Message #794

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Introduction
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:13:59 -0800

Welcome Craig!

That’s a great introductory story.

As you already know, we figured out your problem which (for the benefit
of everyone else) turned out to be caused by poor handling of
potentially empty macro files. If anyone else is having similar
problems, please simply move or delete your macro file or get the latest
version which contains a fix for this situation.

It’s also good to know that we have a colorblind user. Does this cause
you problems with any other parts of the UI? Also, if you do manage to
create a color file that works well for 8-colored puzzles, would you
please sent it to me? I’d love to see an example of what works best for you.

Regarding your mathematician friend who told you "where to go", I’ve had
similar reactions from some of my more mathematically inclined friends
as well, including recently my math professor uncle who first introduced
me to the original 3D puzzle! My guess is that the thought of a 4D
Rubik’s cube strikes them with terror because they feel that they should
be able to figure it out and are worried that they may fail if they try.
Or perhaps they are afraid to spend any real time with it because
they’re worried that they will feel compelled to solve it and that that
will require a lot of work.

One thing that I’ve done in attempting to calm people’s fears is to
point out that there are lots of fun things that you can do with the
puzzle besides the full solve of the 3^4. The most natural challenge is
to learn to easily solve one random twist, and then perhaps two or more
random twists. These exercises are extremely helpful in learning to
understand 4D objects, or at least their 3D shadows.

MC4D version 4.0 now gives us some even better activities to offer:
Visualizations of a whole zoo of exotic and beautiful 4D objects, and
the ability to rotate them in 4D via shift-dragging. We left the
length-1 puzzles in the menu specifically for this purpose. If anyone
has additional ideas for understanding friend’s fears of the puzzle, or
of ways to gently introduce them to our favorite puzzle, please share
them with us.

Congratulations on all your cube solutions, and good luck putting
together that exploded Lego factory that we call the 5^4!
-Melinda

Craig Durward wrote:
> Hello everyone
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> I’ve just joined this group. My name is Craig Durward, I’m 34 and I live in Edinburgh in Scotland.
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> I first discovered Magic Cube 4d about a year ago. There was a fair amount of interest in the 3d versions at my work, which
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> I picked up on. I hadn’t been interested in them since I was a kid, and wasn’t much good at them then anyway. So coming
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> straight to the 4d versions proved a bit too much for me at the time, although I found the concept interesting and liked the implementation.
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> A year later and I’m better at the 3d ones (but by no means an expert), so I started giving the 4d ones another go.
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> It was a happy surprise for me that I found the 2^4 relatively straightforward. A week later I managed the 3^4 and I
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> finished the 4^4 on Thursday. I’ve just started the 5^4 which is proving to be tough, mainly because I can’t see where the
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> bits are supposed to be! Being colourblind is a bit of a disadvantage too - it’s difficult to find 8 colours that look sufficiently different for me to distinguish easily.
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> I’d probably give the cubes a rest and try some of the new ones on the new version, but it doesn’t work on my creaky old machine for some unknown reason :-(. This is especially annoying as an earlier build worked fine last week, but doesn’t any more. So I’ll just have to keep squinting for the time being - although sometimes I think I’m looking at an explosion in a Lego factory.
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> Many thanks to everyone involved in creating it, it’s kept me occupied for hours and hours and probably will do for a long time to come. I’d like to help but I’m nowhere near talented enough. I’m afraid I’m restricted to just being enthusiastic, so please keep up the good work!
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> I told a friend of mine the other day that I was trying to solve a cube has more combinations than there are atoms in the known universe, and he told me where to go. Normally I wouldn’t find this surprising, but he’s a mathematician…
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> Craig
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