Ivy Cube

The Ivy Cube (also known as the Eye Skewb) is a Pyraminx modification originally hand-crafted by Eitan Cher (a puzzle designer more commonly known for the Eitan’s Twist and Eitan’s Star puzzles). Nowadays, it can simply be made by bandaging a Rex Cube (a simple concept but with more moving and separable parts). The Ivy Cube is also interesting as although it was originally made using a Pyraminx mechanism, it both looks and solves more like a Skewb (the Skewb puzzle is the most common “Square Pyraminx” design). The Ivy Cube has also been mass produced by QiYi MoFangGe, a popular speedcube company, so it is now easier than ever to get your hands on one.

solved and scrambled ivy cube

NOTE: The Ivy Cube is a fairly simple puzzle to solve and, with experience with other twisty puzzles, is effectively intuitive (no algorithms required). This puzzle is highly recommended for people who have had trouble figuring out the algorithmic sections of more complex puzzle and would like to try something a bit simpler to solve. Therefore, this tutorial is meant for those who simply would like to solve the puzzle but have no interest in progressing to other puzzles.

Steps

Here are the basic steps to solving the Ivy Cube:

  • Building one face – This involves matching a centre (leaf shaped middle piece) with the two corners of the same colour
  • Building the opposite face – This involves matching the opposite centre with the two opposite corners of the same colour
  • Permuting Centres – Moving the last few centres around to solve the puzzle.

This cube follows the same method as Sarah’s Intermediate Skewb method, by building opposite faces and then permuting the centres with one algorithm. However, the Ivy Cube doesn’t need algorithms, so the last stage is far easier.

Now you know the individual steps required to solve the puzzle, have a go at it again before you dive into the tutorial. If you’re still completely lost, read on to learn how to solve the Ivy Cube.

Step 1 – Building One Face

First, pick the colour that you want to start on. For most this will be white, but you can pick any colour. Each face on a solved Ivy Cube has two different pieces: Two arc shaped corner pieces that stretch around the face and nearly touch, and a single leaf-shaped centre piece that lies between the two corners. Because there are only two corners, they are interchangeable (you can swap them without affecting the puzzle).

Try and move the layers until you have both white (or whichever colour you have chosen) faces of the two corners matching on one face. The image adjacent shows the blue centre leaf on the same face as two matching corners, the yellow leaf on the same face as two yellow corners, and the same with red. You don’t have to worry about the centre piece for now, just try and get two matching corners on one face. The two white corners will be locked in position opposite one another, so you just have to rotate each until they are both on the same face.

Next, you have to place the centre between the corners. Try and locate it on the puzzle. It’s most likely going to be on a face around the outside of the cube (holding the cube with the solved corners pointing upwards), but if it’s on the bottom of the cube just move one of the bottom layers to bring it up.

To place the centre, all you have to do is move it into the top layer to match one of the corners (doing this will displace the other corner), move the centre-corner matched pieces out of the way then bring the first corner back (just undo the first move you did to place the centre e.g. if you moved the corner away from you to place the centre, move it back towards you).

You should now have one face solved, which means you’re ready to solve the next part.

Step 2 – Building the Opposite Face

Next, you need to build the face opposite to the one you’ve just made. Start by rotating the puzzle so that your solved face is on the bottom. Because the axes of movement revolve around each of the four corners on the puzzle, you can rearrange the top layer pretty much independently of the bottom. The only difference between this step and the first step is that the centre cannot be on the bottom, as the bottom is now solved.

Use the colour scheme below to decide which colour you have to solve next:

  • White is opposite Yellow
  • Red is opposite Orange
  • Green is opposite Blue

You can turn the two corners without affecting the bottom, so again just rotate them until they are both facing upwards.

Then, as before, locate your centre. Push it on to the top layer (displacing one corner, just like in the first step), move both it and the corner it’s now attached to out of the way, and return the first corner back to its place.

Now you should have both opposite faces solved.

Step 3 – Permuting the Centres

Because you matched two centres with their corners, two opposite centres will already be solved, so you just have to permute the remaining four. Most of the time, one of the four centres will already be solved, so you only have three to solve. But in other cases, all four are misplaced, so you need to do an extra step. To start this step, simply rotate the puzzle so that the two faces you just solved are on the left and right of the puzzle.

One Middle Centre Solved – Rotate the puzzle so that your three unsolved centres are on the Front, Upper and Back faces of the puzzle (the left, right and bottom faces should all be solved). Now look at the colour of the two corners on the top face (they will match). Find the centre that matches with those two corners and rotate the cube so that centre is on the Front face whilst keeping its matching corners on the top face. Then, do the following four moves to cycle the centres:

  • Move the centre on the front to the top layer, just like in the first two steps, to match with one of the corners and displace the other corner.
  • Move this corner-centre pair you just matched towards you
  • Undo the first move
  • Undo the second move

By solving the top face just like the first two steps, you can rotate all the centres correctly to solve the puzzle.

No Middle Centres Solved – To solve the puzzle when all four middle centres are misplaced, simply do the above set of moves from any orientation (remembering to keep your solved faces on the left and right at all times). After doing the set of moves once, you should now have an extra centre solved, so you can now solve the puzzle with the above step.

When nearing completion, you might (often) find yourself with everything solved except one corner piece is rotated one position from where it needs to be. This means that 3 adjacent faces are solved opposite that unsolved corner.

In this case, the goal is to get the 3 solved faces IN A LINE, which should leave the other 3 faces with the correct sides, but incorrect middle (ivy shaped piece). To get from the 3 adjacent solved faces to 3 solved faces in a line, do this: make the incorrect corner face up, then do this:
L’ U U L
or get the 3 solved sides in a line, To solve the remaining sides, do this: 
R U R’ U’
If the cube still isn’t solved,  (the sides still look right, but the ivy center pieces do not), then do the above pattern again and you should be done.

 

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