h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I came one step closer to solving my 4x4x4 Rubik Cube this morning. I remember being in London for a h2g2 Meet. The following day, I went to the game shop near the British Museum and bought the cube. I met Phil and Metal Chicken there. That was a few years ago.

The cube came in a box which said "solution inside", but the solution turned out to be instructions on how to dismantle the cube so that you could re-assemble it in the correct arrangement.

I soon developed a method for nearly solving it. This would sort it out one in four times, but half the time would leave two edges swapped (which is not soluble using traditional 3x3x3 methods), and independently, half the time would leave one edge flipped - in the right place but the wrong way round.

Well, this morning over breakfast, I developed a method for swapping two edges. So now I'm one step closer to a full solution. My method will now solve the cube 50% of the time, after a complete random scrambling.

I once taught myself the 3x3x3 cube, but I don't remember any of it now. With the 4x4x4, what order do you do it in? I imagine it would be the inner squares first?

Will we be seeing a guide entry at the end of it?

I bought my nephew (when he was 8) a 2x2x2 Rubik's cube, which I thought would be a piece of cake to solve - but oddly enough, it wasn't easy at all...

The 2x2x2 is a special case of the 3x3x3, but it is not easy.

I've been searching my journals for a record of when I bought the cube, but I can't find it.

My method solves the centres of the faces first. Each "edge" consists of 2 little cubes, identically coloured, which must be grouped together. Then you can solve it like a normal 3x3x3, but at the end you might get into a configuration which would not be possible on the normal cube.

I wrote the h2g2 entry on the 3x3x3 cube: A2385597

I can't believe I've not read that entry! Thanks for that!

I've found the journal, thanks to a helpful Researcher:

F54784?thread=582084

So it was 2005 that I bought the cube.

Have you ever tried to play Conway's M13 Puzzle?

http://www.neverendingbooks.org/index.php/conways-puzzle-m13.html

(There used to be a Java applet, but the link appears to be broken.)

Ah, here is one:

http://avalon.ira.uka.de/home/egner/m13/m13.html

but apparently you need to scramble it yourself.

Oh, and of course you don't really need to scramble it by hand

(Apologies for the triple posting, too.)

I bought a 4x4x4 and a 5x5x5 years ago, but haven't got round to opening the 5x5x5 yet . . .

I got interested again when my grandson (who is now 10) got a 3x3x3. I remembered as much as I could of the first algorithm I learned, and found better versions of the bits I had forgotten, and taught it to him. Of course he picked it up and had it working in a morning.

I gfound a method for the 4x4x4 on the web, but haven't transcribed (let alone memorised) it yet. It does start with the centres, taking care to put the right ones opposite each other; then the edges are paired, transforming the puzzle into the 3x3x3; lastly any remaining oddities, states that don't occur in a 3x3x3, are sorted.

Gnomon, you should be encouraged to hear that those last sorting-out moves are short and handy.

Yes You Can!