Jaap's Puzzle Page

Jaap's Links to other puzzle pages

There are many puzzle pages about. Many of my pages have links to sites relevant to that particular puzzle. On this page I have drawn together the most important of them, together with some more general links, in no particular order. Some links belong in several sections and so are included more than once.

Pages which are in BOLD, have a link back to these pages.

Official Puzzle Homepages
Other places to buy puzzles
Solution pages
Speed cubing
Blindfold cubing
Cube Theory
Cube Art
Puzzle modification/building
Pages with programs to download
Pages with scripts or Java programs
Message boards
Musea, galleries and collections
Other neat permutation puzzle pages that are worth a mention
Pages that are not mainly about permutation puzzles
Favourite unrelated links

Puzzle manufacturers and official puzzle homepages:
Meffert's puzzles Uwe Meffert's homepage. He produces and sells many puzzles, including Pyraminx, Megaminx, Pyramorphix, Skewb, Orbix and others. This site also has solutions for some.
Rubik's homepage. The official homepage sells Rubik's puzzles and has links to several cube solutions on the web.
PuzzleAtomic is Douglas Engel's site, where he sells many different types of puzzles, such as circle puzzles, palette puzzles, and sliderule puzzles.
Tom van der Zanden designs clever new twisty puzzles and has them 3D printed by Shapeways.
WitEden manufactures some twisty puzzles and sells the many twisty puzzles available from Hong Kong.
Cube4You produces various twisty puzzles.
RecentToys, the makers of Crossteaser, Planets, Writer's Block, and others.
ThinkFun, formerly Binary Arts, are the makers of such puzzles as Topspin, Turnstile, Spinout, Nineball, Port to Port, Izzi, and many others.
V-Cubes homepage has an on-line shop where you can buy 5x5x5 to 7x7x7 cubes.
Mag-Nif, the manufacturer of The Brain, Saturn and other puzzles.
Tri-trick homepage.
Tantrix is very nice site as it has Java puzzles, and allows you to play in the online Tantrix game tournaments.
Marusenko Sphere homepage.
Arusloky homepage.

Other places to buy puzzles:
Ebay is a large online auction site. To search for Rubik's puzzles, then click here.
Hendrik Haak's Shop. Excellent range of puzzles to buy, and an amazing museum too. Based in Germany.
HK Now Store sells the many twisty puzzles available from Hong Kong
Kadon Enterprises Inc. sells Instant Insanity, make and sell polyominoes and many other neat puzzles.
PuzzleMan (Viktor Genel) has lots of beautifully well-made wooden assembly/disassembly puzzles for sale, as well as a shareware puzzle game to download.
PottyPuzzles sells many of the wooden and metal assembly puzzles.
Bits and Pieces sell many puzzles. No Rubik-type puzzles though, but lots of others such as puzzle rings and disassembly puzzles.
Math 'n' Stuff sells mostly maths teaching aids, but also some games and puzzles.
Speedcubing Store
Cube Depot
Speedcube Shop
Speedcube Shop
Puzzle Addictions

Places to buy stickers:
Cubesmith sells sticker sets for all kinds of twisty puzzles, as well as individual parts.
Dr. Sticker sells stickers in any shape you desire.

Solution pages:
RubiksCube.Info by Josef Jelinek contains corners first solving algorithms. Also has pictures of Hana Bizek's cube art. This site supercedes their old site even though that is still online.
Twisty Puzzles has a 3x3x3 cube solution here which explains a method to solve middle layer edges together with the top layer corners in pairs. This page also has a highly recommended message forum.
Chris Hardwick's Page. This page has solutions for the cube and the Rubik's Revenge. There is also The Unofficial World Records Page here where you can log your best times.
Christophe Goudey's Cube Page has lots of fascinating stuff about the cube, and an excellent links page.
Juergen Koeller's page. A solution to the cube and rubik's magic amongst many other things, also available in German.
Francocube. French solutions to the cube, domino, square-1 and much more.
Le Rubik's Cube. Site by former speedcubing world champion Edouard Chambon has solutions, from simple to advanced.
The Cube Guru has an easy to follow pictorial solution to the Rubik's cube, in several languages.
Jasmine's Page has a very good beginner's solution to the Rubik's cube.
Bigcubes has solutions for big cubes, i.e. the 4×4×4 and 5×5×5.
Rectangular Cuboids has algorithms for cuboids such as the domino
Megaminx PLL & more has last layer methods for the megaminx.
Denny Dedmore's solutions for various cube sizes. Now that Denny has stopped, these pages are being hosted by Georges Helm.
Philip Marshall's Cube Page has a solutions for size 2, 3, 4 and 5 cubes, as well as the megaminx. His cube solution solves edges first, and then the corners and is relatively simple.q
Matthew Monroe's page. Nice illustrated solutions for cube, professor's cube, square-one and Pyraminx.
PuzzleSolver by Jake Olefsky has nice solutions for the cube, minicube, the pyraminx, and the Brain. Also has neat impossible objects.
Jacob Davenport's page. He has a text based 5x5x5 cube solution here.
Chris Eggermont's Twisted Mind Games. The highlights of this page are the solution to Rubik's Magic Master Edition, and the pages on how to get the Square-1 Puzzle into cube shape.
Luciani's Page is a nice looking French site with a solution.
Nerd Paradise has a solution for the Cube and lots of other stuff too.
Ryan Kagin's "How to solve the cube" has a layer solution.
R. Hoffman's site has a one-page solution.
Ronald Bieber's page is in German, and has a cube solution of the layer type, and also a Rubik's Magic page.
Cubo Magico, a Spanish page with a corners first solution of the cube.
Mark Jeays' page has a simple solution, and answers to many common questions.

