Message #1686

From: schuma <mananself@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: 16-cell FT solved
Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 05:38:58 -0000

Here is my story of solving the 16-cell:

When Andrey posted MPUlt v0.1, I was impressed by the images. I decided to try one of the puzzles once the macro function was available. I chose the 16-cell because it had relatively less colors. I love 24-cell but really hate distinguishing 24 colors. I cannot even name more than 10 major colors. At that time I studied the types of pieces in the 16-cell. But I didn’t start looking for algorithms.

When Andrey posted MPUlt v0.2, the macro function was available. An actual solve became feasible for me. So I began to look for algorithms. One of the biggest breakthrough in searching for algos is, to find a convenient viewpoint. I don’t like the default view of 16-cell, where I can only see eight cells. I found that using ctrl+left click to center a cell gave a perfect viewpoint. So I setup my 3-cycle algorithms in that viewpoint. The second breakthrough is that I realized all 16 cells can be grouped into two groups. A sticker belonging to a group-A cell never goes to a group-B cell. So we don’t need 16 very different colors. We only need eight very distinct colors. And for the other eight I use the darker versions of the same colors. It took me some time to customize the colors. "Viewpoint" and "color pattern", two important things. Last night I worked very late and found algorithms needed to solve the small pieces around corners. Those are the hard part. I apparently missed the usual time to bed. The result is I couldn’t fall asleep till 5am. I don’t know if it’s excitation of the new puzzle or not.

Today Andrey posted MPUlt v0.3, which made my study of inner pieces much easier. But even without v0.3 I was planning to solve it within one or two days. In the 16-cell there are nine types of pieces. So six levels of rank cannot fully separate all nine types. In "rank 5+" there are three types of pieces, which leads to some difficulty seeing the inner corner pieces.

Finally it was the actual solve, which took 3 hours and 24 minutes in total. It was not painful.

Andrey, thank you for making this puzzle. Excellent piece of work!

Nan

— In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, "schuma" <mananself@…> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone
>
> I’ve just solved 16-cell FT (cell-turning) using Andrey’s MPUlt 0.3. The log file can be found here:
> <http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/files/Nan%20Ma/>
>
> Phew…
>
> MUUlt is really great! For a puzzle of this size, I can’t imagine a better experience. All the turning and macros are one-click. I can use macro when defining another macro, and so on.
>
> Nan
>