From cube-lovers-errors@curry.epilogue.com Wed Jun 5 19:50:57 1996 Return-Path: cube-lovers-errors@curry.epilogue.com Received: from curry.epilogue.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by curry.epilogue.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id TAA07832 for ; Wed, 5 Jun 1996 19:50:56 -0400 Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@curry.epilogue.com Date: Wed, 5 Jun 96 18:32:29 EDT From: hoey@aic.nrl.navy.mil Message-Id: <9606052232.AA22039@sun34.aic.nrl.navy.mil> To: Nicholas Bodley , Wei-Hwa Huang Cc: Cube-Lovers@ai.mit.edu Subject: Fragile parts in 4^3 On 1 Jun 1996, Wei-Hwa Huang wrote: {Mostly snipped} > As another aside, I don't understand the rationale behind the canonical > 4x4x4 design. It would seem to me that it's better to have two rings of > grooves in each dimension, so that the face pieces could have "fatter" > legs and not break off as easily. If the center pieces had one leg each (instead of a 1/4-leg) you would have _one_ groove around each equator (instead of _half_ a groove). Remember, it's important that the inner sphere stay in sync with at least one of the sets of face centers so that after you've finished the turn you will be able to turn in an orthogonal direction. I don't know how that would work with the turns of the face. You might need a switch that looks kind of like the following where two equators meet: I I * * * I * * ============O===============O======== * I * I * I * * I * * I * I * I * O O I * * I * * * I where the legs live at the "O" positions when a turn is not in progress. But this looks dangerous to me; I think there is a lot of potential for derailment. Dan Hoey Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil