You know, something that always plagues my mind is if we’ve truly found the best way to design cubes.

This idea stems from even cube hardware, how we use a redesigned odd-layered cube hardware to create these. How a 4x4 is in reality a 5x5. A 6x6 is in reality a 7x7. Even a 2x2 is just a redesigned 3x3.

Z3Cubing even showed this off by turning one of his 2x2’s into a 3x3 fairly easily. We can see it’s fully functional.

There was a quote I found long ago from a video that didn’t have anything truly to do with cubing, but it stems from a similar idea.

A quote from ShankMods VirtualBoy Portable video explores a lot of what I debate in my head WAY too often!

“When you start getting comfortable, you stop getting better”

We’ve seen our designs for our speedcubes over the years remain for the most part the same, with light variations between the releases. I struggle to say our newer cubes have actually gotten better, it’s more our hardware capabilities and discoveries! Like all sorts of different magnetic positions!

We’ve gotten very comfortable with the way we design our speedcubes. So have we gotten better? 

We’ve seen that there are other alternatives to the way we design cubes, especially even layer cubes. Back in the day Rubik’s 4x4 used a weird ball-core. Nothing like the magnetic core’s we represent with the term ‘Ball-core’

Some DIY paper 2x2’s are made using string.

Were there better options? Most likely not! 

However, this proves there are theoretically other ways to design cubes! 

They may not necessarily be better, but they’re alternatives! 

We saw Gan recently experiment with the designs of those cubes. Using a Dual-Shell design for their 5x5 and 4x4. While this didn’t work too well for the Gan460 V2, it worked really well for the Gan562. 

Even if both the Gan460 V1 and Gan460 V2 may not have necessarily been the greatest 4x4 release, I applaud them for experimenting with the ‘normal’ 4x4 design and trying something new!

Even MoYu tried something new with their ‘centre-piece’ instead of ‘centre cap’ on their AoChang V6.  

Cube design has come a long way, we’ve seen a lot of amazing new innovations! Especially with hardware that involves magnets!

I mean if you compare any new release 7x7 like the QiYi Warrior or MoYu AoFu V5 it’s a very clear night and day comparison to the original V-Cube 7!

DiangSheng SMC 7x7 even shows new innovations with 7x7.

I think a lot of this stemmed from the Pokemon XY Speedrun Community, where something they were very comfortable with for nearly a decade turned out to be the slower method.

Especially with complaints even layer cube hardware gets, it truly makes me wonder if there is a better way to design even layers that we’ve just never figured out or never bothered to figure out.

We’ve seen people make cubes that were otherwise thought to be impossible, like the Maglev 7x7. 

This doesn’t mean we’ve stayed in that comfort zone, I believe recently more than ever we’ve been escaping that comfort zone. Though that sometimes may be a bad thing.

I believe this stems from DianSheng. 

They started off with the DianSheng Galaxy 8x8. The world’s first factory magnetic 8x8. They started something, next it was the Galaxy 9x9 then Galaxy 10x10. Even stepping away to Galaxy Gigaminx and Galaxy Cluster Mirror 5x5.

They showed us that there indeed was a market for sticking magnets in all sorts of different non-WCA puzzles, which other companies have quickly taken to themselves upon DianSheng's massive success.

YJ Pocket Mini cube, ShengShou Triangle Clock V2, MoYu MeiLong 8x8 V3 (Ball-Core, Magnetic), QiYi Pentagram Clock, QiYi 11x11 (Magnetic, Ball core).

DianSheng experimented, tried something new. Stepping outside that comfort zone and slowly impacted tons of other cube companies into releasing high end speed cubes of non-WCA events.

Admittedly some are more questionable releases. Like the MoYu Pyraminx duo (Magnetic, ball core) it shows the impact of that initial step.

Sometimes this push towards Discomfort may not be the greatest and could be arguably becoming yet another comfort. Especially with the loss of stickered cubes and rush to make everything smaller. I’ve gotta applaud releases like the Qiyi Sail 7x7 (stickered version of the Qiyi Warrior 7x7 non-magnetic that isn’t stocked) or DaYan’s push to keep their releases standard size, even giving us sizing options like their Guhong Pro +’s and Megaminx Pro’s. 

While It’s unclear if there is or will ever be a better way to design certain speedcubes, sometimes all it takes is that initial first step into that discomfort to truly know!

• By css41