DaYan Venus Bermuda Cube

I saw the complete set of all eight planets for sale at a reasonable price so I bought it. I already own Mercury and Earth, so my first port of call was Venus after the set arrived. It looks and feels much like the Mercury and Earth cubes. Having experienced popping problems with its two siblings I was careful with turning this one.

The Venus upgrades the Mercury by adding a second bandaged face. The sides with triangles are opposite to each other on the cube. The Earth cube had them on adjacent sides. The two triangles are misaligned, comparing the picture below with the one above should make that clear.

In the solved state, there are three degrees of freedom: the orange and red faces and the Fisher cut along the hypotenuse of the large orange triangle can be rotated. The layer between the ones with Bermuda faces behaves as a Fisher cube. This means, in the pictures above, the green and white squares behave as edges and the rectangular pieces on the same layer behave as centres.

When the puzzle is scrambled, unsurprisingly, it no longer looks anything like a cube.

It is significantly more difficult to solve than the Mercury (obviously) and probably of a similar level to the Earth cube. I found this easier to solve than Earth but when tackling this I had experience of two Bermudas under my belt.

Solution

This is how I solved Venus. It is more difficult than it looks. I found the key was orientating the layer with the orange face correctly, to allow freedom of movement required to perform the required algorithms to perform the required actions on the rest of the cube.

Step 1 - Partially Solve the Orange Face

This is trickier than it looks because of the bandaging of the opposite face. Solve the squares and rectangles. As expected, the squares behave as corners and the rectangles as edges.

Step 2 - Orientate the Rectangles on the Middle Layer

This step is trivial. Use the missing portion of the orange face to rotate these pieces to the correct orientation.

Step 3 - Solve the Blue and Yellow Squares

Solve the blue and yellow squares. They behave like edges. This is not a particularly difficult step.

The puzzle now has a Petrus-style Fisher block.

Step 4 - Solve the Rest of the Orange Face

On the orange face, solve the two small triangles and the pentagon. Take care to ensure that the green/white rectangular piece is in the solved position after completing this step.

Step 5 - Solve the Green and White Squares

Complete the middle layer by solving the gree and white squares. This is a fairly easy step. These pieces behave like edges.

Step 6 - Solve the Red Pentagons and Rectangles

Solve the two red pentagons and the rectangle. These pieces behave like edges.

Step 7 - Permutate the Red Squares and Small Triangles

It took me longer than perhaps it should have to figure this out. I found the best way to do it is to get the squares into position first and then the small triangles. These pieces behave like corners.

Step 8 - Orientate the Red Squares and Small Triangles

The bandaging of the orange face makes this a little more difficult but should not be too challenging. After completing this step, the cube is returned to its solved state.