Message #1954

From: Roice Nelson <roice3@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Another {7,3} puzzle
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:44:28 -0600

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Melinda Green wrote:

> Wow! That’s amazing, Roice!!
>

Thanks! I didn’t know this one was going to get such a good reaction :D

> Looking closely I now see that you already support a {6,3} with two
> types of twists. I didn’t recall discussing it on the list. Looking at it
> now, it seems like such a frightening crazy-quilt. Somehow this new {7,3}
> with many more colors and three types of twists seems much more tractable
> to me and much more elegant. Might there be other similarly {6,3} or
> perhaps even {5,3} puzzles that are as elegant as this new gem?
>

Yep, this cut pattern works for other tilings. I went ahead and added
{5,3} and {6,3} variants (and uploaded pictures
here<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/photos/album/1694853720/pic/1744582753/view?picmode=original&mode=tn&order=ordinal&start=1&dir=asc>
and
here<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/photos/album/1694853720/pic/2041431059/view?picmode=original&mode=tn&order=ordinal&start=1&dir=asc>).

A disclaimer though… This {5,3} is the first spherical puzzle I’ve put
into MagicTile V2, and it’s not really ready. Twisting of inverted slices
misbehaves (affects one inverted slice in this puzzle), plus the drawing is
undeveloped (stickers aren’t filled in, and twists aren’t animated). The
spherical world needs some love.

> * It seems to need different twisting speeds for the different element
> types.
>

Right now, I have the different twist types animating so they will complete
in the same time interval. Because of the varying angles they rotate
through, this makes some twist types appear to move faster than others. I
liked this better than having all twist types rotate through the same angle
at each animation step. Edge twists felt like they took too long to
complete that way.

> * It seems to want a more fitting name. I can’t think what though so maybe
> someone else on the list can suggest one.
>

I agree completely. FEV isn’t really descriptive enough, as there are a
huge number of potential FEV puzzles, and this particular pattern would
benefit from having a special name for sure. A couple ideas are to name
them "Braid" puzzles or "Doily" puzzles. Maybe something else which evoked
the image of all the tangent circles would be good…

Roice