# X cube



## cmhardw (Dec 25, 2015)

I got an X cube for Christmas this year (my wife's family does most of their presents on Christmas Eve) and it is amazing! It took me a good hour or so to solve it the first time. It is sort of a modded 3x3 by adding a 3x3x1 onto each of the F, B, L, and R faces of a normal cube. The puzzle turns in every way that you could imagine that shape to be able to turn, including allowing shape shifting.

There are multiple types of parity errors, and the shape shifting takes some getting used to. I definitely can say that this is one of my more enjoyable puzzles!

Has anyone else tried it? I searched the forum before making this topic and did not see any thread by the name X cube. If the puzzle goes by a different name, too, I am unaware of that.


----------



## Jaysammey777 (Dec 25, 2015)

If I'm not mistaken, I have either tried this cube or one similar. Mine is with all sides elevated, it doesn't shape shift but still fun. It seems like a similar puzzle. I kinda brushed it off very quickly as i could just solve it as a super 5x5 centers. But Maybe this puzzle, although being similar has diffrent challenge that I'm unaware of.


----------



## Cale S (Dec 25, 2015)

I have two of these, one of which is 3D printed

It's pretty fun to solve and I've tried doing it BLD minus the shapeshifting twice, although I haven't gotten a success


----------



## Abo (Dec 25, 2015)

I'm at the airport right now, waiting to board a flight and go see my dad for xmas, and saw a person with one of these, woulda brought it up, but they seemed to be talking to the person next to them.


----------



## Berd (Dec 25, 2015)

Jaysammey777 said:


> If I'm not mistaken, I have either tried this cube or one similar. Mine is with all sides elevated, it doesn't shape shift but still fun. It seems like a similar puzzle. I kinda brushed it off very quickly as i could just solve it as a super 5x5 centers. But Maybe this puzzle, although being similar has diffrent challenge that I'm unaware of.


I think that's the Calvins Cross Cube.


----------



## SenorJuan (Dec 25, 2015)

This is the X-Cube you have, I presume, Chris? Did your "mind melt", or are you made of sterner stuff?
https://www.vat19.com/item/x-cube-puzzle-toy


----------



## obelisk477 (Dec 25, 2015)

Got one last Christmas, its pretty fun! I also couldn't find much online about it


----------



## JustinTimeCuber (Dec 25, 2015)

lolwut I got one of these for christmas too xD
I figured out how to solve most of it, then got stuck on parity. I fixed the parity, but it involved doing an F perm on one of the "flat" sides (white/yellow on mine) and then trying to resolve it from there. I think this is an interesting puzzle.


----------



## Cale S (Dec 25, 2015)

JustinTimeCuber said:


> lolwut I got one of these for christmas too xD
> I figured out how to solve most of it, then got stuck on parity. I fixed the parity, but it involved doing an F perm on one of the "flat" sides (white/yellow on mine) and then trying to resolve it from there. I think this is an interesting puzzle.



You can fix parity by doing (R U2)5 with the non-extended sides on L/R


----------



## cmhardw (Dec 25, 2015)

SenorJuan said:


> This is the X-Cube you have, I presume, Chris? Did your "mind melt", or are you made of sterner stuff?
> https://www.vat19.com/item/x-cube-puzzle-toy



It definitely melted my mind, especially once I realized that it changes shape


----------



## JustinTimeCuber (Dec 25, 2015)

Cale S said:


> You can fix parity by doing (R U2)5 with the non-extended sides on L/R



lol the fact that I didn't figure this out embarrasses me... honestly Justin that is so simple xD


----------



## cmhardw (Dec 29, 2015)

I'm starting to understand this puzzle better the more I play around with it. For the permutation parity at the end (corner permutation parity of corners does not match that of edges on the extended 3x3x1s) I have been using (outer turns only for R and whole X face for U):
R U R U R U R U' R' U' R' U' R'

After getting the X shape, I then get opposite centers on the X faces, then do F2L, and by that point I can tell whether corner permutation parity matches edge permutation parity. If not I do the alg, and it's not too destructive since I have only solved F2L by the time I execute the alg. I would not recommend this approach for speedsolving.


----------



## unsolved (Dec 29, 2015)

Yeah some 'twisted' family member got me one too.







My nephew opened it up and started playing with it before I had a good look at it. I thought he broke it when I saw the mess above! I didn't realize the thing could change shape.

So I guess first you restore the shape and then solve the cube?


----------



## cmhardw (Dec 29, 2015)

unsolved said:


> Yeah some 'twisted' family member got me one too.
> 
> My nephew opened it up and started playing with it before I had a good look at it. I thought he broke it when I saw the mess above! I didn't realize the thing could change shape.
> 
> So I guess first you restore the shape and then solve the cube?



