Message #684

From: Klaus <klaus.weidinger@yahoo.com>
Subject: Finally solved the 3^4
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:19:38 -0000

Hi everyone!

My name is Klaus and I am a cuber from Bavaria, Germany. I am 18 years old (born on 19.04.1991) and going to finish school this year. After that I’m going to study maths in Munich. Some of my hobbies are juggling, playing keyboard, of course solving Rubik’ Cube, and many others.
Yesterday I finally managed to solve the 3^4 for the first time and I have to say that this is a really good feeling.
The first time I downloaded the programme and made a few twists and turns I was just baffled by its complexity. At that time I haven’t thought that I would ever be able to solve it and stopped trying. That was about a year ago.
In the meantime I started writing a paper about the 4-dimensional cube (the normal one, not the Rubik’s) for school and therefore started to deal with higher dimensions. I then reopened the programme once again and tried to find a way to solve it. But I wasn’t able and even Roice’s solution wasn’t very helpful to me. Well, perhaps it would have been, if I used macros, but I don’t like leaving all the work to the computer.
After all, I finally came up with my own method how to solve the cube corners-first. It was a bit hard to always keep track of what’s going on, but 775 (Melinda counted 774) turns later the programme told me that i’m finished.
I think that I’m going to have a second attempt soon and that I perhaps will be able to stay below 500 twists, because I now have detected some little twist-consuming traps, that I didn’t consider while developing my solving-method.
However, beating Roice’s 298 twists will still be a very hard job for everyone and I don’t now, if I’m able to accomplish this.

Have a nice twist, Klaus