Message #1173

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: 4^6 solved!
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:18:29 -0700

Congrats indeed! Pretty funny to because it was only back in July that
Andrey said <http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/message/997>
"I’m sure that I’ll not try to solve 3^6 in the nearest future. Even if
it’ll take 5 days, it’s too much for me now." Well he kept his word by
leapfrogging straight to the 4^6. I find it very odd that any puzzles
are being solved out of order in either edge length or dimension since
any shorter or lower puzzle should be practice for a larger version
requiring only a fraction of the time.

And let’s not forget to give congratulations to Nan for his success with
the {3}x{3}-3. Wasn’t that the one that Andrey gave up on, or was that
someone else or another puzzle altogether? I love his story of his
patient and happy persistence as he repeatedly hit and then conquered
one parity problem after another. This puzzle seems have a very high
difficult-over-size quotient. I’ve long felt that the original 3^3 was
the hardest puzzle for it’s size but now I’m thinking that this one tops
it. Does anyone think that there are any puzzles that are harder for
their size? I’d *love* to hold a speedsolving contest using this puzzle.
As before, I’ll be happy to run that contest if 3 or more people compete
and I’ll put up another custom t-shirt prize even if we only bet 4
contestants.

Most of all I just want to give the highest congratulations to both
Andrey and Nan for their amazing firsts. Well done, guys!
-Melinda

On 9/26/2010 1:46 PM, Matthew wrote:
> Nice work Andrey! 4032 pieces and 12288 stickers is what my formulae in Excel tell me, which is more pieces and stickers than the 3^7, even if it has one less dimension (which at this scale doesn’t even matter as much). I wonder how long it will be before someone conquers the 4^7 or even the 5^7, and I wish good luck to anyone attempting them, as it will require a lot of patience! What are your plans now Andrey? Any more huge puzzles to solve, or are you working on the speedsolving now? Speaking of which, it is amazing that you were working on this at the same time as getting some really good times on the 3^4! I can only wonder how you managed it all. Congrats again :)
>
> Matt
>
> — In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, "Andrey"<andreyastrelin@…> wrote:
>> It was long. Took about a month from me. I hadn’t expected any parity problems - and there wre none. I had serious orientation problem in the end of 5C stage (3-cycle of one last piece; it looked for me like 5C orientation of 3^5, that is very difficult for my algorithm), but now I see that there was easy way around this problem). Timer shows 40+ hours, but it started at the middle of 3C, so actual time is close to 70h. 175K twists, with longest macro of 65 twists (swap of 5C).
>> Not very difficut… it’s only a cube :P
>>
>> 3^6 is still waiting for its solver.
>> Good luck!
>>
>> Andrey