Hi Non-Twisty Puzzles fans,

Slide Along is a variation to the classic Sliding 2x2x2 puzzle. However, this version has no cage. Instead there are a spider-like core and seven highly irregular sliding cubie pieces.

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

Enjoy!

Oskar

Brilliant, sheer genius. So that's one impossible puzzle off the list!

PS. I think the original caged sliding puzzle may have been called Varikon.

Re: The question asked in your video about the first examples of this type of puzzle:
There is an article by Ad van der Schagt here on twistypuzzles that gives some more information about the different types of sliding cube puzzles.

Edit: There is also this info on Rob's Puzzle Page

Thank you!

One of my YouTube fans calls the design "over-engineered". It may be, but I would not know how to further simplify it.

The seven cubies and the core have chirality. They have to, in order to assure that the cubies can slide from position to position without sliding off. So the question is how we could simplify the design, while retaining the chirality of the pieces.

Oskar

That kind of response could only come from somebody who has not thought through and tried to solve the problem enough to appreciate how difficult it is: to create an uncaged (internally constrained) sliding block puzzle. This solution is as revolutionary as the original Rubik's Cube, which managed to internalise the twisting mechanism for the first time. You have now done the same for the sliding mechanism!

Do you think a 3x3x3 version will ever be possible?

Patience please

That monster looks like it's half-twisty, half-burr. Simply crazy!

...and one half Third Reich, but let's not go there!

PS. Oskar, love the comments on your Shapeway page.

Kelvin, surely you know by now Oscar has had it printed on Shapeways before the glimmer traverses our synapses...

Dave

P.S. Wonderful !

Is it possible to make a slightly bent version of this with three cubes and a gap at the vertices of a tetrahedron?

I can't help but to wonder how you managed to assemble the Slide Along.

The yellow core consist of two halves, which are pulled together with a piece of nylon rope. The rope is locked in place with epoxy glue.I have been breaking my head over that question for many years. That would be a perfect box-less implementation of RotaCubes.Unfortunately, the square-spiral geometry is intrinsic to the mechanism. My Mystery Shapes had one piece that looked slightly square spiral. It led immediately to huge customer complaints, resulting in the producer doing a make-over of the puzzle. That experience teaches us that a puzzle like Slide Along could never be mass-marketed. Fortunately for me, the puzzle does not look like Mohamed ...

Oskar

Of course, you could have just built the mirror image of the entire puzzle, then all the Swastikas would be the wrong way round (anticlockwise vs clockwise), though I'm sure some people would still complain about an apparent association.

Reminds me of a scene from Community. http://community101.tumblr.com/post/414 ... unity-1-18

I think this mechanism would work great for a sort of inverted rotacubes. Take a tetrahedron pillowed enough that edges meet at exactly right angles, then put seven of them touching a point with one missing. Finally, use this sort of mechanism to make it so that the three pieces bordering the gap can rotate into it, using this style of mechanism. The central piece needs to be bent to follow the curves which the pieces take, but I believe it all works out very nicely.