Dino Cube Tutorial

Behold, the Dino Cube, at front and center, supported by its fellow "Skewb-adjacent" puzzles, the Ivy Cube (left) and the Redi Cube. More on them later.

It isn't just a unique variant of the Rubik's Cube; it's the start of a whole new branch of 3-D scrambling puzzles, which include (among others) a Curvy Dino Cube (with zig-zag cuts between corners and edge pieces), a 4x4 Curvy Dino cube (with smooth curves), a Clover Dino Cube, a Dino Skewb, which is easily confused with the Master Skewb and the 3x3x3 Dino Cube, the Raptured Dino Cube and the Rex Cube. And I'm not even going into the Ivy Cube, the Redi Cube and variants thereof; I'm saving them for future tutorials. Here are pictures of those variants if you're interested:

But enough about that. The Dino Cube is a clever variant of the Rubik's Cube, or perhaps closer to the 2x2x2 Mini Cube, in which each of the cube's sides is divided into four edge pieces – no centers or corners. And these edges turn together, in groups of three, around the cube's vertices, meaning that each twist moves approximately one-fourth of the cube. It's a really clever shape whose unusual method of turning may take you a minute to wrap your head around it. I mean, think about it; it has four axes of rotation (each running through two vertices diagonally opposite each other) and, every way you turn it, three layers. Observe:

Neither of the two puzzle scramblers I have bookmarked has a scramble generator for the Dino Cube. However, if you don't mind the fact that the results won't look quite the same, you could use the Redi Cube scrambler at Cubing-dot-net. Here's a sample scramble pattern and the result when executed, to the best of my ability, on a Dino Cube. The main difference is that the Dino Cube has none of the corner pieces on the Redi Cube.

To get there, however, it behooves you to learn what that scrambling notation means. It wasn't obvious to me at first, and for a while I had to look at every single step to make sure I was pivoting around the right vertex at each twist. Then I learned to apply the Skewb principle that the notation makes more sense when you look at the cube edge-on (starting with white up, green to the left of front and red to the right of front), while bearing in mind that the graphics on the scramble generator assume green starts out facing front. So here are examples of the clockwise moves (add a "prime" sign for counterclockwise moves). Here's the vertex to pivot around for an F (as in "front") move:

Directly below it is the center point of the D (as in "down") move:

Down here at the bottom, to the right of D, is the focal vertex of the R move:

Also at the bottom, to the left of D, is the L vertex:

On the top layer, above L and to the left of F, is what the scramble generator calls UL ("up-left"):

Directly across the top from it, as you can now probably guess, is UR ("up-right"):

The B (as in "back") vertex is directly behind the D vertex on the back corner of the bottom layer:

And U (as in "up") is here at the top, directly behind F:

A bit counterintuitive, innit. F above D; U above B. And after you went to the trouble of learning "BR" and "BL" for the Kilominx, here they go throwing in "UR" and "UL." But here again, to refresh your memory, is that completed scramble pattern, adapted from the Redi Cube scrambler.

Of course, you can save yourself the trouble of learning all this notation by just shuffling the puzzle to the best of your ability without a scramble generator. I ordinarily don't go for this kind of thing, because I recognize how difficult it is for people to do randomness, but in cases like this puzzle, I sometimes do take the easy way out and just try to make a unique series of turns until all sides of the cube seem sufficiently broken up. And if you regularly do that, you can forget about all this notation because my approach to this puzzle doesn't use it. STEP 1: Start by solving the white side. It helps to train your brain to think in terms of three-piece vertices – putting them together and dialing them into place. Like, for example, this white-red-green corner, made of three adjacent edge pieces.

Now, recall the BOGR mnemonic for the order of the side colors, as you rotate the cube in ascending order with white at the left. A unique quirk of this puzzle is that you can actually solve it with the colors going in the opposite direction; something I actually did by accident, once. That's fixable, though, in like eight to 12 moves. Either way, though, this yellow-orange edge will eventually need to go on the side opposite to the red-white edge.

That just leaves this gap, with the orange-yellow edge, where the white-blue edge belongs:

Here I've maneuvered the white-blue edge into the slot directly above that orange-yellow edge. Then I dial orange-yellow up and to the right; replace it by dialing white-blue down and to the right; and twist the now completed red-white-blue edge into place.

Most of your solve is going to involve doing pretty much exactly this type of swap, more or less intuitively. When in doubt how to pull it off, slow down and give it a little thought before you rush into a series of moves. Or don't. Because maybe that's how you learn – by experimentation.

STEP 2. Now work on the yellow layer. Conceptually, at least, white will face "down" and yellow "up" for this part of the puzzle – though, of course, you can turn it any way you need to, as one move leads to another. So here (you can see from the bottom edges) are the green, orange and yellow sides of the cube. You could twist the top front vertex to put the yellow-green and green-orange edges exactly where they belong.

But remember, you want to have the whole, three-piece corner ready to dial into place, and that still leaves one piece (yellow-red) out of whack. Here it is, on the other side of the cube.

So, I dialed that front-right corner around to bring that yellow-orange edge in between yellow-green and orange green ...

... and then I rotated that whole, three-piece corner to solve the rest of the puzzle.

STEP 2.5: It doesn't always come out this easily. Often, you find yourself with pieces that need to be swapped across the cube from each other, requiring some relatively complex maneuvers. Usually, you can figure these out intuitively, just using the principles I've laid out above. However, a little experimentation with a solved Dino Cube has taught me that you can also use variations of the "down-down-up-up" gambit to cycle three pieces in various ways. Here's what happens when you "down-down-up-up" a solved cube, alternately twisting around the up-front-right and up-front-left vertices:

Of course, since each edge has three pieces, if you repeat the same pattern, you'll cycle those same three pieces a second time, before returning to the initial state on the third cycle. Or, you can reverse the cycle by alternating from left to right.

Beginning from the same starting state (yellow up, red at front), you get these results when you do "down-down-up-up" from right to left on the two bottom front edges:

Again, if you repeat the same pattern, you put the same three edges through another cycle, before arriving back at the start on the third cycle. Or, again, you can reverse the cycle by starting on the left.

Finally (for now; experiment further on your own), here's what happens when you do a "down-down-up-up" cycle from the top-front-right to the bottom-front-right. The same palaver applies regarding repeating the cycle or reversing it.

So, consider these patterns, or ones like them, if you spot these cycles toward the end of a solve and you want a quick, no-brainer solution to finish the puzzle.

This is one of the first Rubik's Cube-based puzzles that I picked up and solved without first consulting a solution guide or tutorial. I'd like to say a little deep thought led me to figure out the solution, but honestly, I started playing with it and before I really understood what I was doing, I accidentally solved it. That still happens from time to time; I think I'm three moves away from a solution and then, surprise! One move later it's solved. You can make the puzzle last a little longer by blundering ignorantly from one move to the next, but you do so at the risk of stumbling on a solution while you're still trying to learn how the moves work. I'm not saying it's impossible to struggle with this puzzle longer than you expect it to go unsolved; but it's definitely more satisfying to solve it when you really mean it. And it also has the attraction of moving in a unique way, feeling different in the hands from any other puzzle, and being put together in a fascinating manner. Truly a marvelous invention, for such a deceptively simple toy!