Message #1595

From: schuma <mananself@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Latch Cube
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:40:38 -0000

Although Brandon has answered the question, I would like to show a photo of my Latch Cube, where the front face is locked because it has contradicting arrows:
<http://att.newsmth.net/att.php?p.1157.21245.76244.JPG>
Note that the top face has no arrow, and therefore it can be turned to either direction.

I don’t think scrambling is as hard as Brandon described. It’s impossible to move it into a completely locked state (meaning no face can be turned). The face of the last move can always be turned again. And I haven’t run into a situation that only one face can be turned. I don’t know if such state is reachable or not.

Like Brandon, I don’t enjoy solving the Latch Cube because it was full of embarrassment. I didn’t like the crazy 3x3x3 series in the beginning but later I found it interesting. Here is a simulator for it: <http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20285>.

Nan

— In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, Brandon Enright <bmenrigh@…> wrote:
>
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> On Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:06:40 -0700 or thereabouts Melinda Green
> <melinda@…> wrote:
>
> > OK I’m going to embarrass myself here. I’ve only glanced at a couple
> > photos and videos of the latch cube but I can’t see what makes it
> > different from the normal 3^3. It looks like you can make any twist
> > you like but to get some 90 degree twists you need just need to do a
> > -270 degree twist. Can somebody tell me why it is interesting?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > -Melinda
>
>
> Hi Melinda,
>
> When I first saw the latch cube photos I came to the same conclusion.
> What happens though is that if you do a 90 degree twist on a face, the
> arrows along the side of those 4 edges will move through the 4 adjacent
> faces and for each adjacent face, if the new edge’s arrow happens to be
> pointing the opposite direction from the existing arrows on that face
> then you can’t turn that face anymore.
>
> So while you can always undo a 90 degree twist by just doing another
> 270 degrees of twisting, often the intermediate twist before you do a
> full circle will block adjacent faces from moving.
>
> Even scrambling the latch cube seems hard. The puzzle easily ends up
> in a bandaged face mess which makes analysis of it quite difficult.
>
> I really dislike this sort of bandaging. A lot of others seem
> to really like the challenge though. The Crazy 3x3x3 and Megaminx
> planet series puzzles are another such set of oddly bandaged puzzles.
>
> Brandon
>
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