Thursday, June 1, 2017

Sweet Molly

I don't remember why we had the sandbags on the table like that but evidently Molly figured it was for her comfort.


Molly Sandbagging

Crazy Tetrahedrons

I ran across the following unpublished page today. Notice what I said at the bottom. It has been more than a couple years but I have no interest in starting fresh or messing with them at all! 😏

Standard

Solve the Crazy Tetrahedron just like a Skewb Pyraminx. The "inner corners" are really part of the outer edges, so when you solve the outer edges the "inner corners" solve too. The "inner edges" are really part of the centers. For example, the blue, yellow, and white "inner edges" that are adjacent to the orange side all move with the orange center. So in this puzzle the orientation of the centers matters.

Mercury

Mercury has one 1 face and 3 0 faces. Standard has 4 0 faces. I made my Mercury by converting my Standard. I flipped the inner center piece on the white face, since the white face had alignment issues that made it not so enjoyable to play with. The normal store bought Mercury has orange as its 1 face. Unlike its Skewbish puzzle cousins, I no of only one way to solve Mercury. Here are the steps.

Orient the White Center—at most 1 twist.

Outer Corners must be solved relative to one another, or in a double swap—at most 2 twists.

Inner Edges—hold white on the bottom and use The Move.

Outer Edges—hold white on the back and use setup moves and The Move.

Inner Corners—hold white on the bottom and an edge forward, and use the algorithms below which are all commutators built using The Move.

Outer Corners—hold white on either front or back and use variations of The Move x 3 to permute and orient the corners.

Inner Corner Algorithms

The R' Move = R' L R L'
The L Move = L R' L' R
The R' D' Commutator = (R' Move) D' (L Move) D = (R' L R L') D' (L R' L' R) D
The L D Commutator = (L Move) D (R' Move) D'
The R' D Commutator = (R' Move) D (L Move) D'
The L D' Commutator = (L Move) D' (R' Move) D

Pieces are named with 2 letters, the first indicating the face, and the second the position on the face. For example DL = the Down face, piece on the Left.

To move DF > DR > DL > LU > BU do The R' D' Commutator.
To move DF > DL > DR > RU > BU do The L D Commutator.

To move DR > DF > RU do the L D' Commutator followed by the L D Commutator.
To move DL > DF > LU do the R' D Commutator followed by the R' D' Commutator.


Mars and Saturn

Early May 2013 I tried working through Mars but couldn't get into it. It has been about a year since I last solved them. I would sort of like to just forget them for a couple years then start from scratch without notes.