Master Pyraminx Tutorial

In my Pyraminx tutorial, I described the three-layer tetrahedron puzzle as a sort of warm-up to a round of practice with Rubik's Cube-type 3D scrambles. With the Master Pyraminx, a four-layer tetrahedron, the game is really on, with an interesting and diverting puzzle that will definitely take more than one second and change to solve. Here it is, in the foreground:

According to Ruwix, the Master Pyraminx first came out in 2002 but was mainly a collector's item until a Chinese manufacturer, ShengShou, started mass producing them in 2016. Analogous to leveling up from the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube to the 4x4x4 Master Cube, the Master Pyraminx (according to Grubiks) has about 217 quadrillion possible configurations – although Grubiks also claims the original Pyraminx has 75 million possible combinations, which is far higher than the estimate I cribbed from Wikipedia for my Pyraminx tutorial. Since solving the Master P. isn't a sanctioned competition, there are no official records but, again pace Grubiks, the unofficial record for the fastest solve goes to Fedor Abaev of Russia, 18.01 seconds.

It is genuinely a bigger and more complex puzzle. Here's one way to slice it, from the tippy-tip corner (so trivial that my favorite scrambler doesn't even bother to include corner moves in its scrambling notation) down to a second, third and fourth layer.

Let the two pictures above soak in for a moment. There's something different about this four-layer tetrahedron. Not only does each side have three second-layer "centers" that travel with their adjacent corners on two-layer moves, but also a fourth center, right in the middle of the third layer, which travels with three-layer moves. In the Pyraminx tutorial, I inaccurately described the corner-adjacent centers as having a single color. Technically, they're attached as a single piece to the centers on two adjacent sides, making them three-colored pieces just like the corners; but this fourth, more central center really is a one-color piece, and in the solution described below, it ends up being the last piece of the puzzle to find its way home.

Meanwhile, each edge has three pieces you're going to need to slot into place with the right colors facing the right way. But all three edge pieces are not the same. The "middle edge" piece anchors its side in a way that means you'll need to solve it first, before handling the two "side edge" pieces. And because the two side-edge pieces need to approach their slots from different directions, it actually is possible to get them flipped around the wrong way, which really means they're on the wrong side of the center-edge. It's a case of "just because they're the same color doesn't mean they're interchangeable."

So, here's the scrambler for the Master Pyraminx on the puzzle scrambling website that I prefer. Haven't you bookmarked it yet?

It's got this over my second-favorite puzzle-scrambling website: There actually is a Master Pyraminx scrambler on it. (It's worth noting, though, that you have to go back to the Ruwix scrambler for the 8-, 9- 10- and 11-cubes because Cubing-dot-net only goes up to the 7-cube. So, keep this one bookmarked, too.) The drawback to Cubing-dot-net's Master Pyraminx scrambler is the notation, which absolutely drives me nuts. The capital letters stand for two-layer turns; three-layer turns are lowercase, as you can see if you tap on the individual steps in the scramble algorithm and look at the image of how each step should look. My brain persistently wants to flip this around, but the results are lousy. I almost have to mutter aloud what each step is. And what's going to make this tutorial difficult is that you'll need to move fluidly between two- and three-layer moves throughout your solve.

So, let's get this straight. By the notation of the scrambler pictured above, this is a u move. (Always start your scramble with green at front, yellow down).

This, then, is a u' ("you prime") move:

Here's an r move (oh, how I hate this notation), and just trust me but r' twists the same three layers in the opposite direction:

Here's an l move (that's a lowercase ell, mind you), and I trust you can suss out what an l' move is:

And finally, shooting down from above, here's a b move (and again, bear in mind there's also a b'):

But wait! There's more! Here's the capital U move, which is to say, a two-layer corner turn (and from here on, I'm not going to show examples of the "prime" moves, which go counterclockwise when viewed point-on).

An R move:

An L move:

And a B move:

I really, really hate this notation. I'd rather see the wide (3 layer) moves be capitalized and the not-so-wide (2 layer) moves done in lowercase, or maybe a "2L" vs. "3L" type of notation to distinguish between them. But it is what it is.

And now, before we get into steps to solve this thing, here's the scramble pattern provided above, in real life:

You might start to get the impression this is going to be a long tutorial. I won't lie to you. I shot over 100 pictures for this. So far so good. Let's get solving!

Step 1. Match up the corners on all four sides. You can do this with capital-letter or lowercase moves, your choice, so long as it ends up like this. Trust me, the blue and yellow sides are similarly matched up.

Step 2. Choose one side to face down (in this instance, I plumped for yellow). Then put the middle-edge pieces where they belong on the bottom layer. So, for example, find the red-yellow middle-edge at the front, between the red and green sides; there's a red-blue piece where it belongs, at the lower left. (I'm holding it at this angle so you can see both pieces.)

Twist that red-yellow middle-edge into position so the yellow side (i.e. the color that should face down) is at front over the slot where it belongs.

