Message #1004

From: matthewsheerin <damienturtle@hotmail.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Sub-100K for 3^7
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:34:09 -0000

I have to agree here. Everyone will have a different experience of this, but overall I think everyone’s experience will at the very least overlap and probably be reasonably similar. Tranisition from 3D to 4D is hard. If you already have experience of 4D geometry it will obviously go a lot smoother, but for people like me who found these puzzles from searching the internet for cubing material and had no previous encounter with 4D, the first transition is very confusing. I believe the best solution is a mixture of reading about the mathematics and principles of 4D, and simply playing around with MC4D until you grasp the concepts involved. After solving one or two of the 4D cubes, the tranisition to 4D is pretty much complete. For me, transition to 5D was also a bit of hard work, although this time I was already armed with theory and a reasonable understanding of 4D cubes (though not as solid an understanding as I now have). A few days playing with MC5D soon fixed this. After spending a few months with MC5D (my infamous 7^5 solve), transition to 7D simply involved understanding how Andrey had projected all the dimensions (showing stickers of secondary faces confused me at first until I knew what they were showing me). So for me at least, after becoming familiar with 5D, anything bigger is just more of the same. The same concept, and the same solving style, just longer with a lot more pieces. Like Andrey, I am in the situation I can solve any 3^N, it just might be a little tedious. It is also interesting to note that with enough familiarity, the 2C pieces on any 3^N are fairly trivial to solve, not much harder than the edges on a 3x3x3. Actually, I used the same method to solve the 2C pieces of the 3^7 as I would use if I am solving just the edges of a 3x3x3.

Also, the {3,3,3}3 confused me at first, but it is easy to get used to, and it can then be solved very similarly to the standard pyraminx without too much effort. Some of the more unusual shapes I haven’t spent enough time on to figure out how to solve. Those are on my to-do list :)

Matt

— In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, Anthony Deschamps <anthony.j.deschamps@…> wrote:
>
> I would say that solving MC5D makes you more than qualified to solve MC7D.
> Understanding 4D is difficult, of course, but it’s close enough to 3D that
> you can solve the puzzle without a really deep understanding of it. By the
> time you finish MC5D, at least in my experience, you stop thinking of it in
> a visual way and more so in a mathematical/conceptual way. From that point
> on, it’s kind of like being able to solve a 5^3 and you know you’d be able
> to solve a 9^3 if you sat down long enough to do it.
>
> I’m in the middle of an MC7D solve, and to me, it’s very similar to the 5D,
> since I use all the same theorems in order to solve it.
>
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 7:18 PM, deustfrr <deustfrr@…> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Don’t push yourself! Learning a new 3D puzzle takes a while, but learning
> > new 4D and 5D puzzles?
> > solving MC5D doesn’t mean you can do MC7D? Darn. I wonder how you did it?
> > (Magic!)
> >
> > — In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com <4D_Cubing%40yahoogroups.com>, "Andrey"
> > <andreyastrelin@> wrote:
> >
> > >And there are too many challenges ahead: 4^5, some 4D puzzles (like
> > {3}x{3},4), maybe 120cell (but I’m not sure about it), implementation of
> > 24cell and 5D simplex…
> >
> > > Andrey
> >
> >
> >
>