I was planning just to write a short post about the curiosity at right, a 12-sided Rubik’s-style puzzle called a Megaminx. I’ve had one of these things stowed away in a box for more than 20 years, and I stumbled across it a few weeks ago. My Megaminx is in its solved state, but I doubt this means I ever knew how to solve it. I think I acquired this thing toward the end of the early-’80s Rubik’s Cube fad, when I was 12 or 13, and by then I had already gotten interested in other things. Like, um, boobs and stuff.

Anyway, I was looking for a couple of good Rubik’s-related links for this post, and on the official Rubik’s Cube site I discovered a recent Manchester News story about the maverick architect Will Alsop’s plans for an 80-mile-long, 15-mile-wide hypermodern “super city” that would run from coast to coast in Northern England. Alsop’s plans for downtown Manchester include a “50-metre teddy bear” and “a revolving building shaped like a Rubik’s cube puzzle”:

Urbis, Manchester’s Centre for Urban Culture, is hosting a SuperCity exhibit. The Manchester News story explains that the Rubikian building, conceived to be a cinema, will probably never be built: “Mancunians needn’t start writing protest letters just yet. Urbis said the bear-and-cube picture was simply an image chosen to get people thinking creatively. And the city council said it had no plans to act on the ideas….”

You can buy all sorts of unusual Rubik’s-style puzzles here.