5x5 Tropical Petals

This pattern occurred just by chance during my holiday in Hawaii. An Eastsheen cube naturally forms two groups of colors that look tropical: a red-yellow-blue scheme reminiscent of a tropical Macaw, and a white-purple-green scheme like an orchid.

The pattern itself is a variant of a standard snake, albeit with several modifications. The pictures were takent near Kona, Hawaii.

5x5 Flipped DNA

This pattern is a another double-helix like the previous Twisted DNA with a somewhat ore complicated color scheme. In this instance, the colors on each face are flipped onto each adjacent face. For example, the white face shown above has a green stripe and the adjacent green face has a white stripe. The white face also contains a red stripe, and the adjacent red face also contains a white stripe.

This color scheme extends around the entire cube, as shown at right.

Because the colors are flipped from adjacent faces, all six colors are visible when the cube is viewed diagonally. At left the trio of red-green-blue faces contain stripes in white-orange-yellow. Naturally the white-orange-yellow faces must contain red-green-blue stripes.

I used different color groupings from the previous Twisted DNA (which was white-green-orange and red-yellow-blue) because
it provided better color-contrast for this pattern.


Both patterns are best when viewed firsthand because you can trace the double-helix all the way around the cube...

5x5 Twisted DNA

A pair of threads twist over and under each other, wrapping around all six sides. Shown at right, the color scheme is based on two ordinary 3-cycle twists. It's essentially two snake type patterns woven together to depict a DNA-like double-helix.

Because the color scheme is based on a 3-cycle rotation, the cube shows three colors on three sides when viewed diagonally as shown in the picture at left.

5x5 Quad-color Snake

Although similar in appearance to the Quad-color Python, this pattern is infinitely easier to construct because there are dozens of possible solutions.

This is essentially a standard snake pattern extended to the 5x5x5 by permuting each of the three stripes differently to yield four colors per face.

5x5 Twisty Snake

This is just one of the countless ways to extend the basic 3x3 Snake onto the 5x5 cube. As the two views at right show, the snake worms its way around each face, making three turns on each face.

On the 5x5 cube the snake can be arranged to enter and exit each face in any combination of edge cubies. The simplest variant has a single turn on each face while the most elaborate has five turns per face. Another challenge is to extend it to three, four, or even five colors per face.

3x3 Snake

Sometimes called the Worm, the 3x3 Snake is a fairly common pattern for longtime Rubik's Cube enthusiasts. The colored stripe winds around each side of the cube, making a right-angle turn on each.

Many patterns on the higher-order cubes are derived from this basic 3x3 pattern.

4x4 Crooked Snake

I'm partial to "snake" patterns that run from one side of the cube to another. The Crooked Snake is a variant of the common 3x3 Snake pattern, which runs through all six sides in a regular pattern as shown here.

Unlike the standard 3x3 Snake, this version has extra crooked turns on some sides but not others.