Message #1882

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: Where are you all?
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 15:57:43 -0700

Yes, this was a fun event. It is the second time that Brandon, Nan and
myself have met in person since we discovered that we all live in the SF
Bay Area. The first time we met we geeked out over twisty puzzles in a
coffee shop for what seemed like 2 hours before we noticed that it had
actually been 6, and it wasn’t until 8 1/2 hours elapsed before we broke
up! This time we got to meet a bunch of other puzzle geeks, share
information and make new friends.

At the end of Nan’s wonderful lecture he says that there are 141 solvers
of the 3^4 but I have been lazy updating the hall-of-fame and there are
really 143. That means that there are about as many new solvers so far
this year than there were at this time last year, so I don’t think that
interest is waning. The mailing list growth rate seems to be increasing,
so I think our little group is very healthy. Looking at the monthly
message counts on the mailing list home page
<http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/> you can see how
activity happens in bursts that generally last a few month and then goes
dormant for a few more months but it always picks up again when
something new happens. The latest burst lasted over a year but that was
due to a sort of perfect storm consisting of a bevy of new puzzles from
Don Hatch being added to MC4D and other mind-blowing new puzzles done
independently by Roice and Andrey. At this point I think we are
experiencing a natural collective hangover after a year of binging which
is nothing at all to worry about.

After the lecture, 6 of us went out for dinner and drinks and a
continuation of our discussions. We resolved to do more meet-ups in the
not-too-distant future. If there are others in the area that would like
to attend, just let us know. If anyone wants an excuse to travel here,
we will try to work around your availability in setting a date.

Thanks so much to Nan for giving a great lecture demystifying the custom
creation of solutions to any twisty puzzles, and to Brandon for making
and publishing the video to the rest of the world.

Regarding the 24-Cell that Eduard mentioned, we all agreed that we would
love to see more solutions to this special puzzle that many of us have
dreamed about for a very long time. Andrey supports this gem in his
Magic Puzzle Ultimate <http://astr73.narod.ru/MPUlt/MPUlt.html>
software, and currently Nan is the only one posting solutions
<http://wiki.superliminal.com/wiki/MPUlt_Records> to 24-Cell, 16-Cell,
and other puzzles supported by this wonderful new piece of engineering.

Happy puzzling!
-Melinda

On 10/22/2011 1:13 PM, Roice Nelson wrote:
>
>
> Very nice presentation Nan! I enjoyed watching it, and appreciate the
> exposure for our group :)
>
> It’s cool to get a chance to "meet" other members of our group in a
> way, by seeing you in action. The comments on YouTube suggest that
> Brandon maybe also gave a presentation. Is that recorded as well? If
> so, I’d be interested to check it out as well.
>
> Take Care,
> Roice
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 1:44 PM, schuma <mananself@gmail.com
> <mailto:mananself@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Last Thursday I gave a lecture in the Rubik’s cube class of UC
> Berkeley, about solving twisty puzzles using commutators. In the
> lecture I advertised MC4D and other high dimensional puzzles.
> Melinda and Brandon were there in the audience. I hope we can have
> more solvers in the future.
>
> The video of the lecture can be found here:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-oePE5gizs
>