Message #211

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: 5^4 - I’ve managed to solve it (Michal Wizner - Poland)
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 15:52:21 -0800

hello michal,

congratulations on slaying the monster. the 5^4 is truly frightening to
behold and i’m always impressed when someone goes up against it. i’ve
added your latest accomplishment to the hall-of-fame. i’m cc’ing the
group here as i’m sure everyone will be interested in your experience
and in the answers to the questions you ask.

i’m glad that you found the java version helpful in this task. i’m sorry
that you needed macros to finish it because then i could have added you
to the first table as the 1st no-macro 5^4 and not had to create a
completely new table! seriously that’s not a big deal and i knew i would
have to do it before too long anyway. (note to everyone: the 1st
no-macro 5^4 is still up for grabs!)

i’m not surprised that you say the smaller puzzles look like child’s
play. so are you ready to join the 1st 4D speed solving contest? we only
need 3 people, and if you join i think we may have enough contestants.

regarding java macro support, this feature remains to be ported but i’m
not familiar with the c++ code and after a month of work to get to this
point i needed a break and hopefully a little help.

i’m slightly surprised that you were able to pick up your work with the
linux version since the file format is not backwards compatible but i am
glad that it worked for you.

regarding larger puzzles, the problem is that they take up exponentially
enormous amount of memory. i just tested and found that i could create
an 8^4 puzzle on a machine with 2GB RAM but it failed at 9^4. the
biggest problem with offering these huge puzzles is that parts of the
code are set up for the worst case so that offering larger puzzles would
drastically increase the memory requirements of all users. with effort,
that could be redesigned so that only users attempting to use huge
puzzles would require the memory but that will require someone suitably
motivated to do the work.

-melinda

kIrFo wrote:

>Hello Melinda,
>
> At last I’ve done it:) I spent four days working extremly hard on 5^4.
>It’s a fantastic feeling when You solve such a big hypercube. After that
>smaller sizes of hypercube look very funny. I’m getting used to big cubes.
>Maybe 6^4 in the near future;p
>
> While solving 5^4 I used java version, but when I started to join edges
>- linux version with macros was indispensable.
>(By the way, are You going to put macros into practice in java version?)
>The java version is really good. It works beyond reproach.
>To solve centers without any problem I needed to make stickers smaller so
>the "sticker shrink option" is useful very much. In other words good job.
>
> In replay to my last letter You wrote:
>
>
>>congratulations on your new accomplishment! you are now the 7th person
>>in the world to solve the 4^4 cube. at this point i bet the 3^4 looks
>>like child’s play to you! perhaps the 5^4 still looks frightening to you
>>but probably not impossible like it looks to the rest of us. if you
>>solve that one i will have to create a whole new table in the
>>hall-of-fame but i don’t mind the work because it will be nothing
>>compared to what you would do to earn it!
>>
>>
>
> Thank You for Your reply and I’m happy that I could "put a piece of me in hypercubing"
>
>Best regards,
>Michal Wizner
>
>
>