They made a VOID & MIRROR Pyraminx!?

[Music] hey guys and welcome back to z3 cubing today i'm going to be checking out a handful of relatively new non-wca puzzles which i bought from the cubicle.com sometimes i like to just scroll through their list of newly released puzzles and find things i think look interesting and so that's how i found these four we have two interesting new takes on the pyraminx made by shangshao as well as a fun little mini cube as well as this crazy thing which is kind of like a complicated skewb both made by qiyi as always you can get five percent off any of these puzzles linked down in the description or anything else at the cubicle.com with discount code z3 cubing so let's kick things off with let's say the void pyraminx now this is a shengshou puzzle and the fun thing about that is they actually have these really cool textured boxes basically on top of the printing they've kind of indented the lines of the puzzle so you can actually kind of feel it on the box it's just a nice little touch to their packaging no pun intended and of course as always we have the bad translations with literally every twisted puzzle being called a magic tower and no other english on the box anyway let's go ahead and get it open we have a little instruction booklet and then the puzzle itself is quite badly wrapped up in plastic so this thing looks pretty cool doesn't it oh well that's unfortunate i think this piece is stuck to the plastic wrap with poorly applied lube let me fix that real quick as i was saying this thing looks incredible the novelty of a void cube of course is that there's a hole straight through it so you can maybe look through it and see something on the other side or even stick your finger through it and start turning of course this is based off the idea of the original rubik's void cube which is just a 3x3 but without any centers instead it has a hole going all the way through i decided to put a golf ball inside of mine because why not the thing i like about this one is just how detached everything looks when you turn it halfway like it seems like this piece should barely be able to hold on to the other part of the puzzle but sure enough it is super solid except there is one big problem that you've probably spotted already if we take a look side by side with the pyraminx we can see that these aren't exactly the same puzzle there is no centerpiece on a pyraminx to punch out to make a void version now i guess you could kind of enlarge these holes and get rid of the core and this would kind of be what you'd be left with except there's still one big problem there are no tips what i'm saying is that although similar this so-called void pyraminx is not simply the void version of a pyraminx what is it the void version of well i'm glad you asked that would be the jing pyraminx this puzzle has a lot of different names and versions this one was made by shengshou but i believe it was originally released by methods under the name jing pyraminx essentially it's a pyraminx minus the tips and plus these big center pieces now i want to do a solve of the void pyraminx but i think it'll make a little bit more sense if i solve the jing pyraminx first and spoiler alert it solves very similar to the pyraminx all right i think that's scrambled enough so what we're going to do is first solve the pyraminx part of it so the corners and the edges and then we can go ahead and solve these centers separately so we have this nice little pair here let's go ahead and add another edge to that and then we can go ahead and do keyhole so we put all the red centers on the bottom like that we can get this last edge piece in like that and now all we have to do is finish this off with one little algorithm just a standard pyraminx algorithm to flip two edges and there we go we have the entire outside solved and now all that's left is the centers all you want to do is hold it so that you have two centers to swap like this this would be incorrect so just something like this where the two colors are the same hold those towards you and then on these two sides do three sledge hammers it doesn't matter which directions just something like for example up up down down and repeat that three times and there we go now our jing pyraminx is solved now you might imagine based off that description on how to solve the jing pyraminx that this void pyraminx is going to be super easy it's not like on a 3x3 where you base everything around the centers and so removing them actually makes it harder no removing them makes it way easier in this case by making it void they took away the one thing that made the jing pyraminx unique the centers so in a way i guess the void pyraminx is actually more like the pyraminx than i thought in fact it should actually solve in the exact same way as the pyraminx just minus the tips so let's go ahead and try it we have one pair right here let's go ahead and maybe add this edge piece on like that and then we can go ahead and do keyhole with red on the bottom like that we can go ahead and get this edge piece into there as you can tell this puzzle turned a little bit rough just like the original void puzzle but that's to be expected because of the mechanism and then we can go ahead and finish it off with the same case that we got last time just like that and then like this and as you can see there's no centers to deal with so