Online since 2002. The most comprehensive site for all around twisty puzzles.

Planetarium
Above:View 1
Click a thumbnail to see its larger version and description.
A doctrinaire puzzle with 4 axes and 7-fold rotations.

The Planetarium is a puzzle that has 4 axes of rotation, each with 7-fold rotations. These 4 axes of rotation intersect and produce pentagonal pieces. These turns can be combined to scramble the puzzle without any shapeshifting or bandaging.
The 4 heptagons are placed in a ring-like pattern. There are two sides like in image 2 each with two non-rotatable quadrilaterals.
The inventor considers it as a "higher" version of the Skyglobe by Timur Evbatyrov which is why the inventor chose the name Planetarium. Just like the Skyglobe, the Planetarium is slightly fudged. The geometry does not produce exact pentagons at the center of each face. The angles are only about 1 degree off though, so it is very slight. Even from close up the distortion is almost unnoticeable.

The inventor designed the Planetarium to fit into a series of "starminx"-like puzzles with n-fold rotation axes and pentagonal pieces. Puzzles in this series are listed below:
2-fold: Krystian's Twist, Starminx II, Tetragram
3-fold: Trapentrix
4-fold: Biaxe, Constellation Six
5-fold: Starminx, and the bandaged variant Triaxe
6-fold: Skyglobe
7-fold: Planetarium (this puzzle!)
8-fold: Gem-45
9-fold: None
10-fold: 10-10 Vision. Being planar, this marks the highest possible rotation order.
11-fold is not possible, thus the series stops.

Edge length: 23 mm (heptagons)

The puzzle has 30530311927966629277953573138479347245113834389047850862686173064816895496884412478791552652208403949779702673294378401792000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 = 30.5*10^165 permutations if all pieces are considered distinguishable.
-The pentagons allow only even permutations.
-The orientation of the last pentagon is determined by the others.
-The edges can't be flipped and allow only even permutations.
-The triangles are split into two sets. Each allows only even permutations.
Stickered as shown here the puzzle has 887546848272310796165657396334824077171701117861301090787774285420305876720517786842941351979329486091069056614400000000000000000000000000 = 888*10^135 permutations.


Links

Contributors

No one has contributed to this page yet!

Collections

This puzzle can be found in collections of these members:


Found a mistake or something missing? Edit it yourself or contact the moderator.
join »login » Community