Message #3147

From: alvin5553@gmail.com
Subject: 120Cell Solved!!!
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 17:43:29 -0700

About a year ago, Ray solved the 120Cell. It’s about a year and now I have solved it. I started a few weeks after Ray did, and it took a year for me to complete this puzzle. So back then, I solved the cross, and then I had no idea how to do F2L or S2L, since on the 3^4 I always did it with the bottom cell invisible. I was thinking to solve do F2L (literally, the 3D way, how you do it on a Megaminx) and it doesn’t work, I wasn’t thinking "4D" enough. I figured out how to do F2L and S2L and got going. The first cell took very long, the first few cells took like half a year, which is like no progress. About this time, I took a pretty long break from the 120Cell, and then one day decided to continue going. As I started to do more F2L pairs, I got better and get to complete a cell. In the beginning I had always messed up solved cells while doing others, so I always pair pieces up in the "safe zone" (when doing layer 2, layer 3 and layer 4 cells are affected, but layer 5 is not, so I do my buildings there etc.), I can’t make as much progress as Ray does, but I make myself do 2 cells per day, and then progress was definitely noticeable. Originally I’ve calculated that, if I do 2 cells per day, I should be able to complete it in August, which means I still get to break the age record since by birthday was October 20th. But things didn’t go as planned, it went better than planned! After layer 5, the rest of the layers just went really quickly.

There were tons of “obstacles” when solving. During layer 5, I started to pay attention to the pieces and checked if I solved it incorrectly(this issue almost caused me to just give up, since I couldn’t find where I was doing wrong, luckily someone found the issue), as there were more pieces like the gray-gray-gray. I remember on one of the F2L pairs, I struggled to see if I inserted the pair correctly or not (with maxed sticker settings), and I ended up solving an S2L pair first to check. On layer 6, I noticed there was not much building space so I had to bring in layer 9. When solving layer 7, I started to do all RKT moves to pair and insert, I noticed I didn’t need to do layer 8 since when layer 7 is done, the rest of layer 8 pieces belong to layer 9. Something happened when I started layer 9, so I finished layer 7/8 and then I saved the puzzle, reset it to test some algorithms, and then accidentally saved it. That means the loss of all progress done. Fortunately, I had a backup, however it was not the most updated so I had to redo layer 7, since then I saved a backup copy whenever I complete a significant portion of the puzzle.

I did layer 9, up do the LLOLL stage (for more info, check the SZ method: http://wiki.superliminal.com/wiki/3%5E4#Notation http://wiki.superliminal.com/wiki/3%5E4#Notation ), at first it all went well, the OLL. But then I found an unoriented edge on the LLF2L. But if there was an incorrect edge when OLL was normal, you know what happens when I solve that incorrect edge in LLF2L, right? Yep, the OLL becomes "corrupted", with a 4 edges oriented case. So that must means somewhere in the lower layers, I have solved a piece incorrectly. I tryed to avoid this issue but it still occured. I emailed Ray for help, and he found the incorrectly oriented edge in layer 4, which was before I started to pay attention to the unoriented edge problem. He told me I solve it like usual and deal with the problem later. I solved Layer 9 leaving the two unoriented edges. The wrong edge wasn’t a normal three cycle(which can be solved with the 3rd Three Color Series), it was a case where you would normally use the (Special Three Color Series). But the two pieces being so far away, I find that too hard, so I made a different approach: ELL (w/ RKT). I use the algorithm: R U R’ U’ Rw’ U2 R U R U’ R2 U2 L. Of course I changed up the alg so it would work with Megaminx RKT (for example: Rw’ into L’). That alg flips two stickers of a 3-color piece. So I use that and finally solved this puzzle.

I have a video recorded to show what had happened: http://youtu.be/dP61mI0d5TM http://youtu.be/dP61mI0d5TM

Can’t believe I can do it in this year, this puzzle gave me a hard time, the first few cells took half a year, and before I know, I’m already on my last few turns (I originally intended to solve this while I was age 13, but that didn’t happen). A coincidence is that Ray also had a similar "error" in the end of this solve and also another person (out of the other 8) also had a similar 2c problem. . I was also worried that, since Windows 10 came out on July 29th and I reserved a copy, if Magic120Cell wasn’t compatible with Win10, that was basically game over for me. After I solved the puzzle, I was seriously expecting the “congratulations” window to not pop out which meant another issue to fix.

This is first attempt btw, and my name is currently not on the Hall of Insanity yet, but it should update pretty soon.