DaYan Earth Bermuda Cube

After solving the Mercury cube, I wanted to move onto another puzzle in DaYan's Bermuda series. I could not find Venus for sale in the UK but Earth was available. Earth presented a significant upgrade in challenge compared with Mercury. I solved it on the second day of working on it.

Viewed from this angle, the cube looks like a Fisher cube but appearances can be very deceptive...

Turn it over and we see two triangular faces. The cube is a complex mixture of Fisher and standard cube style pieces.

In its solved state, there is only one freedom of movement available, the orange face. This must be turned 45°. This face now functions as one on a Fisher cube. The green face is now free to be turned. Turning the green face by 180° or by 45° frees up the red face while locking the orange one and so on and so on. The two triangular faces do an effective job bandaging the cube restricting the options available to the solver.

The puzzle turns easily enough. Cornering is less than smooth; it is better not to push it too much. It pops more easily than it should.

The bandaging makes it a little tricky to scramble the puzzle.  The integrity of the cube shape is quickly lost during the scramble. Care is needed to ensure that the cube is correctly aligned when performing a series of turns to reduce the risk of popping. The orientation of green and red faces have to be planned carefully during a solve.

Solving the Earth Cube

Summarised below are the steps I took to solve this puzzle. I describe what I did. This should provide some clues to anyone who is struggling to solve the puzzle but I shall not publish any algorithms here.

Step 1 - Partially Solve the Red Face

Solve the triangles and pentagons on the red face. The pentagons are easy but some wiggling of the red and green triangles is needed to manoeuvre the small triangles into the correct positions. This can be a tricky step.

Step 2 - Orientate all of the Remaining Pentagonal and Solve the Rectangular Pieces

Rotate all of the orange and green pentagons into the correct orientation and solve the two blue rectangular pieces. These two processes are done simultaneously in the same step. These pieces all behave like edges. After the two blue rectangular pieces are solved, a Petrus-like block is created. All future moves are restricted to the orange and green faces.

Step 3 - Permutate the Green Pentagons

This step is trivial and intuitive.

Step 4 - Orientate all of the Remaining Small Triangular Pieces

There are four orange triangles and three green triangles to orientate. They behave like corners. It is easier to solve the yellow/green and white green triangles during this process to ensure the orientations are all correct.

Step 5 - Permutate the Orange Pentagons

Permutating the orange pentangular pieces is another easy step.

Step 6 - Permutate the Orange and Green Small Triangles

The final stage is to get the remaining small triangles into the correct positions. This can be tricky but is not too difficult. I do the greens first, the easy bit, and the orange ones second, the less easy bit.

So there you have it, one solved Earth Bermuda Cube.