The Dino Cube [1] [2] [3] [4] is a cubic twisty puzzle in the style of the Rubik's Cube. It was invented in 1985 by Robert Webb, however it was not mass-produced until ten years later. It has a total of 12 external movable pieces to rearrange, compared to 20 movable pieces on the Rubik's Cube.
Robert Webb designed and made the first prototype of what would become the Dino Cube in 1985; his original prototype was made entirely out of paper. [3] Since then the puzzle was reinvented twice, but full mass production of the puzzle did not start until 1995. [2] The first mass-produced version had pictures of dinosaurs depicted on each piece, which led to the adoption of the puzzle's current name of Dino Cube. [5] It is not known what the puzzle had been called before this dinosaur version was introduced. The later versions, however, adopted the practice of using standard single-colour stickers, in common with most other twisty puzzles. [2]
The Dino Cube is a twisty puzzle in the shape of a cube. It consists of 12 movable pieces, all of which are located on the edges of the cube. [2] [3] [5]
The puzzle can be thought of as twisting around its corners: each move changes the position of three edge pieces adjacent to the same corner, by rotating them around that corner. [2] [4] There are in fact eight more "hidden" pieces inside the puzzle, which are located at the corners and are fixed to the puzzle's core; these pieces only become visible in the middle of a move.
The vast majority of mass-produced Dino Cubes have the standard six-colour scheme, with one colour on each face of the cube in the solved state. [2] This is in common with most other cubic twisty puzzles, including the Rubik's Cube. However, a few versions with other colour schemes also exist, including one with four colours (where each colour is centred around one corner of the cube in the solved state), [6] and one with just two colours (where each colour present on half of the puzzle). [7]
The purpose of the puzzle is to scramble the colours and then restore them to their original configuration, usually of one colour per face.
The Dino Cube is considered to be one of the easiest twisty puzzles to solve. One of the things that make it so easy is the fact that each move only affects three edge pieces at once, which means it is easy to solve one part of the puzzle without disturbing what is already solved. In addition, each edge piece only has one possible orientation, meaning that if a given piece is in the correct position, it will always be orientated the correct way as well. Therefore, the solver never has to worry about changing the orientation of any pieces. [4]
Although not obvious at the first glance, the six-colour Dino Cube actually has two distinct configurations that represent a solved puzzle. The two solutions are mirror images of each other and the only visual difference between them is their colour schemes; for example, one solution has the colours Blue - Yellow - Red going clockwise around one vertex, while in the other these colours go anticlockwise. [4]
Mathematically, the puzzle is identical to Hoberman's BrainTwist, which is a tetrahedral puzzle that can "flip" inside out and reveal another set of four faces. Like the Dino Cube, The BrainTwist has twelve movable pieces, and each move rotates three pieces around one corner. It also likewise has two distinct solutions: one with the same colour on each of the faces and one with the same colour at each of the corners. [4]
The Dino Cube has twelve edge pieces. This means naturally there are twelve possible positions for the first given edge, however due to the lack of visible fixed "reference" pieces, all of these positions are rotationally symmetrical to each other. Therefore, the position of the first given edge is not taken into account.
The remaining eleven edge pieces can be permutated in 11! different ways, relative to the first edge piece. Only even permutations of these pieces are possible (i.e. it is impossible to swap one pair of pieces while leaving the rest of the puzzle solved), which divides the limit by 2.
The edge pieces cannot be flipped or misorientated (See Solving), therefore this is also not taken into account.
The total number of possible combinations on the six-colour Dino Cube is therefore equal to: [4]
This number is low compared to the number of combinations of the Rubik's Cube (which has over 4.3×1019 combinations) but still larger than many other puzzles in the Rubik's Cube family, notably the Pocket Cube (over 3.6 million combinations) and the Pyraminx (just over 930 thousand combinations, excluding rotations of the trivial tips).
The number of possible of configurations, 19 958 400, is sufficiently small to allow a computer search for optimal solutions. The table below summarises the result of such a search, stating the number p of positions that require n moves to solve the six-colour Dino Cube (p2 for either solution, p1 for one specific solution): [4]
| n | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| p2 | 2 | 32 | 320 | 2 816 | 23 414 | 180 084 | 1 227 084 | 6 167 660 | 10 926 002 | 1 429 972 | 1 004 | 19 958 400 | |
| p1 | 1 | 16 | 160 | 1 408 | 11 712 | 90 912 | 640 192 | 3 740 838 | 11 138 597 | 4 313 963 | 20 577 | 24 | 19 958 400 |
This table shows that the God's Number of the six-colour Dino Cube is 10 (when solving into either solution) or 11 (when solving into one specific solution).
Several shape modifications of the Dino Cube exist. These include the aforementioned BrainTwist , in the shape of a tetrahedron that can flip inside out, the Platypus, whose shape is also based on a tetrahedron, the Redi Cube, a cubic version with shallower cuts, and the Rainbow Cube, in the shape of a cuboctahedron. [4] The latter three puzzles, unlike the Dino Cube, also have their "core" pieces visible.
Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes had been sold worldwide, making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.
The Rubik's Revenge is a 4×4×4 version of Rubik's Cube. It was released in 1981. Invented by Péter Sebestény, the Rubik's Revenge was nearly called the Sebestény Cube until a somewhat last-minute decision changed the puzzle's name to attract fans of the original Rubik's Cube. Unlike the original puzzle, it has no fixed facets: the centre facets are free to move to different positions.
