Message #1203

From: Klaus Weidinger <klaus.weidinger@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: Siamese
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:29:00 -0700

Hi everyone,

When you talk about bandaged cubes I always have to think
of Ultimate Magic Cube. This seems to exactly fit your purposes,
just with one dimension too few. I’m not a good programmer, so
I might not be the right person to judge, but I think it shouldn’t be
too hard to convert the math and programming logic behind the
interface into 4D. However, I do expect it to be hard to integrate
this into MC4D and the current user interface. What do you think
about this?

Happy Hypercubing, Klaus

________________________________
From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
To: jasmon brian <joebrian.jasmon@gmail.com>
Cc: MagicCube4D <4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sun, October 17, 2010 8:07:49 AM
Subject: [MC4D] Re: Siamese

On 10/16/2010 7:05 PM, jasmon brian wrote:
> Hey Melinda, It’s Jon,
> I finished the siamese hypercube. I started with a solved 3^4 and
> scrambled the red and blue sides for 100 twists as random as I could.
> I then solved the puzzle from there, turning only the red and blue
> sides. I attached the file for consideration.
> I would also like to suggest that you edit your program to be workable
> with other bandaged hypercubes! Even having the program not
> scramble/twist certain sides, at request, would be nice.
> Jon Scott

Jon,

That was a really clever exercise! I hope you don’t mind that I’m
including the rests of the group on this thread so that other interested
puzzlers can also offer new insights and suggestions.

Regarding additions to MC4D, I try to keep out all features that require
coding for special case puzzles, so if we were to add the ability to
bandage cubes, then we need to make sure that it’s possible to bandage
any puzzle. The main question then becomes a UI design problem of how to
most naturally describe such a puzzle, and to a lessor degree, how to
display the bandaging. Right now we describe puzzles by giving a
Schläfli symbol plus an edge length. To add bandaging constraints I
expect would mean adding a third, optional chunk of information to
describe how you want it bandaged. I can’t think of an obvious and
general way to do that, but I’d guess that there are probably ways to do
that having to do with face numbers.

Another thing people could do right now would be to create a bunch of
interesting scrambled versions of different bandaged puzzles just like
you did for this one. The process is a little tedious but only needs to
be done once for any particular configuration. From there people can
just use these hand-created scrambles and simply avoid twisting any of
the forbidden faces. That won’t cover all possible bandagings but should
be good enough to have fun exploring quite a few interesting ones. So
that others can get the full effect, here is what your log file looks
like with only your scrambling twists considered to be fully scrambled:

MagicCube4D 3 2 0 {4,3,3} 3
-0.7781653457506625 0.312535051866865 -0.54477567495927 2.925835719544026E-9
0.6274075122099996 0.426340681158958 -0.651608346486887
-3.525863967809649E-16
-0.02860958397480492 0.8488553851767048 0.5278503829318464
7.375303054792201E-18
-2.276784185734973E-9 9.144260743002593E-10 -1.5939238952932422E-9 -1.0
*
100,1,1 206,1,1 100,1,1 194,1,1 103,1,1 207,1,1 105,1,1 214,1,1 95,1,1
194,1,1
105,-1,1 202,1,1 105,1,1 214,1,1 87,-1,1 207,1,1 105,1,1 207,1,1 105,1,1
212,1,1
105,1,1 214,1,1 105,1,1 207,1,1 87,1,1 194,1,1 87,1,1 196,1,1 105,1,1
207,1,1
83,1,1 205,1,1 105,1,1 202,1,1 102,1,1 210,1,1 81,1,1 202,1,1 103,1,1
210,1,1
98,1,1 210,1,1 87,1,1 210,1,1 87,1,1 207,1,1 105,1,1 207,1,1 100,1,1 194,1,1
87,1,1 207,1,1 100,1,1 212,1,1 100,1,1 212,1,1 105,1,1 212,1,1 105,1,1
212,1,1
87,-1,1 202,-1,1 98,-1,1 202,1,1 98,1,1 190,1,1 105,1,1 212,1,1 105,1,1
212,1,1
105,1,1 207,1,1 105,1,1 202,1,1 105,1,1 194,1,1 105,1,1 205,1,1 105,1,1
195,1,1
105,1,1 210,1,1 103,1,1 212,1,1 105,1,1 212,1,1 105,-1,1 202,-1,1
103,-1,1 207,1,1
105,1,1 207,1,1 100,1,1 206,1,1 100,1,1 194,1,1 87,1,1 206,1,1 100,1,1
205,1,1
m|.

Neat stuff Jon. Thanks for sharing this.
-Melinda