prog: (zendo)
prog ([personal profile] prog) wrote2005-05-28 12:39 pm

Cool

Icehouse game-designmeister Jacob Davenport's Rubik's Cube Artbook (with contributions from various other Wunderlanders) got boingboinged.

[identity profile] cortezopossum.livejournal.com 2005-05-28 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Rubik's Cube Art -- wow. That's so 1980's :-) That brings back memories.

I still have my Rubik's cubes -- I got the classic 'learn to solve it' book but didn't want to use it until I solved it on my own at least once.

6 months later I did (purely by accident actually). I had worked out how to solve one side (fully solve -- not just one side same color, but the entire top layer aligned correctly). I just kept solving one side after another (with an occasional second side being solved as well) and one day it just happened -- all 6 sides.

The method I came up with for solving the top layer was nearly the same as the method the solution book had -- he just went further. After memorizing that technique I was able to get my solution time down to just under 3 minutes regularly.

Later I got one of those 4x4x4 Rubik's Revenges and learned it wasn't that much more difficult. It was just a matter of lining up the 4 squares in the center of each side, then aligning the middle two blocks on all the edges. Do that and the problem reduces to a 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube.

I never did buy one of those 5x5x5 Rubik's Cubes pictured in that web site although I remember a dream that had something like a 20x20x20 Cube on display in a museum somewhere. It wasn't very stable and some of the pieces were missing from it.