Then do the following variation on the general theme of "down, down, up, up." In this case, the moves are l r' l' r. Coming in from the right, that would be r' l r l'. But note that whichever way this "down, down, up, up" ditty plays out, the component moves alternate between left and right, starting on the side containing the piece in question. And for this step, all the moves are three-layer moves because it's that middle piece you're trying to slot into place.

Note that at the end of this pattern, everything is the same except those two pieces have been swapped, and the yellow-red middle-edge is properly placed between the two yellow-red corners.

Keep doing this until the bottom-layer middle-edges are correctly placed on all three sides. If you find a bottom-color middle edge on the wrong bottom edge, swap it with a dummy edge to get it out of there, then put it where it belongs. I'll spare you the photography I shot of doing this to the other two yellow middle-edges. When you've got all the bottom-layer middle-edges done, you can move on to ...

Step 3. Dial in the bottom-layer side-edges. So, this awkward camera angle is meant to show the red-yellow edge piece, toward the top of the edge at front, which will need to go where that red-green edge is at the bottom right.

Why this slot and not where the red-blue edge is? Well, because if you brought it in from the other direction, it would end up red-side-down. Clearly, it's going to be a three-layer move to get it into that bottom edge. So, that's the play you need to make. With the red side at front (go by the bottom corners) and yellow down, do that "down, down, up, up" maneuver – again, starting from the side the relevant piece is on and alternating between left and right; but this time, also alternating between 2- and 3-layer moves, always with the slot in question at the tip of the move. So, below, that would be l R' l' R:

Observe how, at the end of that pattern, the yellow-red edge to the right of center is now in place. Now here's an example of where you'll lead with a two-layer move from the left. We're trying to get the blue-yellow piece, below center on the front edge, into where the yellow-green edge is lurking at right.

The version of "down, down, up, up" in this instance translates to L r' L' r:

Again, it ends as desired, with the blue-yellow side-edge now correctly positioned and oriented at the left of center on the bottom front edge. Another variation comes in from the right, like the yellow-green side-edge toward the top of the front edge, which ought to be where the red-yellow edge is at the lower left:

Bear in mind, you might have to twist the top two or three layers a bit to get this piece into position to go where it needs to go. But once the move is set up, "down, down, up, up" will take the form of r' L r L':

Of course, there's also the possibility of a short-long-short-long maneuver from the right, which would be R' l R l', but I didn't take a picture of that. Let's just say we've made our way around the bottom edges and the bottom layer is done. Even the center-center is done, which doesn't always happen (though it did in my example solve); in fact, that's going to be a problem later.

But let's call this step a success and move on to Step 4: Permutating the middle-edges of the other three sides. This picture, looking down on the upper three sides, illustrates our predicament. The green-blue middle-edge, at top, is where it belongs between the blue-green corners. However, the red-blue middle-edge, at left, and the green-red one, at right, are swapped. What, oh, what shall we do?

With those two edges at right and left of front, do a down-down-up-up maneuver, alternating left and right, all three-layer moves. Here I started from the right, so it was an r' l r l' move.

Hang on, we're not finished yet. After these moves, as you can see above, we've broken the bottom layer, with a chunk out of the bottom swapped with a chunk out of the left side. So now, twist that chunk out of the way (a u' move here):

Then dial the other side up from the bottom (an l' move here):

Twist that out-of-the-way chunk of the bottom layer back in (a u move here):

And dial it back down (an l move here).

Finally, twist the top layers as needed to find that (for example) the blue-red middle-edge is correctly aligned, as compared to the blue-red bottom corner, as are the other middle-edges. If all three edges were out of place at the start of this step, you may have to do it a couple times. But remember this "out-up-in-down" pattern; it's another theme on which you'll play variations as this solve unfolds.

Step 5. Solve the lower side-edge pieces on the upper three sides. Here's another awkward, top-down camera angle. I'd like to draw your attention to the edge between the two blue-red corners at left, where there's a red-green side-edge piece. Meanwhile, at right, there's a red-blue side-edge that's correctly positioned to drop into that slot.

Putting red at front, dial that slot down (here an L move):

Then dial in the correct edge piece from the other side (here an r' move):

Put the edge back where it belongs (here an L'):

And dial the other side back up as well (here an r). The camera angle allows you to appreciate that the blue-red edge ended up where it belongs; however; you may notice that a yellow piece broke free of the bottom and is now at the upper right. That means there's a bit more work to do.

See the yellow piece at the upper right? That needs to go back into the slot where there's a red-green edge at the moment.

Dial that piece out of the way (here a U move). Then dial the slot where it goes up (here an r), put the problem piece in (U') and dial it back down (r') – again, that "out-up-in-down" pattern.

I didn't get pictures of it, but a situation may arise where you need to swap a side-edge piece between two below-center edge positions. There's a method to it that you can probably figure out based on the procedures laid out above, but beware: it doesn't just swap two edge pieces, but it creates a cycle between three pieces, including one of the bottom side-edges. You might be just as far ahead to use the step just described to swap the problem piece with a "dummy" piece from higher up, then repeating the step to put the problem piece where it really belongs.

