11-Cube Tutorial and 8-9-10 Update

I recently received the biggest extension of the original Rubik's Cube that I intend to collect, bringing my range of face-turning scrambling cubes to a final total of 10. Here they are, ranged from the 2-cube to the 11-cube.

My reasons for stopping with the 11-cube are reasonably simple. For one, it's the biggest cube sanctioned for competition, and consequently, it's the largest cube for which a smartphone-friendly puzzle scrambler is freely available. We're back to the Ruwix scrambler, where I started, because the admittedly more user-friendly scramble generator at Cubing-dot-net only provides patterns for up to the 7-cube. And I'm now realizing that in my tutorial for the 8-, 9- and 10-cubes, I may have forgotten to mention this.

So here's what that Ruwix scrambler looks like again, with the pull-down menu showing what puzzles it accommodates. It's not a bad selection, really.

And it does, indeed, generate scramble patterns for the 8-cube ...

And the 9-cube ...

The 10-cube ...

And, finally, the 11-cube (should you select "11x11x11" from the pull-down menu) ...

And now, to the nitty-gritty. What's new on the 11x11x11 that you won't have encountered on the way up to it from, say, the 5x5x5 cube?

Answer: Nothing. It's just more of the same puzzle. More effort to turn the layers, especially if it's a stiff puzzle like mine is, even after being oiled. Bigger and heavier to hold in the hands. A longer reach for your fingers. More opportunities for layers to lock up if they're not perfectly aligned. More steps to complete each 9x9 center, each 1x9 edge. More opportunities to make creative use of last-two-centers and last-two-edges procedures (one or even two times definitely won't be enough). More variations on the edge, OLL and PLL parity algorithms, due to different combinations of layers being involved. But no new parity errors. No new wrinkles at all. Its sides have fixed centers like the 5-, 7- and 9-cubes and otherwise, it's the same puzzle but you'll be working at it longer. Which sometimes is just what I want. You?

According to an article on the Chinese version of Wikipedia, the "11th-order magic cube" has eight corner pieces, 108 edge pieces, 480 center pieces that can move and six fixed centers, making possible 2.368x10⁵⁶⁵ distinct cube states. I've even seen that full number printed out in a footnote; it goes on for nine lines of text that are wide enough for up to 23 groups of three digits. The English-language Wiki credits Greek inventor Panagiotis Verdes with creating the original design that made puzzles up to the 11x11x11 possible, patented in 2004 and in mass production since 2008. Apparently it takes even the fastest cubers about an hour and a half to solve it, which makes me feel not so bad about the amount of time it takes me. Let's just say it's a good way to spend an evening, especially if you have something making noise in the background like TV, music or YouTube.

Will I scramble mine for you and shoot pictures of the process? No. Why not? Because you wouldn't see anything I haven't shown you in my lower-level tutorials, except the muchness and moreness of it. And I'd be at it for hours, probably messing up because stopping for photography makes me lose my place. Should you buy the 11-cube and learn to solve it? Definitely ... if. If you've reached the stage (as I have) where you feel your "comfort cube" lies somewhere in the 6-, 7- or 8-cube range and you anticipate sitting through some movies (like, on the Hallmark Channel) that you can afford to watch out of the corner of your eye. Oh, are we at the 15-minutes-before-the-end misunderstanding already? Where did the time go? I've been working on just one puzzle this whole time and look! I'm all finished!