Gear Cube
Invented by Oskar van Deventer, purchased from Mefferts, 2010.
(plastic, 2.3 inches)
Looks like a complicated version of
Rubik's Cube,
but is actually much easier to solve
(see the
Gear Cube Extreme
for a harder to solve version).
Here is the puzzle solved,
the right face rotated 90 degrees,
and the right face rotated 180 degrees:
Call the operation of rotating a face 180 degrees a
flip;
it is the
only
thing you can do:
-
A 90 degree rotation of a face locks up the puzzle.
-
Middle layers can only be manipulated by flip operations.
-
A flip cycles the adjacent middle layer by 90 degrees and rotates its 4 gear edges by 60 degrees each;
3 flips returns the adjacent middle layer to flat,
and 12 flips returns you to exactly where you started.
A flip also has the effect of reordering two of the gear edges in each of the other two middle layers.
-
Centers move around, but gear edges of a middle layer never leave that layer.
Jaap's Page presents a solution.
Here is an approach that requires essentially no memorization:
-
Restore puzzle to be flat (easy - do flips as needed).
-
Solve the corners (easy - faces cannot rotate 90 degrees).
-
Use step A to solve as much as possible, use Step B, and repeat until solved (repositioning the cube as appropriate):
-
Flip the right face clockwise 6 times.
(Exchanges front/rear and top/bottom of the vertical center layer).
-
Flip the bottom face clockwise,
flip the right face twice clockwise,
flip the bottom face counter clockwise,
flip the right face twice counter clockwise.
(Exchanges front/rear of vertical center layer and left/right centers.)
Further Reading
Jaap's Page,
from: http://www.jaapsch.net/puzzles/gearcube.htm