On Thu, 11 Jan 2001, Joshua Bell wrote:
> I'm onto a new kick now - Rubik's Cubes.
>
> I still can't solve the things (not enough patience) but I've always
> been more fascinated with the mechanics than the combinatorial puzzle
> aspects. As a kid I got my first one in 1980 when the craze hit bit. I
> had it apart shortly thereafter to marvel over the structure.
My father taught me a few simple tricks, and I have an algorithm for
solving the cube now that doesn't match anyone else's that I've seen.
> My collection now includes:
>
> 2x2x2 Pocket Cube - the internal mechanism is essentially a 3x3x3 cube
> burried inside!
So THAT'S how they did it! My father bought 1 or 2 of those; I have one
of them now; you play with that for long enough, you get to where you can
apply the corner cubie knowledge to a large cube.
> 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube (the classic)
There's gotta be 1 or 2 of those knocking around here somewhere, but I
don't *see* one from my desk chair. (Maybe there's one in the box of toys
on the shelf of my closet. I ought to go through it and pull a couple of
things out, and stick a few things into it....)
> 4x4x4 Rubik's Revenge (www.rubiks.com is selling them again)
Cool. I had one, one of the "middles" broke, and it's not good for
scrambling, but it can be useful for a visual aid if you need a 4X4 cube
for something. (Dan borrowed the busted one at one point, I think even
took it to work, to help with some 3-D geometry stuff or something.)
> 5x5x5 Professor's Cube (www.mefferts.com sells these and many others)
I've gotta go there, then! :)
> Pyraminx - a tetrahedron; had it since I was a kid
Too easy. I got one for Christmas and had it figured out before
lunchtime. I think one's in the box in my closet....
That's all I ever had of stuff Joshua describes....
> If anyone has such things burried in a basement, unused... well, I
> wouldn't be averse to buying 'em (or borrowing them to make molds from
> once I've made some attempts).
I'm not giving any of my puzzles up, sorry! :) But if you are successful
in attempts to reproduce things, I might be a potential customer, for the
novelty if nothing else.
When the cube craze was going full force, a number of kids bought books on
solving it, memorized the stuff in the books, and became insufferable
show-offs that way. My father would not *permit* any such books in the
house; if we wanted to look at the stuff on cubes in Scientific American,
we were welcome to, but that was it for literature on the subject. He
wanted us to figure things out ourselves, and I'm glad now that he did.
But, we visited cousins in August of one year, and then were visiting them
at Christmas because Suzy got married a couple of days before Christmas;
and Andy's wife thought it would be a good thing to give my sister a book
on solving the cube, since she couldn't and I could. (I think I got a
travel Scrabble set from them. Suzy gave us both socks. My father gave
me a book of 7 H. G. Wells novels, and that was probably the keenest
present I got that Christmas....)
Julia
