Message #643

From: David Vanderschel <DvdS@Austin.RR.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] a short diversion into sticker and cubie counts
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:27:09 -0600

On Tuesday, February 03, "rev_16_4" <rev_16_4@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Order-m n-puzzle, I’ve been trying to think of that
>terminology for a while. Thank you! That’ll simplify
>most of my posts in the future! I think I prefer
>order-m n-cube, but n-puzzle is a little more
>descriptive. However, I think with the existence of
>the magic 120-cell, which is a 4-puzzle, we shouldn’t
>assume the puzzle is an n-cube.

I can debate that. I don’t think that there is all
that much terminology from higher dimensional Rubik
analogues that applies directly to other twisty
puzzles. One can push generalization so far that you
wind up having to qualify the special cases too much.

I do not like to call an instance of a puzzle a "cube"
because it really isn’t _one_. It is a pile of little
cubes with some constraints on what arrangements are
possible. Admittedly, the shape of the pile is
cubical; but it is its transformability that is of
real interest.

Regards,
David V.