The Pyraminx is a regular tetrahedron puzzle in the style of Rubik's Cube. It was made and patented by Uwe Mèffert after the original 3 layered Rubik's Cube by Erno Rubik, and introduced by Tomy Toys of Japan in 1981.
The Square-1, also known as Back to Square One and Cube 21, is a puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. Its distinguishing feature among the numerous Rubik's Cube variants is that it can change shape as it is twisted, due to the way it is cut, thus adding an extra level of challenge and difficulty. The Super Square One and Square Two puzzles have been recently introduced. The Super Square One has two additional layers that can be scrambled and solved independently of the rest of the puzzle, and the Square Two has extra cuts made to the top and bottom layer, making the edge and corner wedges the same size.
The Megaminx or Mégaminx is a dodecahedron-shaped puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. It has a total of 50 movable pieces to rearrange, compared to the 20 movable pieces of the Rubik's Cube.
The Skewb Diamond is an octahedron-shaped puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. It has 14 movable pieces which can be rearranged in a total of 138,240 possible combinations. This puzzle is the dual polyhedron of the Skewb. It was invented by Uwe Meffert, a German puzzle inventor and designer.
The Skewb is a combination puzzle and a mechanical puzzle in the style of Rubik's Cube. It was invented by Tony Durham and marketed by Uwe Mèffert. Although it is cubical in shape, it differs from Rubik's construction in that its axes of rotation pass through the corners of the cube rather than the centres of the faces. There are four such axes, one for each space diagonal of the cube. As a result, it is a deep-cut puzzle in which each twist affects all six faces.
The Hoberman BrainTwist is a 3D mechanical puzzle designed and marketed by Chuck Hoberman's company Hoberman Designs. The puzzle is in the same family as the Rubik's Cube and other puzzles that involve manipulating and scrambling colored face elements with the goal of returning them to their original order from a randomized state, commonly called twisty puzzles. This puzzle is unique in that in addition to solving one set of tetrahedral faces the puzzle can be flipped inside-out through an intermediate stellated shape to reveal another (dual) tetrahedron with a set of 4 different colored faces. The puzzle also has an alternate solution in which the apices are each a uniform color.
The Pyramorphix is a tetrahedral puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. It has a total of 8 movable pieces to rearrange, compared to the 20 of the Rubik's Cube. Though it looks like a simpler version of the Pyraminx, it is an edge-turning puzzle with the mechanism identical to that of the Pocket Cube.
A combination puzzle, also known as a sequential move puzzle, is a puzzle which consists of a set of pieces which can be manipulated into different combinations by a group of operations.
The V-Cube 6 is a 6×6×6 version of Rubik's Cube. The first mass-produced 6×6×6 was invented by Panagiotis Verdes and is produced by the Greek company Verdes Innovations SA. Other such puzzles have since been introduced by a number of Chinese companies, some of which have mechanisms which improve on the original. Unlike the original puzzle, it has no fixed facets: the center facets are free to move to different positions.
The V-Cube 7 is a combination puzzle in the form of a 7×7×7 cube. The first mass-produced 7×7×7 was invented by Panagiotis Verdes and is produced by the Greek company Verdes Innovations SA. Other such puzzles have since been introduced by a number of Chinese companies, some of which have mechanisms which improve on the original. Like the 5×5×5, the V-Cube 7 has both fixed and movable center facets.
The Pyraminx Crystal is a dodecahedral puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube and the Megaminx. It is manufactured by Uwe Mèffert and has been sold in his puzzle shop since 2008.
The Rubik's Triamid is a mechanical puzzle invented by Ernő Rubik and released in 1991 by Matchbox.
The Helicopter Cube is a Rubik's Cube-like puzzle invented by Adam G. Cowan in 2005 and built in 2006. It is also in the shape of a cube. At first glance, the Helicopter Cube may seem like a combination of the 2x2x2 and the Skewb, but it actually cuts differently, and twists around cube edges rather than cube faces. The purpose of the puzzle is to scramble the colors, and then restore them back to their original state of a single color per face.
A Tuttminx is a Rubik's Cube-like twisty puzzle, in the shape of a truncated icosahedron. It was invented by Lee Tutt in 2005. It has a total of 150 movable pieces to rearrange, compared to 20 movable pieces of the Rubik’s Cube.
The Pyraminx Duo is a tetrahedral twisty puzzle in the style of the Rubik's Cube. It was suggested by Rob Stegmann, invented by Oskar van Deventer, and has now been mass-produced by Meffert's.
The Floppy Cube is a cuboidal twisty puzzle in the style of the Rubik's Cube. It was originally invented by Katsuhiko Okamoto and mass-produced by Gentosha Toys, although several other companies have since mass-produced it as well.
The Nine-Colour Cube is a cubic twisty puzzle. It was invented in 2005 by Milan Vodicka and mass-produced by Meffert's seven years later. Mechanically, the puzzle is identical to the Rubik's Cube; however, unlike the Rubik's Cube, which only has 6 different colours, the Nine-Colour Cube has 9 colours, with the individual pieces having one colour each.
The V-Cube 8 is an 8×8×8 version of the Rubik's Cube. Unlike the original puzzle, it has no fixed facets: the center facets are free to move to different positions. The design was covered by Panagiotis Verdes' patent from 2007 but Verdes Innovations SA did not produce it for sale until 2014. Other 8×8×8 cubes are produced by the Chinese companies ShengShou, MoYu, and YuXin.
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