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Toys Puzzle Games (Games)

Rubik's Famous Magic Cube in Lego Form 85

Posted by Zonk from the clicky-connecty-cubage dept.
addaon writes "I just came across a successful attempt to construct a Rubik's cube entirely out of Lego. It's an interesting companion to the Lego Rubik's solver featured some time ago."
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Rubik's Famous Magic Cube in Lego Form More

Rubik's Famous Magic Cube in Lego Form

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  • Besides removing the labels... (Score:3, Funny)

    by thedogcow ( 694111 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @12:32PM (#10609480)
    Great, now I have to paint each individual lego.
    • I wonder what's more difficult, solving the puzzle or figuring this construction out? I think after finally constructing it, I've spent the last of my sanity... which defeats the purpose of the Rubiks cube in the first place.

  • Thanks a lot (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @12:32PM (#10609481) Homepage Journal
    Now when I have almost finished with my old (simplified) Rubik's cube after years of frustration, now I will have a new thing to "play" with. Thanks a lot!
    • I believe the ones where all the faces were the same colour were marketed as "stupid cube" here.
  • I bet it would be really easy to solve...

  • Massive (Score:5, Informative)

    by themoodykid ( 261964 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @12:40PM (#10609524) Journal
    The thing weighs 3kg! Maybe you could build up your wrist muscles while solving this thing.

  • I think I have enough colors! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by multi-flavor-geek ( 586005 ) <textonly&cpinternet,com> on Saturday October 23, 2004 @12:40PM (#10609525) Homepage Journal
    Oh, I know I have nough, white, yellow, red, grey, black, blue, that's a lego rubicks cube waiting to happen!
    And this would be more entertaining then just trying to build riduiculasly tall freestanding towers (my records have been limited by ceiling height) or ridiculasly long suspention bridges (using legos as cables and all)
    My record on that one was a 9 foot span that held a couple of pounds!
    Of course it would not be as entertaining as building the lego airplanes as smashing them into my bedroom walls to se where all of the passengers ended up in my room!

  • Cool (Score:5, Funny)

    by nounderscores ( 246517 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @12:40PM (#10609528)
    Next, we need to create The Cube [imdb.com] out of lego and abduct people to put into it.
  • Scramble it in anyway you want!

    I can solve it under a minute.

  • All that work for nothing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @12:48PM (#10609560)
    They didn't need to go to such lengths just to have a Rubik's cube that can be dismantled and rearranged when nobody is looking, the original thing had stickers that were easily peeled off and reglued to solve the cube.
    • What is more fun is to just swap a few stickers, then give it to someone who claims they can solve the cube. Usually if you swap a few stickers you'll make a new unsolvable problem (it isn't possible to get from any cube to the solution ^_^ )

      • The simplest unsolvable swap is to swap the stickers from both sides of an edge piece. Then, simply twist it a few dozen times to mask it.

        However, if the solver is as gifted as he thinks it is, he'll probably get it to a similar configuration fairly quickly at which point he should be able to confidently proclaim that it cannot be solved. (Those who are experts in the cube, which I definitely am not, should also be familiar with its parity states.)

      • Actually, switching any two stickers (that aren't the same color) will make a cube unsolvable. You need to switch at least three to have a chance at getting to a solvable state.
      • The thing is, if you know how to solve the cube (I bet millions know how to), you can get to the point where the cube is solved with the exception of the misplaced stickers.

        At that moment, you can point out that the cube was altered.

        A side question to Rubik's cube lovers: where can one buy a quality one? I have an original cube (made in Hungary) and recently wanted to buy a new one (the sticker corners of the original have worn out). Every single cube I could find was made in China and is absolute crap. T

    • Re:All that work for nothing (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why would you peel off the stickers when you can take it apart and rearrange it?

  • turnable? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by slimak ( 593319 )
    I'm failing to see how this thing can turn about all three axis -- the pictures only show it being rotated about the horizontal axis, what about the other two planes? The fact that it is build using the circle on the inside seems to me that it would only be able to turn about one axis rather than 3.
    • If you read the article more carefully, you see that the designer went to great lengths to make the design completely symmetrical, (for example figuring out how many bricks thickness are needed to make cubical parts and such like) so if it can rotate one side, it can rotate all of them; just like the original Rubik's cube.

  • Successful? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23, 2004 @12:55PM (#10609593)
    He hasn't created a working Rubix cube. The gigantic monstrosity which requires belts on every movement layer to prevent it falling apart is not a working Rubix cube. At best, and the site openly admits this, it is a model or a prototype.

    • I have to admit, this is really interesting. I now feel I have to top him by actually building a cube that works seamlessly :-)

    • Re:Successful? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mod_critical ( 699118 ) *

      It's SUPPOSED to be like that! Can't you see that this is an open expression of the Microsoft Server platform??? It is built with fixed, proprietary parts that, while they connect well to each other, cause the final product to only operates in one out of the three ways you'd expect it to, require external help to keep it from falling apart, and weigh much more than and be much larger than what would actually work! Geeze go take an art appreciation class.

      sorry, I couldn't help it =$

  • Solving (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I usually solve rubix cubes by just relocating all the color stickers. With this invention, I can just do it by taking the cube apart and putting it back together without the hassle of peeling stickers! ...now where did I put that blue 2x4 Lego piece...
    • (when i was a 12 years old) My previous neighbur could solve one in (almost) a blink. He was fond of the game. Whenever I was over at theirs place, i'd try it every time but never ever got it just right. So i dicided to relocate some color labels, once i found out how to click them loose. It wasnt easy. But i didn't finisch the job, i had to go suddenly. After that, it was unsolvable, and he didnt realize. He went crazy whenever he was playing with it.
    • If you had one, you took it apart and put vasoline on the moving parts. Moving stickers seems pretty primitive.

