Megaminx - WikiHQ

thumb|A 6-color Megaminx, solved

thumb|A 12-color Megaminx, solved

thumb|A 12-color Megaminx in a star-pattern arrangement

The Megaminx or Mégaminx (, ) is a dodecahedron-shaped puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. It has a total of 50 movable pieces to rearrange, compared to the 20 movable pieces of the Rubik's Cube.

History

The Megaminx, or Magic Dodecahedron, was invented by several people independently and produced by several different manufacturers with slightly different designs. Uwe Mèffert eventually bought the rights to some of the patents and continues to sell it in his puzzle shop under the Megaminx moniker. It is also known by the name Hungarian Supernova, invented by Dr. Christoph Bandelow. His version came out first, shortly followed by Mèffert's Megaminx. The proportions of the two puzzles are slightly different. The Supernova is cut in such a way that the cuts on each face meet at the edges, forming a pentagram. Mèffert's Megaminx has somewhat wider edges relative to the corners.

Speed-solving the Megaminx became an official World Cube Association event in 2003, with the first official single-solve record set by American Grant Tregay with a time of 2 minutes 12.82 seconds during the World Rubik's Games Championship in Canada. The first sub-minute solve in official competition was achieved by Japanese solver Takumi Yoshida with a time of 59.33s at the January 2009 Amagasaki Open, and the first sub-30-second single solve was achieved by Peruvian solver Juan Pablo Huanqui at a 2017 Santiago event with a time of 29.93 seconds. The current world record time for a Megaminx solve is 21.99 seconds, set by Russian speedsolver Timofei Tarasenko in December 2025. A popular modification on 12-color Megaminxes is to change the color of the face opposite the white face from its default grey to black. This is a trivial modification for traditional "stickered" puzzles with a black base color for pieces (simply remove the stickers and, if each face must have stickers for competition use, replace them with a set of black stickers cut to fit); for "stickerless" puzzles using multiple colored plastics, most manufacturers produce a set of the required pieces in black plastic, and the puzzle can be partially disassembled to replace the pieces of any face. This color change increases the contrast between this face, which usually forms the last unsolved layer, and the colors of adjacent faces, which aids in pattern recognition and thus the correct selection of algorithms to solve the last layer. Other color modifications are less common, but as long as each face has a visually unique uniform color, the puzzle is legal, so solvers are free to rearrange puzzle colors at their discretion.

There are many similar 12-sided puzzles with different numbers of layers, most of which change the "mega" in the puzzle's name to another metric prefix. They are the Kilominx (2 layers), Master Kilominx (4 layers), Gigaminx (5 layers), Elite Kilominx (6 layers), Teraminx (7 layers), Royal Kilominx (8 layers), Petaminx (9 layers), Examinx (11 layers), Zettaminx (13 layers), Yottaminx (15 layers), Ronnaminx (17 layers), and Atlasminx or Quettaminx (19 layers). The highest order variant of the Megaminx ever made to date is the Minx of Madness, created by Coren Broughton using FDM printing. The Minx of Madness was revealed in May 2022. It is the dodecahedral equivalent to a 21x21x21 Rubik's cube.

Alexander's Star is equivalent to solving only the edges of a six-color Megaminx.

The Impossiball and Kilominx are equivalent to solving only the corners of a Megaminx, but are very different mechanically. The Impossiball is available with either six or twelve colors.

The Pyraminx Crystal is a modified Megaminx with deeper turning planes.

Tony Fisher has produced a shape modification of the Megaminx into a cube form which he called the Hexaminx. Another variant is the Holey Megaminx, which has no center pieces, like the Void Cube. It is being produced by Mèffert as of July 2009. Other variants include the Flowerminx, Megaminx Ball, and Crazy Megaminx.

Number of combinations

thumb|Ernesto González solving a Megaminx at TLP Tenerife 2017

The Megaminx has 20 corners and 30 edges. It is possible on a Rubik's Cube to have a single pair of corners and a single pair of edges swapped, with the rest of the puzzle being solved. The corner and edge permutations are each odd in this example, but their sum is even. This parity situation is impossible on the Megaminx. For both types of pieces, only even permutations are possible, regardless of the position of the other set of pieces. There are 20!/2 ways to arrange the corners and 319 ways to orient them, since the orientation of the last corner depends on that of the preceding ones. There are 30!/2 ways to arrange the edges and 229 ways to flip them.

<math>20! \times 3^{19} \times 30! \times 2^{27} \approx 1.01 \times 10^{68}</math>

The full number is 100 669 616 553 523 347 122 516 032 313 645 505 168 688 116 411 019 768 627 200 000 000 000 (roughly 101 unvigintillion on the short scale or 101 undecillion on the long scale).

