From cube-lovers-errors@mc.lcs.mit.edu Tue Dec 8 16:03:32 1998 Return-Path: Received: from sun28.aic.nrl.navy.mil (sun28.aic.nrl.navy.mil [132.250.84.38]) by mc.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1a/8.9.1-mod) with SMTP id QAA20365 for ; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:03:31 -0500 (EST) Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@mc.lcs.mit.edu Message-Id: <199812042200.RAA02263@pike.sover.net> Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998 17:00:42 -0500 To: cube-lovers@ai.mit.edu From: Nichael Lynn Cramer Subject: Re: Method for Solving the Professor's Cube (5x5x5) In-Reply-To: <7440f2$q5v@gap.cco.caltech.edu> References: >>Method for Solving the Professor's Cube (5x5x5) > >[snip] This is not a formal solution, but --say when I want to kill some time-- I often find it entertaining to solve the 5X cube in "ascending spirals". By which I mean: Start with the center face on a particular color (I always start with blue). Next solve the non-center face cubies, one by one, in order moving clockwise around the "loop". When that loop is done, then solve one of the blue-faced corners and then solve the remaining blue-sided edge cubies (in order). Then move up, solving each parallel-to-the-blue-face internal slice in order; and so on. Needless to say, this is hardly an optimal solution (in either time or number of moves). But think of it as a way to "practice scales" (Or as I say, just a good way to kill some time. ;-) There are obvious variations on this. For example, solve the individual faces in "ascending spirals" like the above, but instead of starting on a center face cubie, start on a corner cubie and work your way diagonally, in slices, across the cube toward the opposite corner. Or, for the truly masochistic, solve the cube --again a cubie at a time-- in a checkboard pattern (i.e. the result of putting the 5X cube through the Pons Asinorum transformation) doing first the half of the cubies in the first "phase" and then the cubies in the other. -- Nichael Cramer work: ncramer@bbn.com home: nichael@sover.net http://www.sover.net/~nichael/