Message #1962

From: Roice Nelson <roice3@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] IRP {4,6} VT solved
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:45:12 -0600

Thank you for this analysis Andrey! It was delightful to read, and to
follow along with the puzzle open, reproducing the behaviors. I think my
colors might be mapped differently (gray is not opposite light blue for
me), but I could see everything you describe :)

Roice

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 6:34 AM, Andrey <andreyastrelin@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> today I tried to solve {4,6} (12 colors, vertex-turning) in IRP mode. It
> was hard enough. One twist touches about 1/3 of puzzle pieces (almost as in
> 3^3), and at the first glance, two intersecting circles have two areas of
> intersection. But some investigation revealed that actually number of
> elements in this puzzle is not 92 (as expected), but only 50: all
> non-vertex pieces are grouped in rigid pairs of elements symmetric with
> respect to any vertex (in surface geometry). For example, what we see as
> central grey central element is actually a half of grey-light_blue 2C
> piece. Edge elements are actually 4C, and petal elements are also grouped
> in pairs - but again, grey color is grouped only with light blue. So we can
> swap these elements… but not every pair of them - there are two orbits of
> petal stickers. I noticed it too late and spent some time trying to find
> setup moves that are actually impossible.
> Result is 517 twists. It was only 25-twist scramble, but I didn’t see any
> shortcuts, so it was like full-scrambled for me.
>
> Andrey