The Skewb Diamond is an

octahedron In geometry, an octahedron (plural: octahedra, octahedrons) is a polyhedron with eight faces. The term is most commonly used to refer to the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at ea ...

-shaped

combination puzzle A combination puzzle, also known as a sequential move puzzle, is a puzzle which consists of a set of pieces which can be manipulated into different combinations by a group of operations. Many such puzzles are mechanical puzzles of polyhedral s ...

similar to the

Rubik's Cube The Rubik's Cube is a Three-dimensional space, 3-D combination puzzle originally invented in 1974 by Hungarians, Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik t ...

. It has 14 movable pieces which can be rearranged in a total of 138,240 possible combinations. This puzzle is the

dual polyhedron In geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. ...

of the

Skewb The Skewb () is a combination puzzle and a mechanical puzzle in the style of the Rubik's Cube. It was invented by Tony Durham and marketed by Uwe Mèffert. Although it is cubical in shape, it differs from Rubik's construction in that its axes o ...

. It was invented by

Uwe Meffert Uwe or UWE may refer to * Uwe (given name) * University of the West of England, Bristol * UML-based web engineering * University Würzburg's Experimental miniaturized satellites for space research UWE-1 and UWE-2 * Uwe - Wreck in Blankenese ...

, a German puzzle inventor and designer.

Description

The Skewb Diamond has 6 octahedral corner pieces and 8 triangular face centers. All pieces can move relative to each other. It is a ''deep-cut'' puzzle; its planes of rotation bisect it. It is very closely related to the

, and shares the same piece count and mechanism. However, the triangular "corners" present on the Skewb have no visible orientation on the Skewb Diamond, and the square "centers" gain a visible orientation on the Skewb Diamond. In other words, the corners on the Skewb are equivalent to the centers on the Skewb diamond. Combining pieces from the two can either give you an unscrambleable

cuboctahedron A cuboctahedron is a polyhedron with 8 triangular faces and 6 square faces. A cuboctahedron has 12 identical vertices, with 2 triangles and 2 squares meeting at each, and 24 identical edges, each separating a triangle from a square. As such, it ...

or a

compound of cube and octahedron The compound of cube and octahedron is a polyhedron which can be seen as either a polyhedral stellation or a compound. Construction The 14 Cartesian coordinates of the vertices of the compound are. : 6: (±2, 0, 0), ( 0, ±2, 0), ( 0, 0, ±2) : ...

with visible orientation on all pieces.

Number of combinations

The purpose of the puzzle is to scramble its colors, and then restore it to its original solved state. The puzzle has 6 corner pieces and 8 face centers. The positions of four of the face centers is completely determined by the positions of the other 4 face centers, and only even permutations of such positions are possible, so the number of arrangements of face centers is only 4!/2. Each face center has only a single orientation. Only even permutations of the corner pieces are possible, so the number of possible arrangements of corner pieces is 6!/2. Each corner has two possible orientations (it is not possible to change their orientation by 90° without disassembling the puzzle), but the orientation of the last corner is determined by the other 5. Hence, the number of possible corner orientations is 2⁵. Hence, the number of possible combinations is: :

\frac = 138,240.

External links

Jaap's Skewb Diamond page
{{toy-stub Combination puzzles Mechanical puzzles

Description

Number of combinations

See also

External links