Speed solving:
World Cube Association holds speedcubing competitions and keeps track of the national and world records.
SpeedCubing.com has good lists of sequences for speedsolving the cube, similar to Jiri's, and a Java program that can searches for useful sequences. The site also hosts the sites of Chris Hardwick (which has speedcubing videos and links) and Ton Dennenbroek.
Peter Jansen's speedcubing page also has many extremely good speedcubing move sequences, some with video. Now hosted by SpeedCubing.com.
Lars Petrus' site. A great set of pages that show you how to solve the cube fast without having to memorise 100 sequences. Also available in Italian.
Jessica Fridrich's page. A very fast layer algorithm for the cube.
Gilles Roux's page has a very different speedcubing method, and some fun video's on his site.
Planet Puzzle by Katsuyuki Konishi (Japanese).
Cubefreak by Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi, a very talented young speedcuber.
Stephan Pochmann has a Rubik's Clock speed-solving page.
CubeZone, Lars Vandenbergh's site, also has a Square-1 speed-solving page.
Planet Puzzle, Katsuyuki Konishi's site.
Speedcubers.de for the German speaking speedcubing community.
Andy Klise's Rubik's Cube Guide has short guides of speedsolving algs for cubes and the megaminx.
Jess Bonde's site has videos of various people speedsolving the cube as well as videos of good move sequences and a cube timer that gives random positions to solve and calculates average time.
Bernard Helmtetter's page has all possible top layer algorithms you may ever need.
Adam Cheyer's Cube Solution is optimised for visual speed.
Zbigniew Zborowski's page shows his method where the last layer edges are oriented when the last corner/edge pair is placed in the first two layers.
Ryan Heise's site shows another original method.
Andy Camann's site has some great speedcubing tips.
Cubochiaro is an Italian speedcubing site.
Lucas Garron's page
Speedcube.de a German speedcubing site.
RubikAz.com a Spanish speedcubing site.

Blindfold solving:
Richard Carr's page is all about his blindfold cubing techniques.
Grant Tregay's page has one walk-through of a blindfold solve, and various solving video's.

Cube Theory:
God's Number is 20 describes how Tomas Rokicki, Herbert Kociemba, Morley Davidson, and John Dethridge proved that the cube can always be solved in 20 moves or less.
Cube Programming Contest hosted by Tomas Rokicki in 2004. It was fun to do, and I came third.
Prof. David Joyner's permutation puzzles page has a lot of interesting maths, though much of it is too complicated for the non-mathematician.
Cube-Lovers Archive. The original archive at MIT died, but it has now been preserved here.
Martin Schoenert's page has the cube-lovers archive in html form, though only 1980-1996.
Mark Longridge's Domain of the Cube has a few good text pages with cube theory, a large list of patterns, and a neat selection of links.
How to Solve Almost Any Rubik-like Puzzle. A short explanation of the concepts of conjugation and commutation.
Introduction to Group Theory ends with a section on the Rubik's cube.
Peter Suber's page about the 'inductive game', i.e. exactly undoing as many random moves as possible.
Jesper Gerved's page shows his letter to David Singmaster in which he lists the orders of all the elements of the cube group.
Wikipedia has an entry on the Rubik's Cube.
Ryan Heise developed an unusual way to solve the cube based on Thistlethwaite's algorithm.

Cube Art:
Jacob Davenport's page has some wonderful cube art here. It has a few patterns on a single 5x5x5 cube, and many mosaic patterns using a large array of cubes.
Hana Bizek's pages have pictures of her cube art. These are mainly large cubes made from many smaller ones. This is part of the RubiksCube.Info site.
Zarf's Page also has cubes with different designs here.
Fred Holly's Cube designs are mozaics made from regular Rubik's cubes.