there we go it's solved exactly like a pyraminx so yeah that's the shengshou void pyraminx it's funny to think that they took a puzzle that adds centers to a pyraminx and then they got rid of the centers so i guess it is sort of like a pyraminx but in a very twisted way so yeah very solid puzzle the turning's not the greatest but for nine dollars i think it's a very fun novelty that i would definitely recommend all right on to the mere pyraminx this is another puzzle released by shengshou around the same time as the void pyraminx so we have the same nice textured packaging and same magic tower on the box same chinese instructions same not very effective plastic wrap but a different puzzle on the inside albeit with a pretty similar idea to the last one now just by looking at it i can already tell this puzzle is going to turn better than the last one we definitely have more rounded corners and of course no hole through the middle so let's try it out and yeah that definitely turns a lot better it also just looks very cool like you can see the reflection of everything there i am waving from off camera and there is the next puzzle i'm about to talk about this is of course the original 3x3 mirror cube based off a 2x3 the same puzzle on the inside basically the idea is instead of having a different color to differentiate each side we instead have a different layer height and of course every single piece has to match that layer height in order for the puzzle to be a perfect cube so the solved position is the only cubic position and of course because there's no colors you might as well add a fun mirror finish to all the sides to make things even more confusing so that's what the mirror pyraminx is except with the jing pyraminx instead of a 3x3 we've taken away all the colors and just added different heights to differentiate all four sides so in theory this should solve the exact same way as the jing pyraminx but in practice for anybody who has ever solved the mirror cube you'll know that it is a little bit more tricky than that all right i think that's pretty well scrambled so my general strategy to solve a mirror cube is basically the same thing as solving the normal puzzle except with a bit more trial and error to figure out which piece fits in where it looks like we already got lucky and got one piece in so now we need a fairly skinny and a somewhat larger piece to fit in there so how about that one nope not quite what if we put it in backwards and yep it fits now if we take a look at our top corner here compared to this bottom one it looks like we already have these heights matched up perfectly which should mean that this one is oriented correctly and this is the correct height to be on the bottom if we're doing keyhole that's a little bit confusing but that's kind of the way you have to think when it comes to mirror cubes and so now we have matched that correct height with this other corner and then we can move on to the last corner and turn it until that height looks correct just like that there we go now all three of these bottom corners are correct relative to each other we just have to find the piece that goes into there with a bit of trial and error maybe that one's not it that one is not it how about this one okay that one's correct so we can go ahead and do our quick little algorithm thing like this to get that in the right spot and there we go now we have all three of these corners and we can go ahead and line that up with the bottom corners and then taking a look at our last three edges it looks like this one is flat and the other two are not which i think means that we have a case where we have to move one of these edges to the side yep and this one up this one down and this one down and there we go we have now finished the outer pyraminx part so the trick is we have to find the two sets of centerpieces we could swap to solve the entire cube it's very obvious when there's just colors but with heights i'm not really sure how to figure it out obviously swapping these two isn't gonna work because they're both too small maybe swapping these two will work let's try it so we do one two and then three sledge hammers and it looks like we just made everything worse perfect okay so swapping these two didn't work so let's try swapping these two instead so we'll do three sledgehammers here and hopefully this should get us back to a solved position and there we go and our mirror pyraminx is finally solved that was a little bit tricky i'll admit that last step especially i wasn't exactly sure how to figure that out it really takes a good understanding of what you're doing to the pieces in order to solve any mirror puzzle so yeah this was a good test of how well i know my pyraminx and actually now that i look at it there's lines in the pieces and these lines in the centers are not lined up so maybe i don't quite know what i'm doing alright i just did about a million sledgehammers and nothing happened so let me know if you know how to twist centers on a jing pyraminx i would be interested not something i've ever really thought about before so yeah if you like mirror cubes or pyraminx's or really if you just like fun not too hard non-wca puzzles then i could definitely recommend the shang xiaomi or pyraminx i thought it was pretty fun now it's time to move on to the second half of this unboxing with two new cubes from qiyi now before