Message #873

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] 3^4 news
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 15:31:52 -0700

I can confirm that Matthew has indeed submitted a 251 twist solution
today. If anyone else is sitting on a shorter solution I encourage you
to dust it off and send it in. Also, if you think you might be able to
break that record, I suggest that you do it soon so that you can hold
the record for a little while at least. Even when it is in tern broken,
it will still live on in Remi’s Hall-of-Shortests
(http://www.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~rdurka/rubik/hallofshortest/)

Congratulations Matthew! You may know what you’ll be doing tomorrow, but
I can also guess what Roice might do too. :-)

-Melinda

matthewsheerin wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> In response to the posts mentioning the 300 move mark for the 3^4, I felt I should update that information, I have been sitting on this for too long anyway. At the end of November last year I finished trying to beat Roice’s 298 twist record. End of story? Not quite. When I reached the start of the last stage of the solve I thought I had already done enough to claim the title and spent little time optimising the last stage. Record sitting at 282 twists so far, but I wasn’t finished. However motivation started to slip a little at this point and I only spent a little bit of time here and there working on the solution.
> One day out of nowhere I decided to tackle it again. The last step of the solve is effectively a 3x3x3, so I worked on the solution on the train and found a good solution on the return journey from university (first year exams soon!), maybe 33 moves but I’m not sure on that. Transferred that solution into MC4D, and with a bit of effort, knocked the move count down to 251. End of. Er … no actually. Our old friend parity paid a visit at the end, adding around 20 moves to the solution (I believe this particular parity has been mentioned here by Klaus and I posted a solution). That was the story at the end of February, and motivation had disappeared for a while. I have a funny feeling I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow though …
>
> As they say, watch this space.
>
> Matthew