Great floppy cube
The Super Floppy Cube is one of the numerous variations of the Rubik's Cube . It was developed by Katsuhiko Okamoto and manufactured by the Japanese company Gentosha Toys. A slightly modified version (shown here) is supplied by Lanlan Toys Ltd. made in China. It can be recognized by the round color applications (compared to the angular ones on the Gentosha cube) and also allows individual curb stones to be turned, which makes the solution easier.
What is noticeable about the Super Floppy Cube is that it allows so-called "shape shifting", i. H. the stones can be arranged in a different arrangement than the conventional 1x3x3 cuboid arrangement (see Fig. 2).
The cube measures 1.9 cm × 5.7 cm × 5.7 m and, unlike the normal magic cube, only has one level with 3 × 3 stones. It consists of a center stone with two different colored sides, four edge stones with 5 different colors and four corner stones with 6 different colors. The four curb stones can each be rotated individually; the corner stones also have six sides, of which a maximum of five are visible. It is possible to rotate each side 90 or 180 degrees. The cube can therefore form up to three levels, but in the released position all stones are in one level, whereby the cube appears monochrome when viewed from only one side.
The total number of possible settings is 12 × 11 × 10 × 9 × 44 = 3,041,280 positions, since eight orientations are possible, there are 72 possible spatial shapes, some of which are mirror-symmetrical. Solving the Super Floppy Cube is not an official discipline at tournaments of the World Cube Organization; mostly it is not a big challenge for both experienced speedcubers and beginners.