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Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 11:00:50 -0700
To: cube-lovers@ai.mit.edu
From: Mark Pilloff <mdp1@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: Square One

At 12:12 AM 6/19/97 -0700, J.M. wrote:
>The ones I have trouble with are the
>Sqewb and the Alexander's Star.  Anybody got a good solution for any of
>these?
>
>Joe McGarity

I finally came up with a solution to the Alexander Star last year.  I
haven't ever written out all of the details, but here are some helpful
hints.  First of all, the star is almost identical to the Megaminx (aka,
magic dodecahedron, etc.) with all of the corners pieces removed.  The only
reason I say "almost" is that on the star, every individual piece is doubly
degenerate.  This sometimes leads to a problem wherein using the Megaminx
moves seems to leads to an insoluble position.  The trick in this case is
two swap two of the degenerate pieces while disturbing as little of the rest
of the star as possible.  This has always worked perfectly for me.  As for
the rest of the star, I usually find that I can solve most of the star
(except for the uppermost regions) just by inspection.  From there, very
slight modifications of Rubik's cube manipulations are useful.  It's
worthwhile to note that locally, the star (and the megaminx) are identical
to the cube (except, perhaps, for the missing corners on the star).  Thus,
cube moves which only affect small portions of the cube will often be
successful on the star or megaminx.  In any event, I'm not going to write
out explicit moves because I believe solutions to the megaminx are floating
on the net as well, but I hope this is somewhat helpful.  If there is really
strong demand for explicit solutions, I'll see what I can do about that.

Good luck,
Mark

************************************
**    Mark D. Pilloff             **
**    mdp1@uclink4.berkeley.edu   **
************************************