Message #779

From: Brandon Enright <bmenrigh@ucsd.edu>
Subject: Hello fellow hypercubers
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:25:21 +0000

Hey all! I’m pleased to introduce myself to such a small group of
smart and dedicated people. My name is Brandon Enright, I’m 25 and
have been playing with a Rubik’s cube of some form now for nearly 8
years. I have known about MC4D for a long time now (before the
Slashdot article!) but until recently I was too scared to make an
attempt.

Well, last week I decided to use Roice’s really excellent solving
guide (THANK YOU Roice!) as a basis for my own 3^4 attempt. It took
me about 10 hours and *way* too many twists (4106) but I succeeded in
solving the hypercube :-) It was great fun and now I’m disappointed
that I didn’t solve it years ago.

Solving the 3^4 was great fun and I really appreciate all the hard work
Don, Jay, Melinda, Roice, and others have put into this software. I
own a lot of twisty puzzles but I think solving the hypercube was the
most enjoyable solve of any twisty puzzle I have done.

I was going to send an introduction a few days ago but I got busy at
work and then I got busier thinking about how I would go about solving
the 4^4. After about 9 hours of work hypercubing today, I’m excited to
say I have successfully solved the 4^4 too via reduction. I was
quite worried about this solve before I started because I thought there
was a good chance I would run into some strange parity I have never seen
before and I’d either not recognize it or not know how to solve it. I
did run into a position parity between two groups of 2c face pieces but
it was trivial to adapt a 4^3 parity algorithm to the 4^4. My solution
took 5246 moves but again, I was pretty wasteful in my solving,
especially durring pairing of 3c edge pieces to make 3c edge groups.

I’m now thinking about how I would go about solving the 5^4. My only
concern right now is the 1c centers are likely to be much harder than
they were on the 4^4.

I have some technical questions about the turning mechanics simulated
in MC4D but I’m still reading the archives and doing research. I’ll
probably ask a few questions in the coming weeks.

In looking through the MC4D Hall of Fame, I can’t believe Matt went
from solving the 3^4, 4^4, and 5^4 to solving the the 7^5 all in less
than a year. Congratulations Matt, you truly are insane :-). And
thanks again to everybody else here that has conceived of, programmed,
and solved so many great puzzles. Your effort and dedication is what
has allowed me to also enjoy these great puzzles.

Brandon