we get to perhaps the most interesting cube in this entire video let's start with something a little bit more fun and trivial this is a keychain gear cube it looks like just about the only word of english on the box is the word speedcube oh no it also says more than a professional speedcube which one is it more than a speedcube or just a speedcube anyway i guess the idea is that people who like keychains with rubrik's cubes also like keychains with weird looking creatures holding a rubik's cube i guess so we get an extra little keychain here that's useful anyway on to the main attraction now i actually do have a small collection of keychain cubes already i of course have this epic little magnetic one i have this two by two which i took the mechanism out of to make a lego cube and most interestingly i have a pyraminx and a skewb i'll actually link to these in the description too there are actually some pretty cool little mini puzzles anyway that's not what this video is about this is a mini keychain gear cube not exactly the first puzzle to come to mind when you're thinking of keychain cubes but you got to admit it's also a pretty good idea the gear cube is a kind of puzzle that's super fun and unique but it's also just a little bit too easy you're probably not just going to leave one out on your desk and solve it all the time but if you put it on your keychain i mean then you can solve it all the time personally i don't carry any cubes on a keychain but if i did it would definitely be either a three by three or this one another big plus side to this is it feels super sturdy especially compared to these pyraminx and skewb which feel quite flimsy i have no doubt that even if it were scrambled like this it would withstand well being on a keychain of course this is based off the chi gear cube which looks just like this exactly a bigger version of this one you may also be familiar with the methods gear cube this is the original but it turns out that these are actually slightly different puzzles as you can see the orientation of the teeth on the edge pieces are a little bit different and actually the number of teeth on the corner pieces is different which makes things a little bit different basically the one major unique thing about this version is that you can get a special little parody case where a bunch of edge pieces are flipped that you couldn't get on the original so they have actually innovated a little bit with their gear cube anyway let's go ahead and solve this little one and see what it's like so first let's match up some corner pieces so maybe this white and green one with this other white and green one and then get the other white ones and there we go now we have all the corner pieces and now we just sort of have to mess around with things for a bit to figure out the edges so there we go let's get that white one in there white one there there we go now everything is in the right spot and we just have to turn a bunch of sides a bunch of times in order to get the edge pieces aligned like that okay those ones are backwards that's fine and then like that those ones are also backwards so this set is correct these other two sets are flipped so this is a little parody i was talking about we just have to do a little move like this and that should solve it there we go so here is our solved gear cube that's a lot of fun i would probably get rid of the keychain i think it got in the way more than it helped but other than that i mean yeah it's a gear cube and a more convenient form factor if you don't already have a gear cube well then you should get one i guess i'd recommend the normal sized one first but if you already have one of these and you like it then go ahead and get the smaller one too i think it's a really fun novelty to have both and by the way the turning on this one isn't quite as good as a bigger one but that's kind of hard to beat because the turning on this one is amazing also just like the bigger one it has these nice built-in tiles that kind of look like stickers but are actually a lot nicer and more durable anyway let's finally move on to the fourth and final puzzle this is called the qiyi super ivy cube again it says speedcube but also more than a professional speedcube and let's get the box open a little instruction booklet as well as the puzzle itself again i don't think we'll be needing this although if you open them all the way up i guess they are pretty helpful and they do have english on the other side so that's kind of nice anyway just taking a glance around the outside it has a very unique look to it we have some much brighter shades than on most chi puzzles but also we have these built-in tiles with black outlines just like on the gear cubes i was talking about but the interesting thing is we only have them on these five inner pieces not on these outer sort of edge pieces these ones just look like pure stickerless pieces whereas these ones look like stickered pieces which makes for a very interesting hybrid sort of look because there's no black lines along the edges like you'd get on any normal stickered cube anyway this is based off a puzzle called the ivy cube also made by qiyi you can see the resemblance it's just as if you had basically doubled the possible turns on an iv cube so you take this shape and sort of double it on the other axis and that means in addition to turning like this it can