From walts@federal.unisys.com Thu Dec 7 09:04:57 1995 Return-Path: Received: from www.han.federal.unisys.com by life.ai.mit.edu (4.1/AI-4.10) for /com/archive/cube-lovers id AA04683; Thu, 7 Dec 95 09:04:57 EST Received: from homer.MCLN.Federal.Unisys.COM by www.han.federal.unisys.com (8.6.12/mls/8.0) id JAA00555; Thu, 7 Dec 1995 09:04:55 -0500 Received: from h3-91.MCLN.Federal.Unisys.COM by homer.MCLN.Federal.Unisys.COM (8.6.12/mls/4.1) id JAA05663; Thu, 7 Dec 1995 09:07:10 -0500 Message-Id: <199512071407.JAA05663@homer.MCLN.Federal.Unisys.COM> Date: Thu, 07 Dec 95 09:06:45 -0800 From: "Walter P. Smith" Organization: Installation Services X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.22 (Windows; I; 16bit) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Cube-Lovers@ai.mit.edu Subject: Mini Cube & Revenge Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii My first message. Oh boy! It's back. A new version of the 2x2x2 cube previously called the Pocket Cube is in production. The new version is called the Mini Cube. They are available from GameKeepers I got mine in Tysons Corner Shopping Mall Virginia, but GameKeepers is a chain and should be in most large cities. If readers can't locate one, let me know and I'll get a list of locations. They also carry a wide line of puzzles including Triamid, Snake, regular Rubik's cubes, Master Balls etc. The stickers are glossy paper. I don't think they will be very durable. Also the red and orange sides are very hard to tell apart. How could they be so stupid? The mechanism seems to work better than the old ones. I can't tell if the inner workings are the same. The original Pocket Cube had a ball in the center with six cap like pieces screwed to it (with springs under the screw head) to form a series of tracks. Each piece had a shaft that extended down into the grove with a triangular foot on it. This design requires a lot of pieces and drives the price up. I always thought they could be made by making the ball, three of the caps and one corner piece, all into one piece. The Mini Cube uses cubies that are solid on all sides. This may account for the smoother action. They include a complete solution sheet. One comes with the Master Ball also. I personally think manufacturers should't do this. Many people will turn to the solution sheet before giving it a good effort and will miss the pleasure of solving it for themselves. My Mini Cube cost over six dollars. A little pricey but a collector should never pass up an opportunity. Walt "The Puzzler"