Puzzle modification/building:
Tony Fisher shows his many clever twisty puzzle modifications.
Ton Dennenbroek's page shows many puzzle mods in various stages of construction.
Twisty Puzzles has several articles dealing with building puzzles from plastic resin. This page also has a highly recommended message forum.
Mark Longridge's Domain of the Cube shows some of his puzzle building efforts on his prototypes page.
Jin "Time Traveller" Kim's page has a small section on puzzle building.

Pages with programs to download:
Cube Explorer Page. This program by Herbert Kociemba produces move sequences for any cube pattern. It finds a reasonably short sequence in about two seconds, and given a few more minutes will nearly always produce a sequence of less than 20 moves.
Mike Reid's optimal solver can do a very fast and deep search for solutions (uncompiled C source only).
PuzzleMan (Viktor Genel) has a fascinating shareware puzzle game to download, like a cross between a sliding puzzle and Rubik's Magic.
Jozef Jelinek's site has a program that searches for optimal solutions, with the possibility of ignoring parts of the cube.
Cyril Castella's Genetic Cube Solver, solves the cube using a genetic algorithm. It is slow, but this program is a remarkable achievement.
Cube Programming Contest hosted by Tomas Rokicki in 2004. All entries are downloadable.
Superliminal has an excellent simulation of a 4-d rubik's cube, i.e. a 3x3x3x3 cube.
Larry's Cube Corner gives us the excellent Hungarian HexaHedron simulator.
Japanese page, with a megaminx program amongst others.
Ishihama Yoshiaki's page, has lots of puzzles and simulations.
Ken Silverman (programmer of Duke3D fame) also once wrote a cube simulator. It does any size, and recently a solver by Ben Jos Walbeehm has been added.
Tom Davis has a nice cube simulation with solver and macro facility, for use in group theory.
RubikSim is an open source 3D Rubik's Cube Simulator which uses OpenGL.

Pages with scripts, Flash or Java applets:
Karl Hornell's Rubik Unbound. The most used Java cube on the net, and it has become the standard on which others are judged. With source.
AnimCube by Jozef Jelinek is for displaying move sequences. With source.
Ron's Cube Solver from SpeedCubing.com can search for useful sequences, using only some moves or ignoring some pieces.
Wendel Randelshofer's site has a Java cube which can not only turn, but also 'explode' to show the inside. There is also Cube Twister, a neat cube analysis program, many pretty patterns and more.
Mark Sunter-Storey's site has a several Java puzzles, including a Cube, Tricky Disky, and others.
Ganpuzzle has a Java games for various Rubik's Cubes, Square-1, and Nineball.
Jess Bonde's page has a cube timer that gives random positions to solve and calculates average time.
Superliminal's 4D Cube is a playable 3x3x3x3 hypercube.
Raymond Penner's Page. There are neat Java programs here for Rubik's Fifteen and Rubik's Clock amongst others.
Wedran's cube solver. It allows you to edit a cube and then it shows you the moves to solve it, using a corners first method of about 120 moves on average.
David Byrden's Twisty puzzles. A page with Java versions of many puzzles, including all platonic solids.
Rob's Rubix Repair. An interesting page which solves the cube for you. It works on all browsers that support tables with coloured cells, there is no need for Java. Unfortunately it uses a lot of moves to solve it. With source.
Michael Schubart's cube. 3x3x3 cube with views of other faces. With source.
Yuh-Jye (Michael) Chang's cube. Any cube size. Built-in solver just undoes previous moves.
Ishihama Yoshiaki's page, has lots of Java puzzles and simulations here, amongst which a 4d rubik's cube, and several very original 3d puzzles.
CheesyGames has many neat Java games and puzzles.
www.kielack.de has several Javascript games, including a version of Rotos here.

Forums and message boards:
Speedsolving Forum. The main english-language speedcubing forum.
Twisty Puzzles forum. Excellent forum, with a good community.
Cube Lovers forum. Discussions on the mathematics of the cube.
World Cube Association forum. Discussions on speedcubing regulations, records, and events.
Speedcubers.de forum, in German.
Svekub.se forum, in Swedish.
RubikAZ.com forum, in Spanish.
Speedcube.de forum, a smaller German forum.

