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Panagiotis Verdes is a Greek inventor and is known for being the first person to mass produce 6x6x6 puzzles and 7x7x7 twisty puzzles. He is also known for founding the company V-Cube. He has also worked on new designs of every Twisty Puzzle from 2x2x2 to 11x11x11. [1]
Verdes was born in Chiliomodi, Korinthos, a province in southern Greece, where he graduated from high school. He followed his passion for constructions and studied at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki from 1965 until 1970. During his career, he was primarily involved in building, road and public network constructions until his retirement in 2003. [2]
V-Cube is a brand name owned by Verdes Innovations, a company owned by Panagiotis. The V-Cube brand is used to sell puzzles that are similar to the original Rubik's Cube. The brand is known for being the first to mass-produce the first ever 6x6x6 and 7x7x7 puzzles, [2] and for being the first to create a design that would allow for puzzles up to the 11x11x11. [1] Prior to Verdes' invention, the 6x6x6 cube was thought to be impossible due to geometry constraints. Verdes's invention uses a completely different mechanism than the smaller Rubik's cubes; his mechanism is based on concentric, right-angle conical surfaces whose axes of rotation coincide with the semi-axes of the cube. [1] The patents for the cubes were awarded in 2004, and mass-production began in 2008.
The Rubik's Cube is a 3D 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 Pentangle Puzzles in the UK in 1978, and then by Ideal Toy Corp in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer. The cube was released internationally in 1980 and became one of the most recognized icons in popular culture. It won the 1980 German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle. As of January 2024, around 500 million cubes had been sold worldwide, making it the world's bestselling puzzle game and bestselling toy. The Rubik's Cube was inducted into the US National Toy Hall of Fame in 2014.
Ernő Rubik is a Hungarian inventor, widely known for creating the Rubik's Cube (1974), Rubik's Magic, Rubik's Magic: Master Edition, and Rubik's Snake.
The Professor's Cube is a 5×5×5 version of the original Rubik's Cube. It has qualities in common with both the 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube and the 4×4×4 Rubik's Revenge, and solution strategies for both can be applied.
Chiliomodi is a village in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. It was the seat of the municipality of Tenea. Chiliomodi is situated in a valley, 3 km southeast of Koutalas, 5 km west of Athikia, 21 km southwest of Corinth and 43 km northeast of Argos. It is on the Greek National Road 7 and on the railway from Corinth to Kalamata. Chiliomodi has several schools, shops and a church. Chiliomodi suffered damage from the 2007 Greek forest fires.
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.
Uwe Mèffert was a German puzzle designer and inventor. He manufactured and sold mechanical puzzles in the style of Rubik's Cube since the Cube craze of the 1980s. His first design was the Pyraminx – which he had developed before the original Rubik's Cube was invented. He created his own puzzle company and helped bring to market the Megaminx, Skewb, Skewb Diamond and many other puzzles.
The Pyramorphix, also called Pyramorphinx, 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. Although it looks like a trivially simple 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. Many such puzzles are mechanical puzzles of polyhedral shape, consisting of multiple layers of pieces along each axis which can rotate independently of each other. Collectively known as twisty puzzles, the archetype of this kind of puzzle is the Rubik's Cube. Each rotating side is usually marked with different colours, intended to be scrambled, then solved by a sequence of moves that sort the facets by colour. Generally, combination puzzles also include mathematically defined examples that have not been, or are impossible to, physically construct.
The V-Cube 6 is a 6×6×6 version of the original 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, most 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.
Katsuhiko Okamoto is a Japanese inventor who specializes in modifications of the Rubik's Cube. Since 2001 he has created 31 such puzzles.
Mark Setteducati is an American magician and inventor of illusions, games and puzzles. He is also an author, known for the book The Magic Show, and featured on PBS Inventors.
Tony Fisher is a British puzzle designer who specialises in creating custom rotational puzzles. He is acknowledged by cubing enthusiasts as a pioneer in the creation of new puzzle designs and new manufacturing techniques. In 2017 the Guinness Book of World Records acknowledged Fisher as the creator of the world's largest Rubik's cube.
Oskar van Deventer is a Dutch puzzle maker. He prototypes puzzles using 3D printing. His work combines mathematics, physics, and design, and he collaborates at academic institutions. Many of his combination puzzles are in mass production by Uwe Mèffert and WitEden. Oskar van Deventer has also designed puzzles for Hanayama.
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 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube, which only has 6 different colours, the Nine-Colour Cube has 9 colours, with the individual pieces having one colour each.
Larry D. Nichols, born 1939 in the United States, is a puzzle designer. He grew up in Xenia, Ohio, and studied chemistry at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, before moving to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Graduate School. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including 'The Nichols Cube Puzzle' (1972), patent US3655201. He has lived with his wife Karen in Arlington, Massachusetts since 1959.
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 manufacturers released their own versions of the puzzle much earlier.
The Gear Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle designed and created by Dutch puzzle maker Oskar van Deventer based on an idea by Bram Cohen. It was initially produced by Shapeways in 2009 and known as "Caution Cube" due to the likelihood of getting one's fingers stuck between the gears while speedcubing. Later, in 2010, it was mass-produced by Meffert's as the "Gear Cube".
The Mirror Blocks, also known as the Mirror Cube and Bump Cube, is a type of combination puzzle and shape modification of the standard 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube and was invented in 2006. The puzzle's internal mechanism is nearly identical to that of the Rubik's Cube, although it differs from normal 3×3 cubes in that all pieces are the same color and are identified by shape since each one is also a distinct rectangular prism. Like the Ghost Cube and Mastermorphix, the Mirror Blocks has a 3×3×3 shape, meaning that it can be solved the same way as the 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube. The fastest single solve for Mirror Blocks in a competition is 10.07 seconds and was achieved by Braden Richards in Huntington, West Virginia on May 17, 2024.
The Dino Cube is a cubic twisty puzzle in the style of the Rubik's Cube. It was invented in 1985 by Robert Webb, though 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.
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