From cube-lovers-errors@mc.lcs.mit.edu Mon Mar 29 18:40:48 1999 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 SAA21466 for ; Mon, 29 Mar 1999 18:40:47 -0500 (EST) Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@mc.lcs.mit.edu From: wheeler@cipr.rpi.edu (Frederick W. Wheeler) Message-Id: <14080.1711.289304.134028@cipr.no_spam.rpi.edu> Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 18:03:11 -0500 (EST) To: Cube-Lovers@ai.mit.edu Subject: Inventing your own techniques I've been reading Cube-Lovers e-mail for a few months now and am enjoying it very much. It is one of the great benefits of the Internet that people with a common interest, but spread so far apart, can so easily communicate like this. For me, the most fun, and the ultimate challenge, in cubing comes from figuring out how to solve the puzzle in the first place. I avoid published and posted techniques. I'd really like to hear from people on this list on how you go about inventing new moves and techniques or how you feel about learning to solve a puzzle on your own. I vaguely remember how I learned to solve the 3x3x3 back in the early 80's. I was in 8th grade at the time; now I'm in 25th grade. According to my family I quite thoroughly infatuated by the puzzle at the time. Solving one side was faily easy and then I was able to get 2 and 3 sides, but with a disorganized and perhaps even random method. I heard from a friend (who had a solution book) that the key to solving the top and bottom was a set of special moves that allowed you to manipulate the bottom corner pieces without affecting the top side. I set out to find these moves on my own and did. I would carefully record the position and orientation of each corner piece, then move a top corner out of position and then back into position in a different way and check how the bottom side changed. This led to a few sequences which I could repeatedly apply to solve the bottom corners. The rest was fairly easy, except for the situation in which two edges were flipped. I had to have someone show me a move to get past this point. I couldn't figure it out. Otherwise, I had a 50% chance of solving on any given attempt. Now I have a 4x4x4 and a 5x5x5 cube as well. I've been able to solve these primarily using extensions of the techniques I learned for the 3x3x3 and a few new extras, but only to a point. I'm now stuck if one pair of "wing" pieces are switched. If two pairs are switched, I can solve it, but not if only one are switched. Again, I solve it 50% of the times I set out. Of course, there was at least on posted solution for this very problem to this list a couple of weeks ago. I saved it to a folder just in case I decide to resort to it, but in the mean time want to figure this out on my own. Regards, Fred Wheeler -- Fred Wheeler wheeler@cipr.rpi.edu www.cipr.rpi.edu/wheeler