Suppose we've solved all those below-middle side-edges. What you'll probably see at this point is a mostly solved puzzle, except for above-middle side-edges that need to be cycled between the upper three sides, and at least three of the center-centers.

Step 6. With all the corners aligned on all sides, take a strategic look at those last three edges, and note which direction you'd have to twist the top to get those edges where they belong by the shortest route. Like, in this picture, that would be a counterclockwise (u') move.

Now think to yourself that in this step, the word "twist" in the pattern "up-twist-down-twist-up-twist-down" means the opposite direction to that shortest-way-round; in this example, clockwise. Got it? The "twist" in this recipe means the direction of the long way around. And that means, in this example, r U r' U r U r', at the end of which those last three edges will be correctly permutated.

Step 6-1/2. Ideally, you'll just have the four center-centers left to solve. But there's a parity case that often comes up, where one of the centers is already solved, like this yellow side that I warned you about earlier.

Before you can move on to the final, solving-the-centers move, you need to deal with this parity. No worries, there's an algorithm for that. This time the pattern is "down-twist-up-twist-down-twist-up-twist," starting with the problem side down; only instead of two-layer twists like in Step 6 proper, you're doing 3-layer twists; and instead of the "twist" moves taking the "long way around" direction toward the side each center belongs to, they go in the "shortest path" direction. In the example below, I goofed and made my "twist" moves in the "long way around" direction, which led straight back to a similar parity. But here's how it looked anyway: a series of moves that, in this case, were r' u r u r' u r u.

At the end, you then need to do a two-layer move to restore the top corners to their proper sides (here a u' move). And as you can see, my mistake led to another parity, only with the solved center on the green side.

Anyway, now you have to re-do Step 6 again (that's the up-twist-down-twist-up-twist-down one), starting by eyeballing those last three edges to see which direction "twist" means; and again, that's the "long-way-around-to-their-matching-sides" direction. Let's skip from the eyeballing stage to completion:

In my photography, I apparently skipped over redoing the parity algorithm (6.5) and went right on to Step 7: Permutating the true centers. With all four centers out of place, choose two that need to swap centers between themselves, like the red and green sides pictured here; put one at front and one facing down.

Then do "down-down-up-up," alternating between right and left – three times. All three-layer moves!

Whew! It's great to see a puzzle coming together. Even though there's a lot of "down-down-up-up" and "out-up-in-down" and "up-twist-down-twist" or "down-twist-up-twist" going on in this puzzle, there's something satisfying about solving the Master Pyraminx that rises above just hammering it with a handful of rote algorithms. At each step, you need to strategize a bit to make sure the right piece ends up in the right slot, facing the right way around, and that you don't break something already solved without fixing it again. Meanwhile your mind teems with questions like "is that up then down, or down then up?" and "Which way does that twist go again?" and "How the hell do I get that from there to here?"

One more reason I'm pleased with this puzzle is that it's slipped out of my hands a couple of times and taken a hard fall to an even harder floor, scattering pieces in all directions ... and amazingly, I was able to snap those pieces back on. It's not solid plastic. Each red, yellow, green and blue bit can snap off and on again, with a little care. I'm so relieved that my Master Pyraminx wasn't totaled. And truly, it remains a fun puzzle to play with.

Now what do you think? Was this tutorial worth shooting over 100 photos? I didn't use all of them. But quite nearly! Tune in another time for a word on that weird-looking gizmo to the left of the Kilominx and Pyraminx in this series of pictures. It's called the Pyraminx Edge, and I recently adopted it into my menagerie of twisty games. Not to spoil it too much (I hope), its solution is almost entirely a series of "down-down-up-up" moves. I believe the term high-level cubers use for that powerful move is the Sledgehammer; it has many more applications, as we'll see in future tutorials.

Pyraminx Tutorial

I've previously started to shoot photos to write this tutorial on a comple occasions, but I kept biffing it and aborting the project. Well, this time I pushed through. Further to my series of tutorials on Rubik's Cube-based 3D scrambler puzzles, here is the base model in the series of tetrahedral puzzles – which means that group of gizmos shaped like a triangular-based pyramid, with four identical, equilateral sides. It's another one of those Platonic solids, you know, like the cube and the dodecahedron, on which see my previous posts on this thread.

The Pyraminx is sort of the 3-layer tetrahedron to the original Rubik's Cube's 3-layer cube. You can twist the tippy-tip corners at all four vertices; that's one layer. You can twist an entire face opposite one of those vertices; that's two layers. And if you wanted to, you could slice-move the middle layer in between, though I don't know of any practical use for that maneuver, so let's forget I mentioned it.

Practically speaking, a U move would be when you twist the top two layers 1/3 turn clockwise (as viewed from above):

And a U' ("you prime") is the same thing, only counterclockwise:

Photographed from overhead, here's a B move, twisting the back two layers clockwise (i.e. viewed from behind), and I'll leave the B' move to your imagination.

