Date: 6 DEC 1980 1745-EST From: DCP at MIT-MC (David C. Plummer) Subject: Re: That 28 move Plummer Cross To: McKeeman.PA at PARC-MAXC CC: CUBE-LOVERS at MIT-MC Date: 6 Dec 1980 13:40 PST From: McKeeman.PA at PARC-MAXC In-reply-to: Plummer.SIPBADMIN's message of 5 December 1980 1848-est USC-ISIB, Hofstadter at SU-AI David, Interesting observation! Your argument about the Plummer Cross being a local maximum in QTW metric holds for any completely symmetrical configuration of the cube, independent of the algorithm used to reach it. There are a lot of them (including "home"). It raises the question: Can the maximally distant point be proven to be symmetric? If so, the search for a bound is much simplified. Bill I don't know exactly where to start my comments. For one thing, the Plummer cross is not totally symmetric. What I stated (actually ALAN, but I seem to be the culprit now): It is necessary for the maximal state to have the quality that any quarter twist brings you closer to home. It is also true that any symmetric state also has this quality. What I noted was that the 28 move algorithm given shows that the Plummer Cross also fulfills this. HOWEVER, there may exist a 26 or 24 move algorithm such that only 6 of the 12 possible moves may be done first in order to fix it. About your question, even if you could prove the maximal distant point is symmetric, we still cannot prove how far away a configuration is away from home. If you could prove that, you would also God's Algorithm.