Who I Am, and Why I Design This Way

Manqube is the independent twisty puzzle design practice of Manish Rathod, operating out of a home workshop in Ahmedabad, India. Every puzzle begins on my workbench as an exploration of what existing internal mechanisms can become when built into new geometric forms.

Who I Am

In 2017, at age 45, I bought my first Rubik’s Cube during a flight delay. Solving it turned into a question of design: how do internal axis systems function, and how can their physical constraints be pushed? Without a formal engineering background, I taught myself CAD, acquired 3D printing equipment, and began prototyping original shape modifications and mechanism variants.

To date, I have developed over 150 twisty puzzle designs and counting, with 100 archived in the Twisty Puzzles Museum. Two of these, the Manish Hexacopter and Manish Cubo-copter Plus, were licensed for global mass production. I documented the whole journey in my book, One Turn at a Time.

My Design Philosophy

My work focuses primarily on shape modification, re-engineering the outer geometry of established internal mechanisms to alter how a puzzle is solved.

Every design must meet two strict criteria before leaving the workbench:

1. Mechanical Integrity: The new physical form must turn as smoothly as the original core system without binding, catching, or compromising tolerances.

2. Solving Value: A shape change must alter the spatial logic, parity states, or difficulty of the solve. I do not release designs that offer only cosmetic differences.

Each design undergoes iterative CAD modeling, 3d printing, manual surface finishing of each part, assembly, stickering and testing to ensure it functions reliably in hand.