Message #2713

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: Edging closer to a physical 4D puzzle
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:40:37 -0700

I’ve always assumed that a true physical 4D puzzle would have to offer
only a small subset of possible twists much like Don and my very first
version of MC4D just about exactly 25 years ago, come to think of it.
Happy 25th birthday MC4D!! I think that in that very first
implementation you could only perform 90 twists and even then only on
the center face plus along each of the 6 outer faces axis that
intersects the center face. In other words, only those transforms that
did not distort any of the pieces during the twists.

For a true physical 4D cube you don’t even need those outer 6 twists. So
long as you first rotate your face-of-interest into the center, you can
then perform all the twists you like on that face without distortions. I
just have no idea what sort of construction would allow the rotations.
Maybe something involving a squishy material like latex or something
that can stretch a lot without breaking. I can almost imagine some latex
webbing that stretches between the arms of the Roadblock faces. I think
I’ll ask Oskar to think about this problem too. If anyone can figure
this out, he seems like the one.

-Melinda

On 4/6/2013 2:09 PM, Ray Zhao wrote:
>
>
> No wonder I thought I’ve seen something similar before (didn’t think
> of the 2^4 when I first saw Oskar’s puzzle)…There just needs to be
> some eighth cell and the 2x2x2s still have to be able to rotate
> individually in all 3 axes. That’ll take a while =P
> When a physical 4D puzzle is made, will it have the
> Schlegel-diagram-like cell-centered view, since if that’s the case
> then it will be hard to turn the "inner/far" cell…