R, as you may be able to guess by now, means dialing the two-layer corner at the right 1/3 clockwise as viewed from that side, with the predictable R' going the opposite way.

And L is your move concerning the left corner of the Pyraminx; just guess what L' is.

To be technical, and for scambling purposes, there are also small-letter u, b, r and l moves, going in both directions, but those only affect those tips, which turn independently. You'll see those on the scrambler, but in my opinion, it's up to you whether to bother with them or not.

The Pyraminx dates back to 1981, when a Japanese toy company called Tomy rolled out Uwe Mèffert's design. It has four corner pieces with three colors each, six edges with two colors each and 12 centers with only a single color. There are 933,120 different ways to scramble it, which isn't all that many in the cube-puzzle scheme of things, and consequently it isn't terribly difficult to solve. Remember the "God number?" That's the maximum number of moves for the optimal solution to any configuration of the puzzle. Right? On the original, 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube, it was 20; on the Pyraminx, it's only 11.

World records for the fastest single solve are being broken on a regular basis, it seems, with the top five solves all occurring within the last couple years and all in the 0.73 to 0.84 second range. I said, less than a second. The top five solvers by "Olympic average" (i.e. the average time of five solves, excluding the fastest and slowest times) are all between 1.15 and 1.48 seconds and all within the past two years as well. Don't expect these records to stand for long, ha ha.

There's no shame in taking a few minutes to solve the Pyraminx. Even without going for speed, once you've practiced it a bit, you may find it's all over rather quickly. For me, it's become a puzzle that I scramble at the same time as a bunch of other puzzles and then solve one at a time, from easiest to hardest, and it definitely comes in toward the beginning of the exercise. Kind of a warm up, really.

Here's one of my favorite online scramblers, mapping the way to a random configuration of the Pyraminx. Be sure to start with yellow down and green to the front.

And her's how that scramble looks in real life:

The first thing you can do is realign those tips, that you twisted due to those small-letter steps at the end of the scramble pattern. It's as simple as twisting them 1/3 turn clockwise or counterclockwise, as needed, so they line up with the colors of the center piece on each side. The tips can't escape those centers, making them so trivial that, again, it's up to you whether to even bother scrambling them.

With that preliminary, optional step out of the way, I'll call the next step Step 1. It's the completely intuitive matter of making all three tip-and-center doubles match each of the puzzle's four sides. Exercise your own problem solving skills here. On a bad day, it can't take very long. There are, after all, only four sides to this thing.

Step 2. Pick a side to put at the bottom. I'm not picky about which color to go with; in this instance, I put the yellow side down. Then, twist an edge piece that belongs at bottom front onto the adjacent side; e.g. the yellow-green edge at front left.

Why at front left and not at front right? Well, you've got to think about the fact that you're going to do this move (R in this case), bringing the edge where yellow-green belongs to the opposite side of the front layer (in this case, front right):

... And then you're going to twist the top layers (a U or U' move, in this case U') to put that edge piece in place, like so:

... Before dialing that edge back down to the bottom again:

So, in retrospect, you wanted to position that edge so it would be flipped the right way when you completed this maneuver; i.e. with the green side (i.e. the color of the front side) toward the front, and the yellow (i.e. the color of the bottom side) out of the way. Here's a similar case, where we find a blue-yellow edge that needs to end up yellow-side-down. I've positioned it on the blue side (cf. those two lower corner/center doubles), with the blue side to front and the yellow out of the way.

Now twist the opposite corner up (here an L' move) ...

And dial the correct edge in (here a U move) ...

And send it home to the bottom layer (here an L).

Repeat as necessary until your initial, bottom layer (e.g. yellow) is fully solved, as shown here; then (Step 3) choose one of the remaining, unsolved layers to become the new down side. In this instance, I chose blue.

Continue in the same vein, twisting an edge piece that belongs on the bottom so its other side (here red) finds its center ...

Then dialing the edge where it belongs up on the opposite side of front:

Then doing U or U' to put the correct edge in:

And down:

You may notice from this last picture that I broke a yellow edge somewhere in this process. Nevertheless, I keep working on with the blue side on the bottom for now, putting the blue-green edge above the slot where it belongs, green side forward:

Then do the up-in-down manuever:

And somehow, I find myself only a U move away from having the whole thing solved!

There are some algorithms, if you need them, for cases when you find yourself cycling the same two or three pieces around and around. I used to keep a note of them handy in case I ran into one of those parity issues. I never bothered to learn them by heart, which turned out to be all right because, since I learned how to solve the Master Pyraminx (the 4x4 version of this 3x3 puzzle), I've somehow never encountered a parity case on the vanilla Pyraminx that I couldn't intuitively solve using the steps above. Nevertheless, here are those algorithms in case they can help you:

• Need to flip 2 edges at front: R’ L R L’ U L’ U’ L.
• Edges at R, L and B that need to cycle clockwise: R’ U’ R U’ R’ U’ R
• Edges at ditto that need to cycle counterclockwise: R’ U R U R’ U R

Anyway, I suppose that's an advertisement for standing by until I post my Master Pyraminx tutorial – verily, a case of the higher-level puzzle giving me a better insight into solving the lower-level one. Until now, stay curious, my friends!