Musea, galleries and collections:
TwistyPuzzles.com, formerly the Virtual Puzzle Museum, shows a huge number of different versions of the cube and other puzzles.
Ton Dennenbroek's site shows not only his puzzle modifications, but also his huge collection.
Geduldspiele has an extensive collection of puzzles of many different types.
Passion for Puzzles (formerly PuzzlePassion) by Marcel van Leeuwen is a very nice looking site with a small but interesting collection.
Planet Puzzle by Katsuyuki Konishi (Japanese).
Joshua Bell's collection
Milan Vodicka's site shows his varied puzzle collection.
Rob Stegmann has a varied puzzle gallery neatly categorised.
Laurent Blanc's site shows a large collection
Jim Storer has a large puzzle collection, not just twisty puzzles, but also sliding puzzles and assembly puzzles.
MultiWingSpan has a nice selection of twisty puzzles, several with solutions.
Pantazis' Puzzle Paradise shows his extensive collection and his own Rubik's Magic designs.
Richard Whiting's site.
Raoul Raba's homepage, contains images of his first Rotascope patent and of many of his designs.
Kevin Moore's page, has a nice page with pictures and descriptions of various puzzles.
Machan's site (Japanese) with pictures of various puzzles, but actually most notable for the neat hit counter.
Kar Watanabe's pages (Japanese) with a picture gallery.
Japanese site with many pictures of puzzles and their packaging.
Chosi's homepage has a huge and very varied collection.
Das Puzzleum (German) is a museum with all kinds of puzzles.
Casses-têtes en folie (French) has a large gallery of puzzles of many kinds.
Extremely Puzzling Goetz Schwandtner's puzzle collection.
Gabriel Fernandes' Puzzle Collection is a blog where Gabriel regularly discusses a new puzzle.

Other neat permutation puzzle pages that are worth a mention:
Cubeflip An index of links for cubers everywhere. Also has Bandaged Cube scrambles
Gilles Roux's page has many amusing videos featuring the cube.
Joshua Bell's page has a very interesting info on the patents of puzzles like the Rubik's Cube.
Mike Reid's page has a lot of rubik's cube information and links.
Matthew Baker's Lights Out page has lots of good info about the Lights Out game and its variants, including the cube version.
Cubism For Fun is the newsletter of the Dutch Cube Club (NKC), which is still going strong after more than 20 years.
Georges Helm's Page. Has a list of cube literature, resources, and links.
Rubik's Cube World Records lists some amazing world records.
J. Brown's Page describes a robot to solve the cube made from Lego MindStorms.
Jin "Time Traveller" Kim's page has the Puzzle FAQ, now in version 9.
Miroslav Kolar's page is all about the Tower of Hanoi. Has a large number of links, and lots of different algorithms and source codes for solving it.
Chris Lohe's page shows the very difficult Labyrinth cube, a Rubik's Cube variation.

Pages that are not mainly about permutation movement puzzles:
Puzzle World, by John Rausch, is the portal site for assembly/disassembly puzzles as well as sliding piece puzzles. Also has Stewart Coffin's books available to download.
PuzzleMan has lots of wooden assembly/disassembly puzzles for sale.
Juergen Koeller's page has lots of fun stuff besides some Rubik's pages, much of it in German and English.
ClickMazes has an excellent set of Java puzzles, all of them mazes in the most general sense of the word.
The Puzzle Museum has other types of mechanical puzzles as well.
Ed Pegg's Mathpuzzle page has lots of difficult but often fascinating mathematical puzzles.
Ken Duisenberg's Puzzle of the Week has hard mathematical puzzles, with an archive of all the previous weekly puzzles.
rec.puzzles UseNet group.
Pentomino site by a school that uses them for teaching, and includes regular competitions.

Favourite unrelated links:
Jaap's Scratch Pad, my page for other stuff.
Jaap's Magic and Puzzles. My YouTube channel. Mostly magic tricks so far.
Sloane's On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences includes the "God's Algorithm" sequences I calculated.
Nearly Free Speech .net my current website host.
Bad Science, Ben Goldacre's blog / newspaper column about bad (mostly medical) science. Has a forum.
Project Euler, a series of mathematical programming challenges. Has a forum. My current status.
XKCD, A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Has a forum.
Language Log, by linguists Mark Liberman, Geoff Pullum, and others.
Slashdot, News for Nerds, Stuff that matters.
Kongregate, Flash guzzle games.
Mathpuzzle, Ed Pegg's log of recreational maths.
Penny Arcade regular cartoon.
espacenet, the European Patent Office.
sci.math UseNet group.
Mathematical surfaces built from Lego.
Pedagoguery Software has some neat programs, including a gorgeous polyhedron viewer.
Groklaw, technology and the law.
Dilbert daily office cartoon.
Bob the Angry Flower weekly cartoon.
Justin B. Rye's site about SF Xenolinguistics, SF chronophysics, Esperanto, Star Trek, and more.