A chap called Jonathan Kinlay has innovented a Rubik’s cube variant which only has one colour, but six different integer sequences on its sides. As a colourblind integer sequence enthusiast, this basically has to be my ideal Christmas present, right?
Well, it’s currently looking for funding on Kickstarter in advance of actually existing, and the first units won’t be delivered before Christmas, but it’s a fun idea anyway. Here’s Dr Kinlay’s pitch for your cash.
The six faces show (the first 9 elements of) the triangular numbers, the prime numbers, the decimal digits of π, a magic square, the Fibonacci series, and the decimal digits of e.
Since the orientation of the squares matters, I think the Magic Cube is equivalent in difficulty to the Sudokube. If it tickles your fancy, \$20 will get you a plastic cube, while metal and wood versions are available for substantially more. They’re looking for \$7,500 in funding and at time of writing they’ve raised \$2,662, with a couple of weeks to go before the Kickstarter deadline.
Jonathan Kinlay is a founding partner of Innovation Factory, a company which offers help with turning a design into a manufacturable product, and then arranging crowdfunding to produce it. Since Kinlay does high-frequency trading for his day job, it looks like the Magic Cube is just a test case for their business model.
Meanwhile, a ‘magic cube’ is already a thing: it’s the generalisation to three dimensions of a magic square. A perfect magic cube of order 5 was discovered in 2003. Now that’s cool!
More information
The Magic Cube – A Mathematic 3D Logic Puzzle fundraising page at Kickstarter.
Magic Cube at Wolfram MathWorld.