The Mirror Cube Puzzle, sometimes called the Mirror Blocks, is a shape modification of the Rubik's cube. Each of its faces has the same colour, usually provided by reflecting silver or golden stickers. There are also stickerless Mirror Cubes on the market. It was invented by Hidetoshi Takeji in 2006. His idea was to differentiate the pieces of the puzzle not by colour but by shape. Therefore, he modified the thickness (the height) of the six outer layers of the original Rubik's cube by increasing the thickness of one layer (for example, the left one) and decreasing the thickness of its pair (in our example, the right one) by the same amount. The thickness of the three inner layers has remained unchanged. In effect, he displaced the position of the inner layers in the cube. After that change, the shape of each of the 12 edge pieces and 8 corner pieces is no longer a cube but a rectangular cuboid and has a unique shape, different from other pieces. At first, the Mirror Cube can appear quite intimidating. This picture is taken after only six moves L2 R2 F2 B2 U2 D2 (double turns of the Left, Right, Front, Back, Up and Down faces) : In fact, the solving is identical to the solving of the original Rubik's Cube. The only difficulty is finding the pieces that are adjacent. The following picture shows a position where two edge pieces are not oriented properly: The following picture shows a position where two corner pieces are not oriented properly: Some Mirror Cubes, mine included, have a texture on their stickers. In that case, the orientation of the central pieces is not irrelevant anymore and it is quite visible when those central pieces are not oriented properly! Those Mirror Cubes are in fact Supercubes. If that is the case, one needs to use simple algorithms to solve those central pieces. There are different variants of the Mirror Cube on the market of which I have a 2x2x2 Mirror Cube in my collection.
kAtalan_csaT Apr 25, 2021