Red One

I saw this movie last weekend, and contrary to some nasty reviews I've glimpsed, I thought it was highly entertaining. It features Chris Evans as a ne'er-do-well named Jack who started his career – finding things that are supposed to be unfindable – at an early age, discovering proof that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Imagine his surprise when Lucy Liu and Dwayne Johnson bust him for inadvertently revealing the whereabouts of Santa's workshop to a client, who turns out to be an 18-foot-tall shapeshifting ogre known (to those wise enough not to say her real name out loud) as the Winter Witch. He and Johnson, an agent of ELF (don't ask), must now join forces to recover the kidnapped Saint Nick before the witch can use his powers to destroy Christmas. Like, with a vengeance that even Krampus wouldn't get behind.

The movie is directed by Jake Kasdan, also known for the last couple Jumanji flicks, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Bad Teacher. Predictably, it's packed with fantasy special effects and action, including a hit squad of beefcake snowmen, a Krampusnacht party attended by all manner of strange creatures, a talking polar bear, a gadget that can turn toys into their living, life-sized counterparts and, you know, Father Christmas and his team of flying reindeer. Its cast also features J.K. Simmons as the jolly (but not roly poly) old elf, Bonnie Hunt as the Mrs. and Nick Kroll as a high-level crook.

Overall, I thought its take on mythological beings like Santa, Bigfoot and so on was fun, and the commentary on what sets Santa apart from Krampus made room for thoughts like "Christmas presents are a symbol of undeserved grace" whereas the witch represents the unforgiving aspect of pure law and order. I didn't find the special effects distractingly bad, as I sometimes do in fantasy blockbusters. My head stayed inside the movie throughout the fast-paced action scenes, right up to the boss fight at the end. Also, it made me laugh and, for a few moments, got me a bit choked up with the subplot involving Jack and his son.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Jack and Dylan find themselves in a tight spot, giving the father an opportunity to make amends with his son – and, in the process, busting the evil witch's plot wide open. (2) The snowman fight. I mean, come on. (3) The moment when Jack earns some respect from his ELF handler, when they actually start working together. Hint: It involves Krampus.

Believe the negative hype if you want to. I'm not (no pun intended) easily snowed by a lousy movie cashing in at the box office. I mean, I actually saw Justice League and recognized that it was terrible, and not because Zack Snyder lost control of it; I've had him pegged as a terrible filmmaker since Man of Steel. And I stood by my thesis that Morbius was an insult to my intelligence even when people I like and respect insisted it was terrific. When there's something wrong about the taste of the Kool-Aid, I spit. But I drank of this movie with gusto, and while it's a weird take on Christmas folklore and an entirely secular one at that, as pure entertainment I'd recommend giving it a chance.

2 Poignant Period Pics About Parents and Kids

This past weekend, on two different nights, at two different movie houses in two different cities, I went to two movies. Did I see the new Venom flick? Well, it's a sequel to a movie I didn't care to see, so what do you think? No. Did I see Smile 2? Well, it's a sequel to a movie I didn't care to see, so what do you think? No. I also could have seen Heretic, or Here, or I kid you not, Hitpig. Of these three, would you believe the one I was most interested in seeing was Hitpig? But I didn't see that, either. Instead, I saw The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Lost on a Mountain in Maine. And I went away more than satisfied.

In the first instance, it was a touching, family-friendly laugh-fest based on a book that my fourth grade teacher read to the class. I mentioned this to the guy who sold me the ticket, and he said he read the book every year of his teaching career to his sixth grade class. Assuming our cases aren't just a freak coincidence, that might be a sign that there are a lot of people who have fond memories of this story from sometime in the last 40 years or so. And now, I hope, a lot of people will enjoy memories of this movie, with its touching message that the story of Jesus' birth is for everyone, including a certain family of rambunctious redheads from the wrong side of the tracks.

It's a rare Christmas movie that acknowledges that the birth of Jesus is what Christmas is about. It shows the life-changing power of the message of Jesus. It features a character explaining what the word "Emmanuel" means. It features the lowest and least coming, uninvited, to the party and making it the best party ever, because you see what the story of Luke 2 means in their tear-streaked faces. It featured characters admitting they were wrong and growing as people. It features a character looking straight into the camera and saying, "Unto you a child is born!" And it made me laugh. And it made me cry, a little.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is directed by Dallas Jenkins, the force behind The Chosen. The book on which it is based was by Barbara Robinson and is as old as I am, 1972. The cast is headlined by Judy Greer and comedian Pete Holmes, with Lauren Graham of The Gilmore Girls as the narrator and (at the end of the movie) grown-up version of the hero girl, and a bunch of kids who do very well in their roles despite being completely unknown until now. Maybe this movie will change that, for some of them.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Beth (the hero girl) takes the horrible Herdman kids to the school library, where they discover discovery – not to mention everything they wanted to know (almost) about the Christmas story. (2) Beth discovers that she wants Imogene Herdman to play the Virgin Mary after all, and bicycles across town to tell her so. (3) Yes, of course, the climactic moment when everybody realizes that the one with the Herdmans really is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

