Anyone else interested in rubiks cubes/twisty puzzles

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Moleculeman
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19 Dec 2017, 6:37 am

Hello friends, I was wondering if anyone else shared my passion for twisty puzzles. I think that they are one of the greatest things ever and was wondering if anyone else here felt the same about them.



Misery
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20 Dec 2017, 7:17 pm

To answer:

Image

That's just that one set of shelves... I have alot more that dont fit on there.

I dont do the whole speed-solving thing though, my methods are very slow and rather unusual. Means I have a more interesting collection though, instead of just 200 nearly identical 3x3s and so on.

As for the ones in the photo, a great many of them have been solved at least once, certain specific ones have not though. They're not very well organized though so even some solved ones are in an unsolved state in the photo, because screw it. The yellow one in the clear glass casing on the second shelf is the rarest one I have, being a one-of-a-kind sort.

I also made this post on Imgur once:

https://imgur.com/gallery/DLH78

And this one:

https://imgur.com/gallery/xJGxz
which go into a bit more detail about some of the puzzles.



Moleculeman
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29 Jan 2018, 6:09 am

Misery wrote:
To answer:

Image

That's just that one set of shelves... I have alot more that dont fit on there.

I dont do the whole speed-solving thing though, my methods are very slow and rather unusual. Means I have a more interesting collection though, instead of just 200 nearly identical 3x3s and so on.

As for the ones in the photo, a great many of them have been solved at least once, certain specific ones have not though. They're not very well organized though so even some solved ones are in an unsolved state in the photo, because screw it. The yellow one in the clear glass casing on the second shelf is the rarest one I have, being a one-of-a-kind sort.

I also made this post on Imgur once:

https://imgur.com/gallery/DLH78

And this one:

https://imgur.com/gallery/xJGxz
which go into a bit more detail about some of the puzzles.

That is a very impressive collection you have, I do enjoy speed solving 3x3 with my fastest time being 15.97 seconds and 2.34 on a 2x2. Unfortunately I lost both my main 2x2 moyu lingpo and my sticker less qiyi thunder clap 3x3 which is quite sad :cry:



Misery
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29 Jan 2018, 4:30 pm

Aye, losing/misplacing one is always very frustrating. Or worse, if they just outright get damaged or something.

Though the worst bit for me is getting one, and it turns out to just plain have something wrong with it. Either some aspect doesnt really work right, or some part of it's design makes it extra screwy in some way, adding alot of irritation.

That doesnt really happen much with "basic" puzzles like 3x3s. When you get to the weird/complicated/unusual ones though, it's frequent.

See that huge pyramid one at the top of my photo there? I forget what that's called, but it's a bit similar to a skewb. The problem is that due to the way it turns, and the size, it's VERY easy to have it slip out of your hands and fall when you're trying to turn it. The second problem is, if you do drop it, and it hits the ground... even on carpet... the entire thing explodes. It's easy to put it back together, but having it do this like 4 times when trying to solve the bloody thing once was very irritating. Considering that it is also very expensive, that just makes it even more annoying.

Or there's this thing:

Image

That's a Dayan Gem 6. The Gem series of puzzles, there's 8 of them, and mostly, they're pretty good. Usually lots of pieces though. But this one has the most pieces of all of them. The problem: Individual pieces are WAY TOO SMALL. The puzzle as a whole really needed to be bigger than it is. As it is, it's damn near impossible to turn the horrid thing without pieces trying to come out of alignment and pop out entirely. I have one of these, but it's basically just a set piece... likely, it'll never actually get scrambled. Because even making simple turns is just too hard to do. Bloody thing cost like $80, too.

And then there's the occaisional puzzle I get where I try to turn it a few times, and it just randomly explodes and I have no idea just why. That doesnt happen very often, but it's nasty when it does.



MissChess
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29 Jan 2018, 5:04 pm

I love my Rubik's cubes and all their bastard cousins - not only do they provide hours of fun for me, they're also a handy excuse for not talking to people when I'm hating human interaction. :)


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starkid
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13 Mar 2018, 11:04 pm

I want to be interested but I'm terrible at them, so I don't really bother with them.



Misery
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16 Mar 2018, 4:43 pm

starkid wrote:
I want to be interested but I'm terrible at them, so I don't really bother with them.


Yeah, that's typically how alot of people look at them.

I used to look at the basic Rubik's Cube and think it was completely impossible.

Through a few videos, I learned how the cube worked overall, and how/why certain types of movements produced the results they did, and then suddenly... the thing went from impossible to pretty easy. It doesnt at all matter how the thing is scrambled, I'm going to solve it every time, and it's not going to take much effort. My method doesnt involve memorization either, like speed methods do. Was then able to take what I had learned from that, and apply it to many other puzzles of increasing difficulty.

Whole thing seemed a bit confusing at first, but... yeah, it just clicks after a short time. The trick to it is just finding a good explanation of it. There are lots and lots of resources for learning this hobby, but... some of them really arent very good and are likely to just make you more confused.

There's also the option of finding puzzles that are quite a bit easier than the normal cube, while still being twisty puzzles. There's plenty out there that can make a great introduction to the hobby. Any of the Dino puzzles for instance; they're quite easy and they work well for teaching one of the most important concepts for any of these puzzles.


Of course there are plenty of puzzles that ARE really difficult. Certain ones I have, I havent even touched yet because even with all the ones I have solved, I know they're currently just beyond me to do. Like the Bermuda Cubes, those just seem impossible to me even now. Granted, they seem impossible to plenty of people that are into this.