Yay! I think you will enjoy it, it is quite a fun puzzle. Yes, start with solving the shape first, then the colors.

-------------------------------------------------

As for parity, I'm liking this more and more (Start with U and D as the X faces):
(R r)2 U2 (R r)2 U2 (R r)2 U2 F B U D z' M2 U M2 U2 M2 U M2 z U' D' F' B'

After the first z', turn only the outer most layer for each U turn.


----------



## unsolved (Dec 29, 2015)

So is there a repetitive shape restoring sequence? I notice it pretty easy to "half restore" the x-shape by just noting what can't possibly belong to the long-side of the x and "dropping them off" with two moves that are perpendicular to one another.


----------



## cmhardw (Dec 29, 2015)

unsolved said:


> So is there a repetitive shape restoring sequence? I notice it pretty easy to "half restore" the x-shape by just noting what can't possibly belong to the long-side of the x and "dropping them off" with two moves that are perpendicular to one another.



There is an innermost 3x3x3 at the center of the X shape. Getting the puzzle back to the correct shape is the same as on a 3x3 separating the E layer edges to the E layer, then reducing U and D layer orientations to the [U,D,R2,L2,F2,B2] group. Do all this for the inner 3x3 and ignore the outer 3x3x1 block pieces until you get the X shape.


----------



## unsolved (Dec 29, 2015)

Thanks! I'll give it a shot. I don't think I'll be able to write a program for this!


----------



## GTemples27 (Jan 6, 2016)

Pretty cool! I've just about figured mine out as well; how do you solve yours? I've found a lot of tutorials that say to solve a 3x3x5, but I do a LBL method (with quite a bit of PLL and 3OP[yes, I realize you could do my way with OLL, but I like the 3OP algs better since I learned them first and i'm not speedsolving this... yet]!!). I just need to get one last step, then I'll be solid! If you do it the same way, or a different way actually, I'd like to see a step-by-step method of what you do, if you don't mind!


----------



## cmhardw (Jan 6, 2016)

GTemples27 said:


> Pretty cool! I've just about figured mine out as well; how do you solve yours? I've found a lot of tutorials that say to solve a 3x3x5, but I do a LBL method (with quite a bit of PLL and 3OP[yes, I realize you could do my way with OLL, but I like the 3OP algs better since I learned them first and i'm not speedsolving this... yet]!!). I just need to get one last step, then I'll be solid! If you do it the same way, or a different way actually, I'd like to see a step-by-step method of what you do, if you don't mind!



Nice, I think we do something similar. I do layer by layer also. I solve the white and yellow centers, then I do F2L style for the two lowest X layers. I permute U layer edges, use shape changing corner cycles to solve as many corners as I can easily, then use commutators to solve the remaining corners. Because of the commutators at the end I don't recommend my method for speed, but the overall solution is very intuitive.


----------



## GTemples27 (Jan 18, 2016)

cmhardw said:


> I permute U layer edges, use shape changing corner cycles to solve as many corners as I can easily, then use commutators to solve the remaining corners.



...Wait a minute... do you OLL at all before you permute the U edges? If not, then you use commutators for the yellow layer?

How quickly can you solve yours? I've yet to time myself, since I can't finish it (but I should now that your idea of commutators is in my mind!), but I'm guessing I'd solve it in ~3-4 minutes, tops. 


Another question: When restoring shape, do you solve the E layer first, then work with U and D? I solve the E layer, then use some other algorithms to get 2-4 blocks fixed each time.


----------



## cmhardw (Jan 27, 2016)

GTemples27 said:


> ...Wait a minute... do you OLL at all before you permute the U edges? If not, then you use commutators for the yellow layer?



Not really, I mainly focus on using the shape changing corner cycles to place as many of the oriented corners as I can after permuting edges.



GTemples27 said:


> How quickly can you solve yours? I've yet to time myself, since I can't finish it (but I should now that your idea of commutators is in my mind!), but I'm guessing I'd solve it in ~3-4 minutes, tops.



I'm not terribly fast, maybe 2-4 minutes? I'll try a solve tonight and see how it goes.




GTemples27 said:


> Another question: When restoring shape, do you solve the E layer first, then work with U and D? I solve the E layer, then use some other algorithms to get 2-4 blocks fixed each time.



Yeah I think we use pretty much the same strategy. I also solve the E layer then use 3x3 orientation algs to orient the other pieces to get X-shape.


----------



## GTemples27 (Jan 30, 2016)

Huh, cool.


----------



## unsolved (Mar 2, 2016)

So how do we list all of the shape-restoring algs?? The list of starting arrangements seems close to infinity.


----------

