Oh Cube by OSKAR

Oskar · **Joined:** Mon Nov 30, 2009 1:03 pm

Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Oh Cube is a twisty puzzle, similar to Rubik's Cube. However, it turns in some strange way, turning around corners and pieces sliding under and over each other.

My first prototype failed as the little pieces under the surface turned and jammed. I solved the by giving these pieces "floating anchors" deeper into the puzzle. This keeps the pieces upright and aligned. The mechanism is related to Rex Cube and Redi Cube. It was my quest for a working Oh Cube that lead to the Mosaic Cube.

The name "Oh Cube" refers to the intended response from your friends when they fail to turn this "Rubik's Cube" and then you show them how: "Oh, does it turn that way!"

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

Enjoy!

Oskar

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Luke · **Posted:** Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:23 pm

Sweet. Such a beautiful puzzle. Is there any chance of us seeing higher order versions of this?

darryl · **Posted:** Thu Jun 23, 2011 3:03 pm

Oh, that's how it turns. Very clever. Simple concept, but I bet it was a pretty difficult design.

-d

NinjaLamprey · **Joined:** Fri Dec 10, 2010 8:26 am

I saw the cube, and reacted with "Oohh!!" Amazing puzzle, and perfect name

Rouricht · **Joined:** Sat Oct 16, 2010 2:14 pm **Location:** Germany

Genious after all

i love it

Mindstormscreator · **Posted:** Thu Jun 23, 2011 4:21 pm

Very neat and simple concept, yet probably a difficult design, I like it. Kind of reminds me of those Gelatin Brain apps where you take out a chunk of a cube and flip it and put it back in.

pirsquared · **Posted:** Thu Jun 23, 2011 5:36 pm

It's so disconcerting seeing the center pieces go so far under the corner pieces. You have once again knocked my socks off!

-Eitan

Tony Fisher · **Joined:** Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:37 pm

I love the apparent simplicity of this.

Kapusta · **Posted:** Thu Jun 23, 2011 6:02 pm

...Oh.

(Well done. : P)

grigr · **Joined:** Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:38 pm **Location:** Russia

beauty

elijah · **Joined:** Sat Mar 29, 2008 12:55 am **Location:** WA, USA

next you should try to make a proportional one! So that it looks exactly like a normal 3x3! :lol:

I sure there's some challenge to overcome that I'm not seeing to get to that point, but ah well, I can hope.

Wonderful puzzle Oskar! It is a funny puzzle that I think I'd love to share with friends of mine!

wwwmwww · **Posted:** Thu Jun 23, 2011 10:18 pm

WOW!!! I really like this one. From a solving standpoint I'm sure its not the hardest of your puzzles but from an engineering standpoint its one of your most beautiful.

By the way, do we have a name for this type of cut? Most twisty puzzles have planar cuts. But there are now those with spherical cuts, elliptical cuts, hyperbolic cuts, and even wavy cuts as in the grigorusha Fluffy Cube which google tells me was here. Not sure what happened to that post. Anyways all those cuts are surfaces. These cuts are something else, at least I think they are. I believe they require voids inside the puzzle so they are more then just surfaces. Is this a type of fudging? I believe its basically the same method Oskar may have first used on his Kilominx and he talks about it a bit in this video. The end effect is the cut intersects the surface in a way (usually with lines) that would appear to be unturnable if the cut were actually a smooth 2D surface. What ever we call this type of cut this particular puzzle I think is its best example to date. GREAT WORK!!! I'm really glad you stuck with this one to make it work.

Carl

PuzzleMaster6262 · **Joined:** Sun Jun 13, 2010 1:00 am **Location:** Colorado

elijah wrote:

next you should try to make a proportional one! So that it looks exactly like a normal 3x3! :lol:

I sure there's some challenge to overcome that I'm not seeing to get to that point, but ah well, I can hope.

The only problem is the corners wouldn't touch the core. Besides that it's easy :lol:

Great puzzle Oskar! One of my favorite things is seeing failed designs fixed into beautiful creations.

Jared · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 12:32 am

darryl wrote:

Oh, that's how it turns.

This is why it's called the Oh Cube, right? :lol:

KelvinS · **Joined:** Mon Mar 30, 2009 5:13 pm

wwwmwww wrote:

By the way, do we have a name for this type of cut?

Intersecting spherical cuts?

Anyway, very nice idea!

Gus · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 6:16 am

If at first you don't succeed ... you end up with a great puzzle.

I see that you used the floating anchor system again Oskar. This seems to be very useful for mechanically complex puzzles. Has this technique been "stolen" for use in a mass produced puzzle yet?

Thomas · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 9:28 am

Thomas

wwwmwww · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 9:35 am

Kelvin Stott wrote:

Intersecting spherical cuts?

Maybe... I guess I don't understand exactly how these cuts are made. Are the voids in these puzzle definable as the intersection of spheres?

http://www.shapeways.com/model/50089/kilominx.html?gid=sg13603
http://www.shapeways.com/model/49957/slice_kilominx.html?gid=sg13603
http://www.shapeways.com/model/40561/redi_cube.html?gid=sg13603
http://www.shapeways.com/model/40559/fadi_cube.html?gid=sg13603
http://www.shapeways.com/model/139101/oh_cube.html?gid=sg13603
http://www.shapeways.com/model/237478/mosaic_block.html?gid=sg13603

Has anyone aside from Oskar used this method yet... not counting the Mosaic Cube from Mefferts? I'd love to see a video or something explaining how to determine the appropriate interior geometry that allows these cuts.

