
Rubik's Cube inventor is back with Rubik's 360 - sanj
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/4412176/Rubiks-Cube-inventor-is-back-with-Rubiks-360.html
======
mhb
For me, a big part of the original cube's appeal is the aesthetics of moving
the physical object around and also the cleverness of the mechanism which, on
first seeing it, is a bit of a puzzle of its own.

A puzzle with balls banging around in plastic doesn't have either of those
appealing aspects and there are plenty of other difficult puzzles around.

------
jcl
Neat, but unlikely to beat the popularity of the original cube. By my
recollection, Rubik's has had several other puzzles in the interim, none quite
as successful (although the Rubik's Magic was pretty cool).

------
acangiano
They are doing a lot of PR work, if they make it easily available, most people
here will buy it even just out of curiosity.

------
Retric
_It has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations on its six faces._

That's wrong, there are only 22 pieces on a Rubik's Cube. 8 edges, 6 faces, 12
corners. 8! * 6! * 12! = 1.3905608 × 10^16 and even here there is a lot of
symmetry. For example dividing by 6 faces and 4 rotations of each face you get
5.79400335 × 10 ^ 14 unique combinations.

~~~
avinashv
No--not only are the faces fixed, but the orientation of the 12th corner and
8th edge are dependent on the previous 11th and 8th corner and edge
respectively.

The quoted number is known to be fairly standard amongst cubers.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubiks_cube#Permutations> has a decent
description of why.

~~~
Retric
_oriented independently_ , doh.

Thanks.