In the second instance, I took a chance on a movie that I had never heard of until I started looking at what was playing at the two-towns-over cineplex. I looked at a trailer for it and that was all I knew going in. Truly, I spent the drive there debating in my mind between this movie and Hitpig, which at least has a good title. I still think "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" is still rather on-the-nose. But belly to the box office bar, I bought a ticket to it and when I say both movies made me cry, please understand that I squeezed out a tear for the Christmas pageant but this one made me sob.

Produced by (among others) Sylvester Stallone, the movie is about a fighter – a 12-year-old fighter named Donn who becomes separated from his family during a hike up Maine's Mount Katahdin. It's a true story; it actually happened in 1939. But you might not know how it turned out, because it was that long ago, so whether the kid's going to be found alive as he remains lost for day after agonizing day remains in suspense until the very end. It's a brutal ordeal for everyone involved, and the cast – again, featuring some little-known actors – gets credit in my book for seeing their characters through hell, especially the hero boy, his parents and his twin brother. If their work gets noticed, maybe names like Caitlin FitzGerald, Paul Sparks and Luke David Blumm will be better known by this time next year or so.

Three Things That Made It For Me: (1) There are a couple of fourth-wall breaking moments where Donn and one of his parents both gaze into the lens and somehow seem to make eye contact despite being separated by miles. One one occasion, the dad becomes so convinced he hears his son calling to him that he runs out into the woods and gets injured. On another occasion, it's what the son hallucinates hearing his father tell him that finally decides his fate. (2) The scene in which Donn, resting on the forest floor, comforts himself in the embrace of the terrifying, Native American god his trail guide told him about at the campfire the night before he got lost. The secrets he confesses to the winged, antlered monster are deeply touching. (3) The mom's confession that when her husband called her with the news that he lost their boy – without saying which of their three sons was lost – she hoped it was Donn, because he had a will to survive. Or as one of his friends reminisced in some archival footage cut into the film, Donn was a livewire.

In some ways, he's the ideal type of character to endure a survival ordeal like this. But it's still terrible to see him go through it and, bringing the tension to a hum, even the latter-day archival footage doesn't reveal the ending before its time. Do you think you can endure it? You'd better, in honor of this movie's young hero.

Dragon Slayers' Academy (Books 1-8)

The New Kid at School
Revenge of the Dragon Lady
Class Trip to the Cave of Doom
A Wedding for Wiglaf
Knight for a Day
Sir Lancelot, Where Are You?
Wheel of Misfortune
Countdown to the Year 1000
by Kate McCullan
Recommended Ages: 9+

Somewhere, sometime – probably during a visit to Costco – I picked up a boxed set of eight books, plus a bookmark, of the first eight books in this series of silly kiddie chapter books, all with cover art by Stephen Gilpin and illustrations by Bill Basso.

Briefly, they depict a medieval boy named Wiglaf who escapes being picked on by his 12 big, dumb brothers and nelgected by his single-minded cabbage farmer folks, to attend (duh) Dragon Slayers' Academy. It's a run-down castle staffed by oddballs, run by a certain Mordred the Marvelous, who's only in it for the gold, and who send unprepared children out to rob dragons of their hoard. Quite by accident, Wiglaf becomes the first student in the school's history to actually slay a dragon, and then another one, despite having a horror of blood and never mustering the nerve to poke his sword into anything. On a lot of his adventures, he's accompanied by fellow students Angus (Mordred's eternally hungry nephew) and Eric (who only Wiglaf knows is actually a Princess Erica), more or less the Ron and Hermione to Wiglaf's Harry. And of course, what could go wrong without the "help" of a cracked wizard named Zelnoc, who is responsible for (among other things) teaching Wiglaf's pet pig, Daisy, to speak Pig Latin.

I believe you can guess where this is all going, so I won't belabor the synopsis other than to say that at least once in almost every book in this set, I laughed out loud. I believe the first time was when a minstrel, by way of inspiring Wiglaf to seek his fortune as a dragon slayer, told him that every dragon has a fatal weakness; like a certain dragaon who hated to be teased, and was thus slain by a knight who said, "Nonny noony poo poo, you old sissy" to it. If that just made whatever you're drinking shoot out of your nose, we may share an appreciation for these whimsical books, in which the problems of modern-day school kids are cosmetically touched up with Middle Ages trappings and the anachronisms (look that up) are perhaps the funniest part.

