Octahedron Christmas Trees

Okay, there's nothing particularly Christmas-like about this pattern. It's just a vague depiction of a tree, but I chose to call it a Christmas Tree because of the season.

Woolworths used to sell decorations like this back in the 70's when abstract geometric shapes were the "in" thing.

Octahedron Snow Angels

This shape was inspired by a traditional snow angel.

As usual, the design is somewhat abstract. But when working with a slate of nine triangles any patterns has got to be pretty abstract.

Octahedron Tri-color Clover

The Magic Octahedron completes the set of Tri-color Clover patterns.

There are several different ways the pattern could be achieved on the Octahedron. This one uses opposite-face colors at each of the corners, equivalent to turning each of the corners one-half turn. Because there are eight corners, it can also be done by the equivalent of turned each corner a quarter turn.

Octahedron Four Clovers

My previous Gnostic Triquetra attempted to demonstrate how the Magic Octahedron could be divided into odd-and-even faces with two different patterns. This pattern shows it a bit more clearly: four sides have clovers, and four sides are blank.

The pattern is arranged so each face with a clover is flanked by three adjacent blank faces. And each blank face is flanked by three clovers.

Octahedron Black Widow Spider

I'll finish the week with one final pattern that shows that Octahedron patterns don't have to be so complicated-looking.

Each face shows an hourglass, resembling the markings on a black window spider. It's a natural shape for this kind of puzzle, and it can probably be done a few different ways. As shown in the end-view at right, each "hourglass" pairs a mobile edge piece with a non-mobile center piece without involving any corner pieces.

Octahedron Gnostic Triquetra

That title is a real mouthful, isn't it?

Each face has a three-color triquetra arrangement, but unlike the previous Octahedron Triquetra each face is a mirror-image of each of its three neighbors. As a result, four faces show a left-handed triquetra and the other four faces show a right-handed triquetra. This arrangement resolves the agnostic edge, something that wouldn't be possible in a Pyraminx Triquetra pattern.

Of the platonic solids, only an 8-sided puzzle can divide the puzzle into two schemes where each face uses a different scheme from all of its neighbors. An ordinary Rubik's Cube can't do it. The Skewb Diamond (a different octahedron puzzle) can get half solved, so that each solved face was surrounded by three unsolved ones.

Octahedron Gale Warning

Each face in this Magic Octahedron pattern looks like the previous Pyraminx Gale Warning, except that I inadvertently flipped it (mirror image).

Any pattern a Pyraminx can do, it seems an Octahedron can do better.

But don't assume the Octahedron is limited to the relatively mundane patterns as the Pyraminx puzzle. At first the Octahedron struck me as a Pyraminx, just with twice as many faces, twice as many corners, and twice as many edges. But I've begun to discover that it can do a lot more than this. More soon...

Octahedron Tri-color Triquetra

All eight faces of this Magic Octahedron depict a three-color triquetra pattern. It took me three tries to get this pattern right because there are so many sides and colors that I kept making mistakes. This color scheme integrates the trivial tips, rotating quadrants, and mobile edges on each face, but is edge-agnostic on adjacent faces.

The Magic Octahedron puzzle is more complex than the eight-sided Skewb Diamond puzzle, but much more versatile. According to TwistyPuzzles.com the Taiwanese version of this puzzle was called "Star Puzzler." Such puzzles are relatively scarce, but occasionally obtainable on eBay. (Or at a flea market in Berlin.)