Message #1193

From: schuma <mananself@gmail.com>
Subject: [MC4D] Re: 4^6 solved!
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:50:43 -0000

Congratulations, Andrey! I can do nothing but admire your achievement.

Melinda, thanks. Talking about puzzles that look easy but are hard to solve, I can only think of the 3D puzzle called Little Chop, a.k.a. 24-Cube. It looks identical to the Dino Cube. It has only 24 pieces, less than 26 pieces for 3x3x3. But it is way much harder to solve than 3x3x3. You could try it here:

http://users.skynet.be/gelatinbrain/Applets/Magic%20Polyhedra/index.htm

number 3.3.7.

All clean 3-cycle algorithms I know are pretty long. I think Little Chop has a higher difficulty-to-size quotient than {3}x{3}-3. {3}x{3}-3 is tricky, but Little Chop is just hard.

Interestingly, the internal structure of Little Chop is also very hard to build. The best structure without magnet has 209 pieces in total for the only 24 external pieces. Check the following link for details.

http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14128

So, Little Chop is really a monster for both solving and building.

Nan

— In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, Melinda Green <melinda@…> wrote:
>
> Congrats indeed! Pretty funny to because it was only back in July that
> Andrey said <http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/message/997>
> "I’m sure that I’ll not try to solve 3^6 in the nearest future. Even if
> it’ll take 5 days, it’s too much for me now." Well he kept his word by
> leapfrogging straight to the 4^6. I find it very odd that any puzzles
> are being solved out of order in either edge length or dimension since
> any shorter or lower puzzle should be practice for a larger version
> requiring only a fraction of the time.
>
> And let’s not forget to give congratulations to Nan for his success with
> the {3}x{3}-3. Wasn’t that the one that Andrey gave up on, or was that
> someone else or another puzzle altogether? I love his story of his
> patient and happy persistence as he repeatedly hit and then conquered
> one parity problem after another. This puzzle seems have a very high
> difficult-over-size quotient. I’ve long felt that the original 3^3 was
> the hardest puzzle for it’s size but now I’m thinking that this one tops
> it. Does anyone think that there are any puzzles that are harder for
> their size? I’d *love* to hold a speedsolving contest using this puzzle.
> As before, I’ll be happy to run that contest if 3 or more people compete
> and I’ll put up another custom t-shirt prize even if we only bet 4
> contestants.
>
> Most of all I just want to give the highest congratulations to both
> Andrey and Nan for their amazing firsts. Well done, guys!
> -Melinda
>
> On 9/26/2010 1:46 PM, Matthew wrote:
> > Nice work Andrey! 4032 pieces and 12288 stickers is what my formulae in Excel tell me, which is more pieces and stickers than the 3^7, even if it has one less dimension (which at this scale doesn’t even matter as much). I wonder how long it will be before someone conquers the 4^7 or even the 5^7, and I wish good luck to anyone attempting them, as it will require a lot of patience! What are your plans now Andrey? Any more huge puzzles to solve, or are you working on the speedsolving now? Speaking of which, it is amazing that you were working on this at the same time as getting some really good times on the 3^4! I can only wonder how you managed it all. Congrats again :)
> >
> > Matt
> >
> > — In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, "Andrey"<andreyastrelin@> wrote:
> >> It was long. Took about a month from me. I hadn’t expected any parity problems - and there wre none. I had serious orientation problem in the end of 5C stage (3-cycle of one last piece; it looked for me like 5C orientation of 3^5, that is very difficult for my algorithm), but now I see that there was easy way around this problem). Timer shows 40+ hours, but it started at the middle of 3C, so actual time is close to 70h. 175K twists, with longest macro of 65 twists (swap of 5C).
> >> Not very difficut… it’s only a cube :P
> >>
> >> 3^6 is still waiting for its solver.
> >> Good luck!
> >>
> >> Andrey
>