To me the defining characteristic of these cuts is the apparent cut surface has sharp angles where it intersects the surface of the puzzle, such that if it were a 2D surface it wouldn't be able to turn.

Carl

will_57 · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 10:39 am

Quote:

Has anyone aside from Oskar used this method yet... not counting the Mosaic Cube from Mefferts? I'd love to see a video or something explaining how to determine the appropriate interior geometry that allows these cuts.

Muffet's Helicopter Dodecahedron uses cuts like this. While I haven't prototyped a puzzle that uses such cuts, I have tried a couple designs like it. I'm pretty sure that no "voids" are necessary, but the cuts have a weird curved shape.

TomZ · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 10:44 am

Getting these kinds of cuts to work is incredibly difficult. I've uploaded a video now on how to get SolidWorks to calculate the surface that creates these kinds of lines but even once you know how to do that, it's tricky. Theses shapes usually cause SolidWorks to experience crashing, and filleting is a pain.

I think it's definitely not the first time that floating anchors have been used. In fact, there's not much special about the mechanism for this puzzle (it's really just an FTO/Rex Cube). The biggest achievement is getting the cuts and proportions right, since this is a very tricky shape to make work.

madartilect · **Joined:** Mon Jan 03, 2011 7:19 am

Wow. I'm amazed how well it turns. Great puzzle

wwwmwww · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 1:46 pm

will_57 wrote:

Muffet's Helicopter Dodecahedron uses cuts like this.

It sure does... good catch.

will_57 wrote:

While I haven't prototyped a puzzle that uses such cuts, I have tried a couple designs like it. I'm pretty sure that no "voids" are necessary, but the cuts have a weird curved shape.

Interesting... I don't see how such cuts are possible without voids but I'd love to be proven wrong.

TomZ wrote:

Getting these kinds of cuts to work is incredibly difficult. I've uploaded a video now on how to get SolidWorks to calculate the surface that creates these kinds of lines but even once you know how to do that, it's tricky. Theses shapes usually cause SolidWorks to experience crashing, and filleting is a pain.

THANKS!!! Youtube is blocked here at work but I'll be sure to check that out when I get home.

Carl

elijah · **Joined:** Sat Mar 29, 2008 12:55 am **Location:** WA, USA

I think I've heard these cuts being reffered to as conical before? Maybe that's some other type of cut, though, I've never designed a puzzle before... :oops:

TomZ · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:25 pm

They're definitely not conical. If they were conical, the pattern on the faces would be parabola, hyperbola or ellipses. Not straight lines like Oskar has used to amaze us.

I've made a drawing showing the surface that would be used on the Oh Cube. It was hard to capture the shape in a single image, but I hope it makes things clearer.

will_57 · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:37 pm

I just noticed that the cuts looked kind of parabolic. (that is, the curve that is revolved to create the cut looks like a section of a parabola) Is there any way to confirm whether or not this is true?

Muffet · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:22 pm

I definitely want this puzzle someday, I was worried that Oskar would never come back to it. My Helicopter dodecahedron uses an exponential looking shape of a cut, and it does cause very small voids, which are not noticeable unless you look very closely.

TomZ · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:27 pm

The cross section is indeed a parabola.

pirsquared · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 5:36 pm

Thanks so much for that tutorial, Tom! I can't believe I hadn't seen surface sweep before! I'm going to go have fun with this...

-Eitan

wwwmwww · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2011 8:30 pm

TomZ wrote:

I've uploaded a video now on how to get SolidWorks to calculate the surface that creates these kinds of lines but even once you know how to do that, it's tricky.

NICE!!! And thank you! I just watched the video and two comments...
(1) I won't call these "non-planar cuts". Conical or spherical cuts are non-planar... this is something more.
(2) The post showing the cut as a revolved parabola above I think is a bit misleading and its also not totally clear in the video but these pictures show the cut as a 2D surface. I believe the cuts actually have volume though all the sides of that volume may be defines by these revolved parabola surfaces.

Tom, to address that last point can I ask when you cut the dodecahedron up in the video do you get volumes that aren't in the face centers, the edges, or the corners? If so could you post a picture of what is left of the dodecahedron after you remove all the copies of those 3 pieces? Its that volume that is your cut. It's not a non-planar surface... its not even a surface... but a volume. So to go back to my question about a name for this type of cut... I think the question is flawed. A cut by definition is a surface... isn't it? If I cut a cake I don't remove any cake... in principle. So what these cuts are is not cuts at all. By analogy with the cake example... they are bites.

So if I cut up a dodecahedron with cuts... I've used cut as both a noun and a verb. What is the verb form of bite? I think we are past the point of needing a new topic to discuss these cuts/bites so I'll start one. Let's keep this one to discuss Oskar's great new puzzle.

Carl

P.S. New thread started here.

grigr · **Joined:** Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:38 pm **Location:** Russia

TomZ thanks for your video! I was looking for an easy way to make this curve;)

I have a reason to remove my Fluffy cube ... Then I used the spline-cut (a distorted sine wave)

jaap · **Posted:** Sun Jun 26, 2011 11:48 pm

TomZ wrote:

The cross section is indeed a parabola.

No, it is a hyperbola. The surface is a hyperboloid. Its surface is ruled by straight lines as shown in the picture in that wiki page.

Oh Cube by OSKAR

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