The corners are distinguishable on a 6-color Megaminx because two corners with the same three colors will be mirror images of each other. There are 15 pairs of identical edges. It would not be possible to swap all 15 pairs, since this would be an odd permutation of the edges, so a reducing factor of 214 is applied to the preceding figure.

:<math>20! \times 3^{19} \times 30! \times 2^{13} \approx 6.14 \times 10^{63}</math>

The full number is 6 144 385 775 971 883 979 645 753 925 393 402 415 081 061 792 664 780 800 000 000 000 (roughly 6.1 vigintillion on the short scale or 6.1 decilliard on the long scale).

For the larger size variations (gigaminx, teraminx, petaminx etc.), the general number of combinations is <math>\frac{30! \times 20! \times 60!^{n^2-1} \times 2^{28-n} \times 3^{19{5!^{12n(n-1)</math> where <math>n = 1,2,3,4,...</math> respectively for megaminx, gigaminx, teraminx, petaminx, etc. The number of combinations evaluates to <math>3.65\times 10^{263}</math> for gigaminx, <math>1.15\times 10^{573}</math> for teraminx, <math>3.16\times 10^{996}</math> for petaminx, <math>7.58\times 10^{1533}</math> for examinx, <math>1.58\times 10^{2185}</math> for zettaminx, <math>2.87\times 10^{2950}</math> for yottaminx, etc.

Records

thumb|[[Speedcubing|Speedsolvers completing Megaminxes at the Estonian Open 2011]]

The world record single solve is 21.85 seconds, set by Timofei Tarasenko of Russia on 1-2 May 2026 at Start of Summer Beijing 2026 in Beijing, China.

The world record average of five solves (excluding fastest and slowest) is 24.38 seconds, set by Timofei Tarasenko of Russia on 6-7 December 2025 at Tashkent Open 2025 at Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with times of 21.99, 27.44, 23.81, 23.67, and 25.65 seconds. !! Result !! Competition

|1|| Timofei Tarasenko || 21.85s || Start of Summer Beijing 2026

|2|| Alexander Vujcich || 22.23s || NZ North Island Champs 2026

|3|| Ziyu Wu (吴子钰) || 22.70s || Guangdong Revival & Rival 2026

|4|| Aidan Grainger || 22.89s || Weston-super-Mare Spring 2025

|5|| Leandro Martín López || 22.98s || Entre Ríos Cubea 2025

|6|| Tristan Chua Yong || 23.77s || Singapore Big Cube 2024

|7|| Alexei Sinyavin || 24.60s || Long Island Side Events 2024

|8|| Stephanie Rose Martin || 24.79s || UCD Cube Days 2026

|9|| Juan Pablo Huanqui || 25.24s || Lima Cuberano 2022

|10|| Heewon Seo || 25.26s || Lexing-not-a-ton of NxNs 2024

Top 10 solvers by Olympic average of 5 solves

{| class="wikitable"

! Rank!! Name !! Result !! Competition !! Times

|1|| Timofei Tarasenko || 24.38s || Tashkent Open 2025 || (21.99), (27.44), 23.81, 23.67, 25.65

|2|| Ziyu Wu (吴子钰) || 24.76s || Guangzhou Special 2025 || 25.03, (27.75), (23.49), 23.94, 25.30

|3|| Leandro Martín López || 25.40s || Entre Ríos Cubea 2025 || 25.53, (29.79), 26.93, 23.74, (22.98)

|rowspan="2"|4|| Alexander Vujcich || rowspan="2"|26.60s || A New Year in Auckland 2026 || (28.03), 27.82, 26.60, 25.38, (24.15)

| Aidan Grainger || Crewe Spring 2026 || 27.16, 24.93, 27.70, (30.91), (24.32)

|6|| Stephanie Rose Martin || 26.83s || UCD Cube Days 2026 || 25.24, (24.79), 27.17, 28.09, (28.93)

|7|| Tristan Chua Yong || 26.92s || Singapore Masters 2023 || 28.20, 25.69, 26.87, (25.21), (DNF)

|8|| Alexei Sinyavin || 27.92s || Apple Cider Open MA 2024 || 27.73, (30.00), (26.93), 27.03, 29.01

|9|| Zeke Mackay || 28.57s || Racine Rendezvous 2026 || 29.51, (30.40), 28.71, (26.87), 27.49

|10|| Kyeongmin Choi (최경민) || 28.86s || Rubik's WCA World Championship 2025 || (37.32), 28.66, 29.02, 28.89, (28.56)

References

External links

Meffert's puzzle shop
Jaap's Megaminx page—contains solutions and other information