Dayan Gems IV and V

On June 29 I made a post about the Dayan Gem IV in which I suggest starting the solve with the White center on the bottom. That makes sense since it is consistent with the way I do cubes. On July 1 I made a post about the Dayan Gem V in which I suggest starting with Purple on the bottom. Now that is silly. But understandable because at that point I did not realize how similar the color schemes are. And there is something I like about having purple on bottom with the V. With purple on bottom the colors around the bottom half go:

(Orange hexagon, Red square), (Yellow hexagon, White square), (Green hexagon, Blue square).

See the pattern? Red White Blue squares with opposite colors for the leading hexagons. 

And the colors on top go Red White Blue hexagons.

So it might make sense to hold the IV with Dark Pink down instead of White. That way the color schemes of the two puzzles will jive better. Dark Pink on the IV corresponds to Purple on the V and Gray on the IV corresponds to Light Pink on the V. Otherwise everything is identical.

Another thing about the V. When using The Move to cycle the Square Center Strips it is imperative that you use Big Triangles with Big Triangles, or Small Triangles with Small Triangles. 

Dayan Gem IV (2)

Sure look pretty in the morning sun.

There is a pretty detailed entry in the Solution Guides pre Fall 2013 spreadsheet. Let me sum up. 

Color scheme: Yellow opposite White. Red opposite Orange. Blue opposite Green. Pink opposite Gray. With White on bottom, Gray, Orange, and Green are in the bottom half from left to right.

After the centers, start with the triangles that go between the square pieces.

Corners.

Edge triangles.

Anywhere from simple twists to The Move to the commutator. 

There is also a strategy put forth by rline.

Puzzling With Annie in the Garden

We have been visiting our son, Raymond, and his family in the Czech Republic. About 30 or so puzzles accompanied us. :] All my puzzles have been solved at one time or another, but many had not been solved yet in 2014. That is a situation being remedied this summer. It is the Dayan Gem IV's turn today.

One of the puzzle highlights of the summer is an opportunity to show a local young man how to solve a cube. This week we talked about solving the first two layers. He had done so some years back but had forgotten how. Next week perhaps we can review the first two layers and go on to the last layer.

A daily puzzle delight has been puzzling with my 3-year old granddaughter. We have discussed the differences between a cube, a tetrahedron, a dodecahedron, an octahedron, a curvy kite hexahedron, and a truncated octahedron. :] She especially likes the gear puzzles, and is good at identifying which pieces still need solved on all the puzzles. Above she is completing her two-twist solve of the megaminx.

Besides puzzling we had a blast today going to the local zoo and then to a playground for a picnic. I was surprised to see a baseball field at the park. I didn't think Europeans played baseball. The zoo pictures are uploaded to my flickr page.