There are 20 books in the Dragon Slayers' Academy series. From book 9 onward, they include 97 Ways to Train a Dragon; Help! It's Parents' Day at DSA; Danger! Wizard at Work; The Ghost of Sir Herbert Dungeonstone; Beware! It's Friday the 13th; Pig Latin – Not Just for Pigs; Double Dragon Trouble; The World's Oldest Living Dragon; Hail, Hail, Camp Dragononka!; Never Trust a Troll; Little Giant, Big Trouble; and School's Out – Forever! Kate McCullan is also the author of a bunch of picture books, beginning readers' titles, 10 Myth-o-Mania books (titles include Say Cheese, Medusa!), and a few more children's books.

Saturday Night

This past Sunday night, I sat alone in a small movie theater and watched this movie, depicting the 90 chaotic minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. It's directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, the director of Juno, Up in the Air and Thank You for Smoking. His co-writer, Gil Kenan, also worked with him on Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Its cast features Gabriel LaBelle of The Fabelmans as SNL creator Lorne Michaels; Cory Michael Smith, whom I recall playing the Riddler in Gotham, as Chevy Chase; Dylan O'Brien of Teen Wolf fame as Dan Aykroyd; Ella Hunt of Anna and the Apocalypse as Gilda Radner; Rachel Sennott of TV's The Idol as Michaels' sometime wife and writer Rosie Shuster; Lamorne Morris of TV's Fargo as Garrett Morris; soap opera maven Kim Matula as Jane Curtin; Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things as a page; Nicholas Braun of Succession in a dual role as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman; Willem Dafoe as the NBC talent executive who held the power to make or break SNL up to the moment it went on air; Matthew Rhys of the Perry Mason reboot in a very unflattering portrayal of George Carlin; J.K. Simmons in an even more unflattering portrayal of Milton Berle; Robert Wuhl as the show's director; Catherine Curtin of Orange Is the New Black as a network censor; Paul Rust of I Love You, Beth Cooper as Paul Shaffer; Brad Garrett in a throw-away role as a bad night club comedian; and lots more people in roles that might make their careers.

It's a tour de force of the kind of suspense you can't really take seriously, if you take time to think about it, because we all know that SNL went on the air and has been on the air for almost 50 years. But the movie doesn't give you much time to think about it. It's a chaotic look behind the scenes at an everything-that-can-go-wrong-does moment, focusing mainly on Michaels as he (seemingly calmly) puts out one small fire after another without ever, until the crucial moment, appearing to be in control of the general conflagration. It puts the unknown 20-somethings who became instant stars on SNL into context, without sugar-coating the quirks that made them difficult to work with. It delivers spot-on impersonations of young Billy Crystal, Gilda Radner, Andy Kaufman and more. It sometimes made my flesh crawl (cue Uncle Milty). It frequently made me laugh. There's some hard drug use in it. There's some great music in it. And there are a lot of people in it whose heads you want to knock together, many of them on the crew side of the production. It doesn't break down into a three-act structure; it just flows and evolves, building up to a tense moment followed by just the first on-air sketch of SNL. Whatever it is, and however you feel about it, it just might be a perfectly executed piece of film.

Let's head straight into Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The Dafoe character's unexpected pep talk to encourage Michaels, early in the movie. He doesn't mean it; by the end of the movie he's singing an entirely different tune. This was a big surprise but there was also an underlying layer of menace in it, lingering in the back of your mind when, later, another producer belts Michaels across the chops with the news that the network wanted SNL to fail. (2) Michaels' answer, when he finally spits it out, to the question of what his show is. (3) Andy Kaufman's Mighty Mouse gag. Always wonderful to see, and his impersonator in this movie nails the character, dead center.

Robbie's 8-, 9- and 10-Cube Tutorial

My collection has grown a bit since I last showed it off. In addition to 3-D puzzles of different shapes, or that turn along different axes, I've also sized up to the 8x8x8, 9x9x9 and 10x10x10 cube – leaving only the 11x11x11 before I reach the limit of mass-produced Rubik's Cube-type puzzles that are sanctioned for official competition, and for which scrambles are provided by the online puzzle scrambler that I consult. I'm not so much concerned about the official competition bit; as I've said many times, I'm no speed cuber. But I do like the help of a scrambler to set up a random state of each puzzle for me to solve.

This isn't going to be as much of a tutorial as the previous ones in this series, for the 2- through 7-cubes. There are no new parity errors to work your way through; just lots of cases of edge, OLL and PLL parity, for which the solutions are the same algorithms as ever, only applied to deeper and/or wider slices of the cube. The last time I solved the 10-cube, for example, I had one case each of edge parity that affected single, double and triple layers. If you've gotten down those parity algorithms and have the flexibility to apply them in a variety of situations, and if you've fully absorbed the strategy for solving last two centers and last two edges on any cube sized 5x5x5 and up, and if you know your method for solving a 3x3x3 cube, you're golden.

