The way we solve the cube, it's not a puzzle.  The Rubik's Cube, when 
solved without being taught, is indeed a puzzle.  The fact that the 
Rubik's Cube has 12 additional orientation combinations for the centers 
(did I get that number right) is pretty trivial.  If they want to 
define puzzle that way, fine, we just draw some arrows.

If anything, I think just citing the number of Rubik's Cube 
competitions compared to Sudoku competitions, and I think we can rest 
our case.

Tyson Mao
MSC #631
California Institute of Technology

On Jan 5, 2006, at 1:21 AM, Jasmine Lee wrote:

> Today a friend showed me a passage in her Sudoku book which claimed 
> that
> the Rubik's Cube is NOT a puzzle. Their claim is that anything which 
> has
> more than one solved state is not a puzzle. Their reason is that 
> because
> the centres on a standard Rubik's Cube can have various different
> orientations and we still consider it 'solved', then it isn't a puzzle.
> By this definition only supercubes are puzzles.
>
> I thought the book sounded pretty crap. My friend didn't necessarily
> believe it either, but had told me about it because she knew I'd be
> interested in anything that mentioned cubes. Maybe the author was just
> trying to convince sudoku solvers that they are cooler than cubers?? ;)
>
> What does everyone else think?
>
> BTW, I consulted Wikipedia to see what it had to say on the matter:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzle (You'll see that the cube is almost
> the definition of puzzle in Wikipedia! Well, not quite, but you'll see
> what I mean if you follow this link.)
>
> Jasmine
> http://speedcuber.blogspot.com
>
> -- 
> http://www.fastmail.fm - Access all of your messages and folders
>                           wherever you are
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>



 
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