Message #1707

From: Matthew Galla <mgalla@trinity.edu>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: 24-cell FT solved!
Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 02:18:43 -0500

Congrats Nan,

I knew I wasn’t gonna be fast enough to be the first one done, but I do have
about 50% done and all algorithms ready. Having just got out of a
particularly difficult year of college (junior math/engineer double), I’ve
been having trouble dedicating enough time to sitting here nd solving it ;)

Perhaps I can beat you in moves? ;) How many was yours?

As for the 120Cell, as I mentioned before, I believe it took me roughly 150
hours, based on some random samples of how quickly I was solving pieces on
average. I only used 2 permutation algorithms, very similar to eachother,
and of only 8 and 12 moves and after doing them a couple of times, they
easily become memorized. The actual process of clicking through the moves of
these algorithms only took me about 16 seconds for the short one and about
30 seconds for the second. Although I never memorized setup moves, it was
simple enough to abuse the undo feature to see exactly what setup moves I
used and remember them for the 10 seconds it took to redo back to the end of
the current solve. So my point here is that having the macros isn’t as big
of a handicap as you may think. In fact, I’ve barely used any macros so far
in my 24Cell solve. Especially in the beginning, they actually really hurt
your flexibility in move count and setups.

Congratulations again on the solve. You have too much free time and
dedicaton!!! :D
Hopefully I’ll be able to finish my solve and provide some great competition
for lowest move count ;)

-Matt Galla

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 1:07 AM, schuma <mananself@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Hi,
>
> Let me tell the story of solving the 24-cell. Everybody knows that 24-cell
> is much sexier than 16-cell. So after solving the 16-cell, I looked at the
> 24-cell. There are only five types of pieces to solve in the 24-cell,
> compared with eight types for the 16-cell. The 3-cycle algorithms are
> similar to the counterparts for the 16-cell. So it didn’t take long to find
> them. Unlike the 16-cell, I prepared many different rotation algorithms to
> fix the orientations of corners and edges, so that whenever I need any of
> them, I can directly pull it off the shelf without thinking. I don’t want to
> go into details because that would spoil the fun to those who wanna analyze
> it by themselves.
>
> After I prepared all the algorithms, I still don’t know if I can face the
> main difficulty of the 24-cell. The main difficulty is, of course, there are
> too many colors. This time I use shift+left, shift+right a lot. Basically
> I’m using them to find pieces. I never trust my color identification ability
> because there are too many close colors. I only claim two pieces have the
> same color when they are highlighted at the same time when I use
> shift+right. In the beginning I wasn’t sure if I could really handle 24
> colors. So I used the first step, the face centers, as a test for me. The
> face centers don’t need complicated algorithms. Finding pieces of certain
> color is everything. I started the solve on Friday afternoon, when I
> finished the work I had to do for the week. I solved all the face centers
> intuitively. It meant that I could handle the colors.
>
> After dinner I resumed the solve from about 9pm. By 2am, I solved all the
> pieces except for the side-face pieces. I thought I should go on to finish
> it, if the side-face pieces could be solved quickly. Then I used a stopwatch
> to time myself on solving one such piece. In that trial I was nervous and it
> took me 40 seconds to spot the colors, find the place it should go (using
> shift+right), setup, call the macro and reverse setup. A simple calculation
> told me that I needed three more hours for all the pieces. So I gave up and
> went to bed. On Saturday I got up earlier than in weekdays and indeed spent
> three more hours to finish it.
>
> This one is my longest solve to date. There are six hundred pieces or so
> and I can use macros. I really don’t know how someone can solve the 120-cell
> without macros.
>
> Nan
>
>
> — In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, Melinda Green <melinda@…> wrote:
> >
> > Congratulations, Nan!
> > The 24 Cell is a very unique object. I’m sure we will all enjoy hearing
> > your story.
> > -Melinda
> >
> > On 5/14/2011 12:13 PM, schuma wrote:
> > > Hi guys,
> > >
> > > I just solved the cell-turning 24-cell. The log file can be found here:
> > >
> > > <http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/files/Nan%20Ma/>
> > >
> > > This is probably my longest solve ever. It took me 9 hrs and 25 min.
> I’ll probably write about my experience later today.
> > >
> > > Nan
> >
>
>
>