Message #1955

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Another {7,3} puzzle
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:51:14 -0800

On 12/12/2011 5:44 PM, Roice Nelson wrote:
>
>
> 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

For my part I find it very cool. I especially like that our master
solvers say it’s easy because I’m more likely to try it. I’m also
finding that I’m getting more and more attracted to puzzles that I can
solve intuitively. That’s one reason I love your Harlequin puzzle so
much. It’s just right for me and is very pretty too.

I also love the small puzzles like the 24-cell which are also very hard
just to enjoy fiddling with them and admiring their terrible power. I
guess there are a lot of different things I love about lots of these new
puzzles.

> 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>).
>

Wow, that was fast!

The reason I was interested in smaller polygons was because I wanted to
see what this design looked like when all the circles are about the same
size. Sure enough the {6,3} is the closest and looks beautiful to my
eye. It’s slightly disappointing that the face pieces aren’t exactly the
same size as the others but I think it looks the most attractive. That’s
so cool that you also knocked out the first positive curvature tile
puzzle. I’m not sure yet how I feel about it aesthetically. I’ll wait
until I see it filled-in and have a chance to interact with it before I
decide.

I was kind of expecting to see spheres and was surprised to see it from
what appears to be a point within the sphere, but in retrospect this is
in keeping with the style of your program. Then again maybe having the
ability to show it both ways would also make sense in the way that the
IRPs fit in.

> 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.

That also goes for the spherical world we live on.

> * 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.

Do the current speed ratios look ideal to your eye? This makes me wonder
what formula would make the twisting speeds look "correct" to you, me
and others. Is there a formula that will make it so that nobody even notices

> * 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…

I seem to be turning this whole thread into a discussion of puzzle
aesthetics. Now we just need a beautiful term for your new puzzles.
"Fervent" puzzles maybe? It has the letters FEVT in the right order.
Nah. Sooner or later someone here will probably come up with the perfect
name, maybe even by accident. We shall see.

-Melinda