| When I was 16 years old, I designed the basic idea for the cube puzzle.
The puzzle consists of 3 parts:
1) The 'innards' - 24 pieces in the standard 24-piece burr shape
2) The 'shell' - 41 pieces, mostly surrounding the 'innards', which fill out the
cube shape, and also form the locking mechanism to hold everything together
3) The 'key piece' - the cross-section of this piece is rectangular - half as
thick as the other pieces which are cut from a square rod.
The workings of the puzzle are as follows:
a) The 'innards' pieces are irregularly shaped, and must be moved in some
particular sequence in order to free the 'key piece'
b) The 'key piece' is removed
c) This unlocks the 'shell', which then comes apart
d) The 'innards' come apart in a rather chaotic fashion.
I created about 6 different designs for the 'innards'. The one sold today as
'The Cube' is the third of these designs, and the one which has proved to be
the most popular. |
