Thursday, November 12, 2015

The ZhanChi

The ZhanChi is Dayans 5th and final cube. What? You say there was another Dayan cube? No. No there wasn't. This was Dayan's exit from designing 3x3's, and it was a good one. While the GuHong and other cubes were definitly good, the ZhanChi was the beginning of what is now considered "modern 3x3's".
The ZhanChi had no outstanding flaws. All cubes before this had some issue. The Alpha cubes couldn't corner-cut as well, the GuHong had block corner-cutting and pops, and Rubik's brands were, and still are, just bad. The ZhanChi, on the other hand, had none of these problems. It had rounded and smoothed curves on the corners and edges which resulted in all around better corner-cutting, and the torpedoes held the cube together. With all of this was Dayan's signature buttery feel, and sticker-less options. The ZhanChi was the first cube to have such large gaps between the corner stocks and edge wings, which gave it a customizable factor. It could be as fast or as slow as you want it to be, based on how you lube it. The gaps also helped internally for reverse corner-cutting.
I've talked about Dayan a lot this week, but there's a reason for that. Dayan released some of the most important 3x3's of all time. They created speedcube 3x3's as we see them today. And while they have ceased creating new 3x3's after the release of the ZhanChi (Directly after the release of the ZhanChi. The Dayan 5 ZhanChi was the final 3x3 created by Dayan. There was never another. Never.), Dayan will always be remembered for their service to our community.

I'm not scared of anything. Well, accept glass. I'm kinda scared of glass...
-GIR