also turn on this other axis like this so let's try it out we could just turn like half of the corners and that would basically turn it into an iv cube like this or we could start turning the other corners and that just makes everything a little bit more complicated and i can already say out of all the new puzzles i've tried in this video this one definitely turns the best chi is definitely doing better things than shengshou when it comes to turning not only do we have actual corner cutting and just a general smooth and fluid and fast feeling to the turns but we also have a nice clicking mechanism it feels like ball bearings but yeah every time you turn aside it snaps nicely into place and gives you a great sense of when you have finished each turn another fun comparison to make is to the skewb the classic corner turning cube as you can see the center pieces on these two puzzles are obviously going to act the same as you turn the different sides but this one also has edges on it that of course aren't present on this cube and it's almost as if these corners have sort of been split up into three different pieces so that only two out of the three parts of the corners move with each turn essentially the difference is that there's multiple layers whereas on a skewb there's only one layer on each axis okay maybe it's not as much like a cube as i thought anyway the knowledgeable among you probably recognized this at first sight as a rex cube it's actually a design that's been around for quite a long time i guess it's called that because it's kind of like a deeper cut version of the dino cube with kind of these overlapping cuts with more pieces on the inside now this is the first puzzle in this video that i don't immediately notice all because i've never owned a rex cube so i guess i better give it a try looks like we have a bunch of orange pieces here can we maybe get one more orange piece kind of like that and the last one like that okay now how do we get these edge pieces i guess maybe we have to kind of pair them with these pieces before we move them in so i think we need the yellow one here okay i think i'm figuring this out maybe this will be correct there we go those two are together and now those ones are correct uh i think i messed up one in the process but i think we've made progress overall now i have to get these last two which will probably be pretty tricky okay so i'm sort of starting to be able to wrap my mind around moving these pieces around so i want to get this piece up to here so i need to move it into this position like this that way i can move this out of the way like that and then move this into position and then move those back now i just have to figure out this last edge piece okay now i got all the edge pieces in but i can't figure out how to also get this piece in my thought is what if i maybe move this out of the way like an iv cube and then maybe i can attach the orange piece in from here oh uh here we go orange pieces attached and now we can move it back in and there we go i feel like i'm totally overthinking this what if we try a different strategy and maybe just try and solve all the edges first okay that was easy that was just like a dino cube there we go now we can finish up the last remaining uh center it's just like a skewb so we want to do this and then just a couple of sledge hammers like this okay so it turns out that messes up the edges so i guess i'm gonna have to play around a little bit until i figure something out oh not sure how i did that but that worked okay now i got everything except these little inner pieces now what i have to figure out is how to just move the inner pieces individually which sounds like a pain and honestly i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to figure that out by the end of the video unless i cheat just kidding let's end the video anyway that concludes this miscellaneous little unboxing if you like pyraminx's then well here are two good options for you i think this one is probably my favorite just because of the novelty of sticking your fingers through it and stuff it's also the easiest of all these puzzles at least if you already know how to solve a pyraminx the gear cube is also pretty easy this one's a little bit more challenging than all of those and obviously this one is the most challenging unless i'm just really stupid i definitely enjoyed the mere cube and the gear cube too but i think my personal favorite of this video is this one just because it is pretty difficult and a lot of fun even just getting this far i really enjoyed it and i hope to learn how to solve it soon it also is definitely the best turning cube in this video also i guess i forgot to mention the two pyraminxes are each nine dollars the mini gear cube is just six dollars and the chi super ivy cube is 14. make sure and check out the links in the description to where you can get each one at the cubicle.com and once again you can get five percent off anything from their store with discount code z3 cubing anyway yeah i thought this was a fun little unboxing and i hope you guys enjoyed too let me know what you think and i'll see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: Z3Cubing

Views: 182,056

Keywords: rubiks cube, rubiks, cube, cubing, cubes, puzzle, puzzle cube, magic puzzle, magic cube

Id: 9HJfBTe1cog

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021