  • Gilligan (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    If the professor of Gilligan's Island had legos, he could have built that nuclear reactor in 1 day instead of the 3 it required with coconuts.

    • Re:Gilligan (Score:2, Funny)

      by acvh ( 120205 )
      it's not often that I get a glimpse of the future, but I just had one.... hundreds and hundreds of "Gilligan/professor/coconut" posts on Slashdot.

      (or have I been missing something all along?)
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Now a Rubick's cube for military! (Score:3, Funny)

    by WetCat ( 558132 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @01:05PM (#10609631)
    Just use only green lego blocks for it!

  • Adult (fan of) LEGO (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23, 2004 @01:32PM (#10609760)

    The author of the article calls himself an "adult fan of LEGO". Well, I'm a fan of adult LEGO [corrupt.net]!

    • I JUST HAVE to stop telling myself "yeah, I've seen it all now"! LOL! It just goes to show ya that if you can't find it on the internet, it probably can't be found at all.

  • Ye gods. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fortran IV ( 737299 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @01:40PM (#10609811) Journal

    Just when I think the nerd community cannot surprise me any more, along comes something like this article. Not only is there a CAD system [lm-software.com] for building with LEGO, there are enough of them to justify a common graphic interface [ldraw.org] for them. Jeez Louise.

    Perhaps the universe has a reason for giving us such lousy social skills. If we ever really worked together, turned all that creativity and ingenuity to a single purpose, we'd have already built the Earth Mark II by now (probably from LEGO), and uncovered the Ultimate Question: How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?
    • Ultimate Question: How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?
      Um, 42? Wait, that's not how I remembered it. Nice try, but I don't think you have the Ultimate Question.
      • Okay, I know earthly research has put the answer somewhere from 144 to 411 [tootsie.com] (thanks, AC), but they do not allow for just how long a tongue Eccentrica Gallumbits [wikipedia.org] brings to each lick. (The issue of multiple tongues may be ignored, totalling the licks by each individual tongue.)
        • I think they should refine that as well as a few other measurements, and I think we could actually anser the question sufficiently. We simply need to define the length of time the lick takes, the amount of surface area the lick covers, and how much saliva is applied durring each lick. Anyone want to rigidly define a lick? Anyone care a lick?
    • Just when I think the nerd community cannot surprise me any more, along comes something like this article. Not only is there a CAD system for building with LEGO, there are enough of them to justify a common graphic interface for them. Jeez Louise.

      Reminds me of that program those guys were building in Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs".

  • Slightly less enormous lego cube (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jerkface ( 177812 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @01:44PM (#10609826) Journal
    I know a guy who did a slightly smaller cube [ikaruga.co.uk] based on a different design. His page includes a short video showing the cube in operation.

    More uniquely, the same guy also has what is probably the world's only complete page on lego logic circuits [ikaruga.co.uk].

  • A few words about the Rubic cube... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:01PM (#10609896)
    "A famous recent puzzle is Rubik's cube invented by the Hungarian Ern Rubik. Invented in 1974,patented in 1975 it was put on the market in Hungary in 1977. It did not really begin it's infamous popularity until 1981. By 1982 10 million cubes had been sold in Hungary, more than the population of the country. It is estimated that 100 million were sold world-wide."

    That is for the facts, otherwise from the brain twisting solution, there is another way to solve it, as few noted before, to strip all the cover from the cube, making it entirely black, which is a valid solution according the rules of the game.

    Oh boy its one of the rare moments im proud to be a hungarian, when there is a discussion about hungarian inventions, that is...
  • From TFA:
    • The axes in the centre are not strong enough to hold everything together: gaps appear, big enough for corner- and middle- pieces to drop.
    • Partial solution: strapping belts makes the cube much easier to handle
    That's a partial solution all right. All in all, I thing this looks like a fun hack, but it might need some more polishing...

  • Another cool lego design (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Theres is a mechanical automatic transmission [last-outpost.com] made of lego that is pretty clever too. It is the only one I've ever seen that doesnt use the mindstorm controller to shift up and down. It just uses springs. It make make the base of a good Sumo Bot [24tooth.com] for next year's contest.

  • Try it 4D (Score:4, Informative)

    by dark-br ( 473115 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @03:54PM (#10610446) Homepage

    While the physical cube can currently not be built, you can solve it through the portal of your computer screen. Try it: Magic Cube 4D [superliminal.com]

  • Dogic (Score:2)

    by blogan ( 84463 )
    If any of you are interested in Rubik's, you may be interested in buying a Dogic. It's a 20-sided puzzles that's going to be re-released by Meffert's if they get enough pre-orders.

    See http://sites.webec.com.hk/meffert/index.cfm?id&fus eaction=browse&pageid=108 [webec.com.hk] for more information.
  • http://www.henrylim.org/Harpsichord.html [henrylim.org]
    Yes, it's what the html filename says it is. Some of the pics appear to have jaggies from aliasing, but a closer look shows they are actual Lego blocks.
  • The majority of *my* Legos never made past the following: The void under the couch cushions, family dog (think chewed or untouchable...), vacuum, the day I took a few Legos outside, that heating vent in my bedroom, road trip to the east coast, your younger brother, superglue, hacksaw, driveway gravel, and "lending them to a friend."
  • One more comment for anyone still reading the comments to this article, this book by A. K. Dewdney (one of several who wrote the recreational column that replaced Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" in Scientific American, ISTR it was "Computer Recreations" when Dewdney wrote it) may be of interest, the full title of the book is "The Tinkertoy Computer and Other Machinations." This book appears to be out of print, but many used copies are available from used/out-of-print sellers on http://amazon.com/ [amazon.com] and

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