Twisty Puzzles (Yes, that's what they're called)

Hey, everyone. It's me, back at it again with another blog post about puzzles. Recently, I made a very large order- I purchased close to 200$ worth of puzzles. I got some pretty cool ones, but none of them were cooler than this one, the Tuttminx: The Tuttminx is a truncated icosahedral (32-sided or 32-faced) puzzle that functions similar to what you'd expect from a Rubik's cube. Each side is a unique color, just  like the Rubik's cube- meaning it was a huge pain to sticker. It actually arrives in the mail with no stickers applied, and the user  is expected to do this themselves. Now, I'm fine with this, but when you're working with 32 different colors, it can be very difficult to decide where you want them to go- if you're not careful, you can wind up with too many similar colors too close to each other (for example, I was given eight different shades of blue, and the task of keeping them as far apart as I could!). The Tuttminx took me about two hours...

Hey, everyone. So I know that my first post kind of  touched on this subject, but that was really more just a "General" puzzle post where I talked about a lot of things without going into a whole lot of detail on any of them. I figured now may be a good time to talk about why I actually got into them. I had a Rubik's cube when I was a kid- I think a lot of people did- but that didn't get me interested in them. In fact, I probably had a few, and they all probably ended up getting lost. But one Christmas when I was 16 or so, I got a Rubik's cube as a gift. I thought it was pretty cool- and I thought it was cooler when, in a book I was reading, they mentioned the 4x4x4 "Rubik's revenge". This intrigued me- I had known, like most people, what a Rubik's cube was for years. Yet I had never considered that there might be other variations, or other Rubik's cube type puzzles, out there. I Googled it, and then I googled "Rubik's cube variati...

Hey, everyone! So it's past midnight and I've been sitting here for a bit trying to decide what to write my post about, and I decided on puzzle designers. There are a lot of them, but I'll just go through and talk about some of the more famous ones. I'll start out with my favorite, Oskar Van Deventer. Oskar is a Dutch puzzle designer who, rather than modifying existing puzzles like many puzzle designers do, creates completely unique mechanisms and puzzles using 3D printing. He's best known for designing the 17x17x17 "Over the top" cube, which held the world record as the largest of its kind for a very long time. He also started the "Gear puzzles" idea, which you can see below: https://thecubicle.us/gear-cubes-c-100_144.html He's also invented other unique designs like, such as the mixup cube (A really interesting cube where the centers and edges can switch places) and the Redi cube, an interesting corner-turning puzzle. Next up is Nat...

So, this is my first blog post. I guess it was supposed to be my second, but I ended up getting distracted with other, less important stuff. I also wasn't completely sure on what topic I wanted to write about, though I did have a pretty good idea- but, anyway, I think I've found one. I'm going to write about the only real hobby I've ever had, twisty puzzles. Now, most people don't know what twisty puzzles are, and that's alright. It's kind of a silly name, and they're not really all that popular, but they're what I'm making my blog about. Since so many people don't know what they are, I figured I'd use my first post to explain it. You've almost certainly seen a Rubik's cube before- something that looks a little bit like this: This was the original twisty puzzle, the 3x3x3 Rubik's cube, invented by Erno Rubik. But did you know that there are, actually, other variations of the puzzle? These puzzles have a similar concept to...