Message #613

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Melinda solves the cube
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:31:33 -0800

I have a particularly fun announcement to make tonight which is that I
have finally solved the 4D cube. It might surprise many of you that I
had never before solved this puzzle that I’d helped to write but it’s
true. It’s been over 20 years since Don Hatch and I wrote the first
working version so it’s been something of an embarrassment to me to have
never actually solved it. Well, with the number of solvers fast
approaching 100 I decided to give up my hopes of solving it entirely on
my own and learn Roice’s solution. Even with the heavy use of macros it
still took me five nights and 1844 twists to achieve. Even with all the
tools it was difficult and sometimes frightening for me. I’m very happy
to have finally checked off one of the important things that I had
wanted to achieve before I die. I also come away with ideas for a few
improvements that I want to make to the program. Thanks to all of you
for all of your encouragement and great ideas. This program is one of my
proudest accomplishments and my solution is the icing on the cake. I’ve
uploaded that solution a snapshot of the final screen to the Yahoo site
in case anyone’s curious. Your suggestions for how to improve my
solution method are most definitely *not* welcome as I have no desire to
try for a shortest record or to tackle the larger puzzles! :-)
Actually I know that subsequent solutions will be much easier now so I
wouldn’t rule that out but if you ever catch me trying to solve the 120
cell or 5D puzzles, please just shoot me!

Thanks again for all your support and for letting me brag about my
personal accomplishment.
-melinda