My central interest is gaming. I doubt I need to explain that to anyone.
A new special interest of mine though is cubing. Or "twisty puzzles", you can call them... either works. Usually with this you often hear of people that do things like solve a Rubik's Cube (the most well-known and most common type of cube, easily) in like 5 seconds or stuff. That'd be "speed-cubing". Being that that method requires memorizing like 97 freaking algorithms, I got into a "logic" method instead, which only uses 2 algorithms (that are very short) and which I can apply to most types of twisty puzzles, not just the basic cubes. The big difference though is that those algorithms are only used every now and then, and other than that, it's all logic to solve any given cube. I love that, so I'm really enjoying these.
I've built up a pretty sizable collection already. And I just really dont get tired of them. The main 3x3x3 cube, what most people know as a "Rubik's Cube", is the one that I've solved the most often... lost count at this point. Takes me about 10 minutes with this method. But I've solved nearly all of my different cubes (or "cubes" with sarcastic quotes, for the ones that arent actually cubic) at least once, usually more than once, and yeah, I just dont tire of them.
I got some new ones in the mail today, which are these:
From left to right: Pyraminx Diamond, Gear Ball, 3x3x3 Mixup Plus, Gear Cube, and the horrible jagged mess on the far right is an Axis Cube (yes, it actually is a cube shape when solved).
The Mixup Plus and very obviously the Axis Cube have yet to be solved; I'll do them later today for the first time. The other three I've already done. The Gear types are interesting in that you cannot turn just one part of them at a time. When you turn the top face/layer of a gear cube 90 degrees, for instance, the middle layer will always rotate 45 degrees. However, the cube cannot rotate along any other axis this way, so all outer turns must always be 180 degrees. In addition, the gears that make up the edges do all sorts of weird things and end up sticking out at a variety of strange angles. The Gear Ball works almost exactly the same (except the parts never poke out of it) but with some added bits too. What's interesting is that the cube in particular looked so intimidating when I first saw it.... but it's actually one of the easiest puzzles I've got, by far. Crazy thing almost seems like it'll just solve itself if I look at it too hard. Was just a matter of understanding the concepts that make it work. The Diamond offered more challenge; usually I can find some info on these different puzzles to give me some tips or tutorials that teach the concepts they use, but for this specific one, there is.... nothing. Which I've never seen happen before. But I figured the loopy thing out anyway on my own, so I was very pleased about that. Took bloody forever though.
I have some more coming... 1 of which is a hyper-expensive and unique (as in, the only one ever made) version of the popular "Ghost Cube", which I'm very much looking forward to trying. I got very lucky in being able to buy that at all, had I come across it one day later, it probably would have already been bought by someone else. So freaking expensive though! But it looks absolutely great, I cant wait. Ghost cubes though are supposed to be one of the most difficult of all of these sorts of things...
There was also a 6th that came today, a 2x4x6 cuboid I'd been really looking forward to (a shapeshifter type!), but it's not in the photo there. This is because it exploded. Needless to say, I was not pleased by this fact. I didnt even get to scramble it once...