Variations
There are different variations of Rubik's Cubes with up to seventeen layers: the 2×2×2 (Pocket/Mini Cube), the standard 3×3×3 cube, the 4×4×4 (Rubik's Revenge/Master Cube), and the 5×5×5 (Professor's Cube), the 6×6×6 (V-Cube 6), and 7×7×7 (V-Cube 7). The 17^3 "Over The Top" cube (available late 2011) is currently the largest (and most expensive, costing more than a thousand dollars) available. Due to additional complexities inherent in manufacturing even-number-layered cubes, all cubes 9^3 or larger (as of 2012) have an odd number of layers.
Non-licensed physical cubes as large as 11^3 based on the V-Cube are commercially available to the mass-market circa 2011 in China; these represent about the limit of practicality for the purpose of "speed-solving" competitively (as the cubes become increasingly ungainly and solve-times increase exponentially). These cubes are illegal (even in China) due to the fact that they violate Panagiotis Verdes' patents; however some countries do not enforce patent law strictly, leading to their general availability. In addition, Chinese companies have produced 3x3x3 cubes with variations on the original mechanism that, while legally controversial, are generally considered to be superior for competitive speedcubing.
Another electronic variation of the 3×3×3 Cube is the Rubik's TouchCube. Sliding a finger across its faces causes its patterns of coloured lights to rotate the same way they would on a mechanical cube. The TouchCube was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in New York on February 15, 2009.
The Cube has inspired an entire category of similar puzzles, commonly referred to as twisty puzzles, which includes the cubes of different sizes mentioned above as well as various other geometric shapes. Some such shapes include the tetrahedron (Pyraminx), the octahedron (Skewb Diamond), the dodecahedron (Megaminx), the icosahedron (Dogic). There are also puzzles that change shape such as Rubik's Snake and the Square One.
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Famous quotes containing the word variations:
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)