Puzzled 2: Devil's Eye II or Evil Eye II

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Devil's Eye II or Evil Eye II

Fiddling with this trying to remember how to solve it degenerated quickly into a scrambled puzzle in which it was not apparent at all what went where. I figured pretty soon that I should look up my past documentation on it. Wrong! I could find no past documentation. So I started from scratch with a scrambled puzzle and started fiddling. The above 4 photos are my current documentation in case I ever come back to it in the future and want to at least start with what goes where when I try to solve it.

One thing I do not like about it is that some of the stickers are peeling. To further clarify the color scheme I will say that the following are on opposite sides of the puzzle:

Red and Pink

Dark Green and Light Green

Purple and White

Dark Blue and Light Blue

Gray and Orange

Yellow and Black

At first some pieces could be moved together fairly easily, but eventually I resorted to finding commutators that worked to move things into place.

Now that I have played with it some I'm thinking that it is important to start with the dots. Then the other pieces can go in pretty much any order, but I think the long pieces with one color on them would be a good second step. Then the edge pieces with two colors on them.

3-cycles and corner twisters. There is a tremendous amount of flexibility with this puzzle. Pieces can not only be 3-cycled one at a time. You can cycle a pair of pieces. Even three pieces at once. For example, if you hold the puzzle so a vertex made up of 4 edges and 4 longs is at the top and one is in the front, you can do what is like a 3x3x3 corner 3-cycle. Or the 3x3x3 corner twister algorithm.

The more I play with this puzzle the more I like it. I've come to think of it as a 3x3x3 only with a lot more layers! Ha! To solve the dots I think of them as the 12 edges of a cube and solve them as such. Then I like to give the puzzle clearer definition by solving the long pieces. Then I finish up with the edge pieces that I solve like corners of a cube. Kind of crazy. I doubt I will have any clue what this means unless I solve it every month or so.

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Rubik's Cube Books

I got my first Rubik's Cube in the early nineteen eighties. The only way I could solve it was to take it apart and put it back together solved. Until, that is, I got some little books that explained sequences of moves that could be used to put pieces where you want them without messing up what was already in place.

The Simple Solution To Rubik's Cube
by James G. Nourse
Notes on Rubik's Magic Cube
by David Singmaster
Solve That Crazy, Mixed-up Cube Puzzle
by Don Frederick.

I think I put together my own strategy using bits and pieces gleaned from all three books. Eventually I lost interest and forgot how to complete the cube, forgot I had those books, and lost track of the cubes.

Mark Jeays' Working Corner Method

http://jeays.net/rubiks.htm

In 2007 my interest in Rubik's Cube was rekindled when I watched the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. Marae found my 1980s cube for me and I tried to solve it. Huh-uh. I could do part of it, but not the last layer. Looking online I found various tutorials. Mark Jeays included YouTube videos with his Solution 2. This method worked for me and although I no longer use it in its entirety, nor could I, as I have forgotten the yellow edges sequences, I still find the basic working corner technique helpful, and use a slightly modified version of his corner twisting technique at times.

In the summer of 2014 we packed 30 or so puzzles and flew to visit Raymond and Fam in the Czech Republic. Breann, who had learned this method and no other, made some comment about bubururu or something like that, and it piqued my curiosity. What were those algorithms, and how similar are they to the EPS technique I use now when using a working corner? So I looked them up. Actually, the three algorithms were for dealing with the two last edges solved, which either needed to be swapped, or flipped, or swapped and flipped. The swapper is very similar to the one I have learned and used since, but I actually like it better in one sense, with a slight modification.

To swap UR and FR without flipping:

U' R U' R' U' R U' R' U'

To swap and flip UR and FR:

F' U' F U' F' U' F U2

To flip UR and FR:

F' U F U' R U' R' U

Will I actually learn and use these? Probably not. But I like them. :)

There is a slightly different implementation of the Working Corner Method. Arnaud van Galen calls it the Keyhole Method. I like his demonstration better than the one I originally learned. It just dawned on me why he is able to get away with doing it the way he does. He goes ahead and finishes the F2L before going to the last layer, unlike the way Jeays uses the working corner (keyhole) to also get the last layer. Since I no longer use the working corner to get the last layer, I should implement Arnaud's technique.

Jasmine's Scalable Method

http://peter.stillhq.com/jasmine/rubikscubesolution.html

This was the next method I learned. For awhile the idea of speed cubing appealed to me. This promised to be a good beginner's method for those that wanted to go on to faster method's later. Now that I know what I know, I wouldn't recommend this method if your goal is to be able to consistently solve the cube in less than 30 seconds. Rubik's Speedsolver Champion Leyan Lo presents a beginner's method that I like the looks of although I've never learned it. I have recently watched Arnaud van Galen's complete beginner's method video series and recommend them. Gilles Roux presents a beginners' method that is very close to one of my favorite ways of solving the cube. The simplicity and comprehensibility make this method a good place to start if you want to understand the Rubik's Cube. Also, if you are interested in speedcubing you should check out this YouTube video.

After trying for months to get under a minute with both Jasmine's Method and the Corner's First Method—and failing, I finally decided to quit trying and just enjoy cubing at a nice slow pace.

Don't get me wrong. Jasmine's Method has its merits. The sequences for orienting the last layer edges and corners, and permuting the last layer edges are still in my arsenal of useful algorithms.

Adam Cheyer's Corners First Method

Philip Marshall's Ultimate Solution

http://helm.lu/cube/MarshallPhilipp/
After learning to solve the cube corners first, what is next? An Edges First Method! This was a very difficult tutorial to follow, but once I got it, it was my favorite way to solve the cube for awhile. It uses only a few algorithms, and when you are finished solving the cube you feel like you've solved the puzzle, not just used memorized sequences to unscramble it.

Gilles Roux presents a beginners' method that could be used to solve the cube edges first. The simplicity and comprehensibility make this method a good place to start if you want to understand the Rubik's Cube. His technique is much easier to follow than Marshall's.