I'll just use this space to alert you to the very few, relatively minor ways in which solving an 8-cube and up is harder than 7-cube on down. First and foremost, moving the layers is more difficult. They're tiny. They catch on each other and lock up, unless they're perfectly aligned. A few minutes ago (while setting up for the photo above, in fact), I dropped my 10 cube and for a hot minute, I wasn't sure it was ever going to work again, there were so many pieces pushed out of alignment and locked up amongst each other. Then I pushed something just the right way and everything snapped back into place again, thank God.

Second, scrambling the cube takes a lot more steps, and if you're striving toward competition, that exposes you to a lot more chances of missing a step, or losing your place in the scramble, and not arriving at the state depicted at the end of the scramble ... which would be bad, in the context of competition, but doesn't really matter if you're just puzzling for fun. Still, it's a longer-lasting chore and any lapse of concentration can lead to that frustrating moment where you find yourself asking, "Where was I in this list of steps?"

Third, while solving the centers and edges is the same job as ever (from 4- or 5-cube on up), it's a helluva lot more work, so you'd better enjoy the process before you invest in the cube. The puzzle isn't any harder, and it's actually kind of relaxing if you ask me, when you know exactly what it's going to take to solve each side and each edge. But it will take longer, for sure. And when you add this on top of issue no. 1 – I blush to admit how many times I found myself swearing at these larger cubes, when they wouldn't let me make the turns I wanted – let's just say, enjoyment of a toy like this will be proportional to the Sitzfleisch you possess. Which is to say, this is a pursuit best enjoyed by highly focused, task-orient(at)ed people; not, I should think, for the amusement of someone with ADHD.

The 8x8x8 version of Rubik's Cube is shown above in its solved state in the front row of toys ahead of the smaller-scale cubes. Known as V-Cube 8, its invention is credited to Panagiotis Verdes in 2007, but it's made by a number of different manufacturers and I guess there might be smoother-moving versions than the budget cube I bought. Verdes Innovations makes the V-Cube 8 with rounded sides; Chinese-made versions have flat sides, like the copy I own. Like the 4-, 6- and 10-cube, it has no fixed centers, so it's on you, as the puzzle solver, to assemble the 6x6 centers in the correct order. There are 296 pieces, including 216 single-color center pieces, 72 two-color edge pieces and the usual eight three-color corner cubies. The number of possible permutations of these pieces has been calculated at 3.52x10^217. You understand that that's a 218-digit number, right? Nevertheless, the unofficial speed record for solving the 8-cube, at this writing, is alleged to be 3 minutes, 19.87 seconds.

The 9x9x9 or V-Cube 9, like the 3-, 5- and 7-cubes, does have a fixed center on each side, plus 288 center pieces that can move anywhere and that you have to assemble into 7-by-7 centers; 84 edge pieces and, of course, eight corners. There are about 1.42x10^277 possible ways to scramble it. I'm told it's been solved in as little as 6 minutes 58.33 seconds.

About the 10x10x10 or V-Cube 10, I can't tell you much. Despite the center pieces getting smaller in cubes 8 and up, the overall sizes of the cubes have also grown to the point where this massive toy is actually tricky to hold in the hands, and at times you have to think about how you're going to make the next move. I don't have any data about record solves or possible permutations, I'm afraid. But the latter statistic is already way beyond the number of particles in the observable universe, going back a few cubes, so there's little doubt that that number, for the 10-cube, is just stupidly big, on a scale that has no meaning to the human mind. And probably, there's somebody in China or Korea who knows how to solve a well-scrambled 10 in, like, 10 minutes or less. Believe it or not, I've solved it (and the 9-cube as well), as recently as yesterday. But I've reached the point where "scrambling all my cubes and solving them" is no longer something I can do within the duration of a Hallmark Channel movie.

The 9- and 10-cubes are unsolved in the picture above. It so happens that I scrambled all nine cubes, from 2x2x2 up, last night and solved 2 through 7 while watching YouTube videos before bedtime. I had solved the 8-cube's centers too, leaving the rest of the puzzle for me to finish over lunchtime today. I'm saving the 9- and 10-cubes for tonight after work. I just haven't had the time yet and I didn't feature spending the time solving them to shoot pictures of a process I've shown in my previous tutorials, give or take an extra few pieces per row of center facets or edge pieces. Like I said, same puzzle, same solution, only bigger and requiring more time and work; not actually any harder, except in the three ways noted above.

What is the effect of all this leveling-up? I can only speak for myself. I'm still engaged in the puzzles. I'm a little frustrated with the amount of effort it takes – not the steps of solving the puzzle as such, but struggling with layers that catch on each other and lock up. I might have been happier if I had invested in a "speed cuber" grade product instead of the cheapo cubes I got. But the fun of puzzling is still there, and with each center solved, each edge, each parity case sorted, each step taken toward the final solution, that endorphin payoff keeps me hooked. I was talking, a few installments back, about the "comfort cube" needle on my dashboard edging from the 4-cube to the 5-cube. Honestly, today, I'd say my "comfort cube" is somewhere between the 6 and the 7 – in that sweet spot between not too easy and not too hard – and I think that needle will continue to move, despite these minor annoyances.