Erno Rubik, inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, has developed a new puzzle that is coming soon to a store near you. The puzzle is called Rubik’s 360. There aren’t a whole lot of details about the puzzle, but from pictures it appears to be a clear plastic ball with smaller colored balls inside. The goal is to get each ball into the appropriately colored ring on the surface of the larger ball.
Maarten Steurbaut has a page dedicated to his lego constructions, some of which are puzzle reconstructions using legos. In addition to functioning Rubik’s cubes, Maarten has also created a number of 3D jigsaw puzzles. He uses standard lego bricks and plates in combination so that all of the puzzle surfaces are smooth. It’s a method he calls SNOT (Studs Not On Top.) His site is worth a look.
On CrunchGear, I found a story about a new interface design for mp3 players based on the Rubik’s Cube. The interface, designed by Hee Yong of Yanko design, involves rotating different layers of the cube to perform different mp3 functions. The story also makes a big deal about the fact that you have to solve the puzzle to turn the player off. But, as is noted in the comments, it seems that only the horizontal layers rotate, so this is likely not a difficult task.
It’s hard to see this design having much more than novelty appeal, and it will likely never see production. Still, it’s a fun idea.
Through the minimalist weblog on thinkythings.org: Rubik’s Sudoku now available from the UK Amazon site. After reading the product description, I don’t think that there will be any new or interesting twists in the Rubik’s version of Sudoku. The only advantage they’re plugging is different colors for each of the different digits. There doesn’t seem to be anything else that you can’t do just as easily with pencil and paper.
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