James Clavell's Shogun for the delay in updating this post. Both are highly recommended, but not during school.

-Eitan

Thank you. I think I can see how it can look the same now. That's too bad it didn't work. That would have been quite epic. Whenever I show a normal helicopter cube to a non-puzzler, they always try to turn it like a 2x2x2. With that, you would confused even the adept puzzlers.

If you're extending the pieces in the most natural way, wouldn't that mean that a deeper cut helicopter cube can't jumble at all either? Or do those jumble at a different angle than the normal helicopter cube?

I love that game. It's so fun trying to optimize your machines. I wish more of my friends were serious about the game. It's great having the scoreboard of friends to drive you to do better.</sidetrack>