Date: 31 December 1980 22:35-EST From: Ed Schwalenberg Subject: bigger&better cubes To: DDYER at USC-ISIB cc: cube-lovers at MIT-MC Obviously the age of mechanical polyhedra is long past. I propose that the center cubies (polyhedries?) of the electronic marvels be equipped with fixed arrows so that those who are hacking the higher-order problem can be happy. (I really like this idea because it closely resembles one of my favorite ideas: a keyboard which has small character displays in each keytop in lieu of engraving; when you hit SHIFT the legends change from qwertyiop to QWERTYUIOP and when you hit CONTROL+META they change to ETAIONSHRDLU, etc.) The all-electronic cube has many other potential features: instant resettability, a stack of saved states, subroutines.... Given extensible, customizible, self-documenting editors, I don't see why we should settle for polyhedra that are any less featureful. Speaking of higher-order polyhedra, I hereby nominate the tetrahedron as being appropriate to my own level of expertise.