Message #536

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] extreme 3D puzzles
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:23:29 -0700

I recently bought a new megaminx which people might be interested in.
I’d bought one ages ago but now there are a couple of new ones with
lovely plastic tiles instead of stickers. It appears that there are two
versions available: an expensive one from Mefferts
<http://mefferts.com/>and a very cheap Chinese model. I think the
Mefferts version is out of stock and could be hard to find. I got a
Chinese version from Puzzle Proz <http://stores.ebay.com/PuzzleProz> for
$14 but it looks like you can get them for half that price. Here’s one
cheap source
<http://cgi.ebay.com/New-version-MEGAMINX-12-Colours-Rubik-Type-Puzzle_W0QQitemZ160258962812QQihZ006QQcategoryZ19187QQtcZphotoQQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem>
and here’s another
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=310066397692&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:US:1123>.

I haven’t handled a Mefferts version yet. Speed solvers seem to prefer
it but it looks rather small to me and the tiles look sort of thick and
lumpy. I like the look and size of the Chinese version better. The
action is very stiff at first but loosens. I haven’t lubed it yet but I
bet that will help a lot. It locks up easily but that’s not hard to deal
with. I saw a YouTube video by someone describing how to round the sharp
internal parts to minimize that.The most interesting part to me is that
it has little bumps and holes inside that let it snap into place as you
twist. Oh, and it has 12 unique colors but the two shades of green are
annoyingly similar. The good news is that they can’t get mixed up.

I’m really happy with my new puzzle and especially happy that I’ve been
able to solve it on my own. It takes hours but I’ll get better.

-Melinda

Roice Nelson wrote:
> This isn’t hyper-d related, but I’ve occasionally checked up on the
> public release of "olympic cubes", which now look to be called
> v-cubes. I just happened to check again this weekend, saw they were
> available, and ordered a 7x7x7 for myself :) I imagine many in this
> group would be interested, so I thought I’d help get the word out to
> those who might not know. It looks like the 6^3 and 7^3 were offered
> for purchase for the first time on 6/19. When I ordered last night,
> their inventory listing said they had 63 of of the 7^3 left, and just
> now it was listed as 54, so they may not last much longer before
> another production run must be done!
>
> http://www.v-cubes.com/