Floppy Cube

FLOPPY CUBE

I am currently on a short vacation in the UK and could not resist packing some puzzles into my luggage. The one I am reviewing today is called FLOPPY CUBE and won the First Prize at the IPP competition 2006. It was designed by Katsuhiko Okamoto and produced by a Japanese company called Gentosha. I could get my copy from a Hungarian Ebay Seller for under 10 Euro which is a great deal taking into consideration that Gentosha is not producing the FLOPPY CUBE since years.

Well, I am not good at all at twisty puzzles and just solved BOLARIS GREY (which was my second review) and a Pie Cube but I have to say that this FLOPPY CUBE is really, really easy and I therefore rate it a 2 out of 10. The goal of the puzzle is to scramble it and bring it back to the initial state, however, we are talking here about one layer of a real Rubik's Cube (Happy Birthday by the way - I read this last week that it became 40 years already) so that there are not much possibilities to do something wrong. It took me under 5 minutes to solve so it must be really easy. If someone is really interested in details I have a link for you with a bunch of information to this specific mechanical puzzle --> http://www.jaapsch.net/puzzles/floppy.htm

Finally, I think this puzzle is not worth to buy for an intermediate puzzler or puzzle king. It might be a collection piece or an easy start into twisty puzzles. As mentioned earlier there are still some around on ebay from time to time and even more knock-offs. However, those are a bit different according to another puzzle colleague's PM at the Revomaze forum.