Megaminx

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The Megaminx 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 of the
Rubik's cube.

Contents
1 History
2 Description The 6-color Megaminx in
3 Solutions solved state
4 Number of combinations
5 Records
6 Variations
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

History
The Megaminx, or Magic Dodecahedron, was invented by several people
simultaneously and produced by several different manufacturers with slightly
The 12-color Megaminx, in a
different designs. Uwe Mèffert eventually bought the rights to some of the star-pattern arrangement
patents and continues to sell it in his puzzle shop under the Megaminx
moniker. [1] It is also known by the name Hungarian Supernova, invented by
Dr. Cristoph Bandelow.[2] His version came out first, shortly followed by Meffert's Megaminx. The
proportions of the two puzzles are slightly different.

Description
The Megaminx is made in the shape of a dodecahedron, and has 12 face center pieces, 20 corner pieces, and
30 edge pieces. The face centers each have a single color, which identifies the color of that face in the solved
state. The edge pieces have two colors, and the corner pieces have three colors. Each face contains a center
piece, 5 corner pieces and 5 edge pieces. The corner and edge pieces are shared with adjacent faces. The face
centers can only rotate in place, but the other pieces can be permuted by twisting the face layer around the face
center.

There are two main versions of the Megaminx: the 6-color version in which opposite faces have the same
color, and the 12-color version in which all faces have a different color.

The purpose of the puzzle is to scramble the colors, and then restore it to its original state of having one color
per face.
per face.

Solutions
Despite its daunting appearance and greater number of possible positions, the Megaminx is not much more
difficult than the standard 3x3x3 Rubik's cube. This is because it is not a deep-cut puzzle; it only has
pentagonal face layers which are similar in structure to the square face layers of the cube. There are no pieces
that do not have a counterpart on the cube. Many of the techniques employed in the solution of the Rubik's
cube can also be adapted for the Megaminx, except those that involve turning the center slice of the cube,
since the Megaminx has no equivalent slice.

The 6-color Megaminx comes with an additional challenge which is not immediately obvious. Its edge pieces
come in visually-identical pairs, because of the duplicated colors of opposite faces. However, although
visually indistinguishable, they are nevertheless mathematically bound in a parity relationship. In any legal
position (reachable from the solved state without disassembling the puzzle), there is always an even number of
swapped pairs of edges. However, since swaps may be between visually indistinct edges, one may find that
having solved almost the entire puzzle, one is left with a pair of swapped (distinct) edges that seems to defy all
attempts to exchange them. The solution is to swap a single pair of 'identical' edges to reverse the parity, and
then restore the rest of the puzzle.

This property is absent in the 12-color Megaminx, because all its edges are visually distinct, and it would be
immediately obvious that there is another pair of swapped edges besides the pair one is working with.

Number of combinations
Both versions of the puzzle have 20 corners and 30 edges. In both cases, only even permutations are possible,
regardless of the position of the other set of pieces. Thus, while it is possible to have two corners and two
edges swapped on a Rubik's Cube, this is impossible on the Megaminx. There are 20!/2 ways to arrange the
corners and 319 ways to orient them, since the orientation of the last corner depends on that of the preceding
ones. There are 30!/2 ways to arrange the edges and 229 ways to flip them.

The full number is 100 669 616 553 523 347 122 516 032 313 645 505 168 688 116 411 019 768 627 200 000
000 000 (roughly 101 unvigintillion on the short scale or 101 undecillion on the long scale).

The corners are distinguishable on a six-color Megaminx because two corners with the same three colors will
be mirror images of each other. There are 15 pairs of identical edges. It would not be possible to swap all 15
pairs, since this would be an odd permutation of the edges, so a reducing factor of 214 is applied to the
preceding figure.

The full number is 6 144 385 775 971 883 979 645 753 925 393 402 415 081 061 792 664 780 800 000 000 000
(roughly 6.1 vigintillion on the short scale or 6.1 decilliard on the long scale).
Records
The current world record for a single solve of the Megaminx stands at 57.94 seconds, set by Bálint Bodor at
the World Rubik's Cube Championship 2009. Erik Akkersdijk currently holds the record for an average over 3
attempts at 1 minute and 4.34 seconds, set at the Danish Open 2009.[3]

Variations
More complex variations of the Megaminx have been made, including the
Gigaminx, Teraminx and Petaminx. [4][5] These are 5-, 7-, and 9-layer
versions of the Megaminx. A variant with only the corners (equivalent to the
Impossiball) has also been made, called the Kilominx. As of August 2009,
only Gigaminx has entered mass production.

Another variant is the Holey Megaminx, which has no center pieces, like the
Void Cube. It is being produced by Mèffert as of July 2009.

See also Cube4U's Gigaminx, with

black body
Impossiball
Alexander's Star
Pyraminx Crystal
Rubik's Cube
Pyraminx
Skewb Diamond
Dogic
Combination puzzles
Magic 120-cell

References
Holey Megaminx, with black
1. ^ Jaap's puzzle page, Megaminx
body
(http://www.geocities.com/jaapsch/puzzles/megaminx.htm)
2. ^ twistypuzzles.com, Hungarian Supernova (http://www.twistypuzzles.com/cgi-
bin/puzzle.cgi?pid=651)
3. ^ World Cube Association Official Results - Megaminx (http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/e.php?i=minx)
4. ^ Gigaminx and Teraminx (http://www.chaosottolo.it/se-pensate-che-il-cubo-di-rubik-sia-difficile-non-avete-ancora-
visto-megaminx-gigaminx-teraminx-e-petaminx.html) (Italian)
5. ^ Video of Petaminx (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLyFqm4D9tI)

External links
Meffert's puzzle shop (http://www.mefferts.com/)
Jaap's Megaminx page (http://www.jaapsch.net/puzzles/megaminx.htm) — contains solutions and other
information
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaminx"
Categories: Rubik's Cube | Combination puzzles | Mechanical puzzles | Puzzles

This page was last modified on 18 October 2009 at 18:25.

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