Japanese company develops possibly the most difficult ever: Rubik’s Cube Impossible

You won’t believe your eyes when playing this version of the classic puzzle.

There are few puzzles as famous and enduring than the Rubik’s Cube, and there are few countries that have embraced the puzzle game quite like Japan has. In the years since 1980 when the love affair between Japanese people and Rubik’s Cube began, a Mario stop-action animation made entirely from these cubes was crafted and the smallest official version was also released here.

But the game itself and its fundamental mechanics haven’t changed drastically over the years. While it continues to present challenges to new generations of puzzle solvers, those who have already mastered the Rubik’s Cube are left to come up with new and inventive ways to solve it, like this guy who can do it while juggling three of them — something which never ceases to amaze me.

So, MegaHouse, the subsidiary of Bandai Namco that’s licensed to produce Rubik’s Cubes in Japan, set out to create the most difficult version ever made. That’s no easy feat, since any drastic change to the puzzle’s deceptively simple design would threaten to make it cease to be a real Rubik’s Cube.

As a result, MegaHouse developed Rubik’s Cube Impossible: a standard Rubik’s Cube except for the fact that some of the colored squares change colors depending on the angle you look at them.

The surprisingly simple design change doesn’t even really rely on any new technology, but boy does it ever gum up the works. In fact, it would seem that these flickering colors would actually have the strongest effect on veteran speed cubers who would suddenly need to be very sure of what color they glanced at while twisting and turning the unit at high speeds.

In the above promotional video, the impossible cube was given to two speed cubers who could solve a regular one in about a minute. The first one just gave up but the second one managed to solve Rubik’s Cube Impossible in about three hours.

It’s a fiendishly simple adjustment that really keeps the elegant design of the original cube intact. I’d try it myself but value my sanity too much. However, for those who have conquered the instant noodle cube or developed flying cubes that solve themselves, this may be the ultimate challenge you’ve been looking for when it goes on sale later this spring.

Source: PR Times
Top image: YouTube/MegahouseJP
Insert image: PR Times
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