From cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Mon Jun 9 19:04:20 1997 Return-Path: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Received: from oolong.camellia.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by oolong.camellia.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id TAA09819; Mon, 9 Jun 1997 19:04:20 -0400 Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970609160106.00ade4a0@sdgmail.ncsa.uiuc.edu> X-Sender: mag@sdgmail.ncsa.uiuc.edu X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Mon, 09 Jun 1997 16:01:06 -0500 To: cube-lovers@ai.mit.edu From: Tom Magliery Subject: Re: Designations for the cubes (proposal) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:31 AM 6/8/97 -0400, Nicholas Bodley unabashedly said: > > Peter (Reitan, I think; sorry) (who is not Karen) brought up the >clumsiness of such designations as "5X5X5". I find these downright clumsy >to type (although the Caps Lock key helps). In my private world, I simply >refer to the Pocket Cube as "[the] two", the original Rubik's as "[the] >three", Revenge as "[the] four", and the biggest available as "[the] >five". > > I think that provided we understand that we are referring to the >well-known family of true cubes, it should be OK simply to refer to "the >three", for instance. Granted, these names require more keystrokes, but >numerals should be OK, as in "the 3". I have another suggestion, which might be slightly less likely to require explanation to a newcomer. I know how to *pronounce* it, but I'm not sure how I would recommend *spelling* it. (Considerations include terseness, ease of typing -- which is of course not the same thing!, and likeliness to be mispronounced by a reader.) The pronunciation is three-bye, four-bye, five-bye, ... Possible spellings include: 3by, 4by, 5by, ... 3-by, 4-by, 5-by, ... 3x, 4x, 5x, ... three-by, four-by, five-by, ... mag -- .---o Tom Magliery, Research Programmer (217) 333-3198 .---o `-O-. NCSA, 605 E. Springfield O- mag@ncsa.uiuc.edu `-O-. o---' Champaign, IL 61820 http://sdg.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~mag/ o---'