Message #352

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: 2^4 contest #2 update & news
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 14:35:08 -0800

Dear Cubists,

I’ve only received one submission for the second 2^4 contest: a
record-tying 96 twists from Kate Lazar. Excellent work Kate!

I think we can therefore end this contest prematurely. In its place I
will offer some interesting news and a new challenge.

First the news:

Don and I have been busy. Don has fixed the compress function that he’d
designed a long time ago to squeeze out the rotates and to combine
multiple twists on the same face in a sequence of moves. This makes the
"cheat" version of solutions look much smarter, and it shortens the
"real" solve function by roughly 15%.

At the same time, I’ve been at work fixing some bugs plus I made it so
that you can now load log files that do not include history data. It
does that by restoring the puzzle state directly from the face color
data block that follows the first line in the log files. That means that
you can now design and import your own pretty patterns. You can then use
the real solve method to see if they are reachable from the solved
state, etc.

And now for the new challenge:

Below is a state-only log file for what I suspect may be the 4D
equivalent of the "superflip" pattern. I call it the "superduperflip" . :-)
The challenge is to come up with the shortest solution for this one.
There’s lots of regularity–in fact I think that it has the same
symmetry as the solved state–so it should be pretty easy to find a
short solution, right? Well, grab the latest version of MC4D and give it
a try. Be sure to also copy the period at the end when you go to paste
it into a log file.

Good luck!
-Melinda
___________________________

MagicCube4D 2 0 0 3
000010000020304050000060000
111171111121314151111101111
222212222272324202222262222
333313333323730353333363333
444414444424047454444464444
555515555505354575555565555
666606666626364656666676666
777767777727374757777717777
.