Message #2911

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] RE: MPUltimate 1.5
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 13:30:11 -0800

OK, time to reveal that my favorite puzzle of all was the face-turning
24-cell. It’s a very special regular polytope, unique to 4-dimensions,
and turns out to be an extremely difficult puzzle with complications at
every step. This puzzle does not want to be solved! As I’ve read of
other member’s favorites, I began to feel a bit less attracted to my
own. With all the octahedral faces, I am also reminded of the
face-turning octahedron that I tried to build a long time ago. After I
finally got my hands on one many years later, I discovered that I found
it rather boring. So maybe I just don’t respond very well to this shape.
If each platonic solid were a type of gem, the octahedron would be like
a deep blue diamond to me. Beautiful but also cold and lifeless.
Andrey’s recent implementation of ‘Z’ reflecting puzzles certainly
breaths new life into it. It even gives it a pulse as faces collapse in
on themselves and bounce back out inverted.

I said the FT 24-cell "was" my favorite, but now I feel that my favorite
is the lovely {3,7} 56 Color E0:1:0. She is a thing of grace and beauty,
not least because of the gorgeous UI and multiple viewing modes that
Roice implemented. The edge-turning version in particular is fascinating
to me because it consists of a bunch of short orbits and a bunch of
*really* long ones that snake sinuously around it’s body and limbs like
ivy on a marble statue. It was the first IRP that I had found and I
could barely believe that it was real. Then to discover much later that
it could be turned into a twisty puzzle came as a pleasant shock. The
{5,5} seems so much more unlikely, that it should be even more special,
but like the 24-cell, I sort of don’t know how to relate to it. It’s
amazing that it exists at all, but it is rather ugly.

So like Ed, I ended up on Magic Tile, except that I didn’t have much
trouble picking my favorite. I’m going to also recall that Ed did gush
over several MT puzzles, and I will even suggest that perhaps his
favorite is the humble but deceptive "MT eucl klein {3,6} 8 v 0:0:1".
What do you say, Ed?

I was surprised to see the 15 puzzle come up in this discussion. I am
certainly aware of it but never found it to be terribly interesting. I
get that it may have been the first popular group-theoretic puzzle, but
it certainly feels very different from all the twisty puzzles to me.

And then gosh, there are so many amazing puzzles that you all have
created! Higher dimensions, hyperbolic, abstract polyhedra, complex
polyhedra,… There seems to be no end to these wonders, and that’s just
the way I like it!

-Melinda

On 1/22/2014 2:15 PM, Melinda Green wrote:
> Andrey, unfortunately I can’t find the puzzle anywhere, but the
> description sounds ugly. So you don’t think that you could solve dotto
> if you had to? You solved the other sporadic simple group puzzles, and
> we all suspect that you have magic powers.
>
> Nan, I’m not considering puzzles to be hard just because they’re big.
> The more I think about it, the more I’m starting to suspect that
> "hard" is a fuzzy and subjective concept. "Hard for its size" is
> another concept that I thought made sense, but now I want to include
> some form of elegance criterion as well, so I think that I’ll just let
> go of the concept altogether and just think in terms of favorites instead.
>
> So here is a question for everyone: Of all the puzzles in the world,
> which is the one that you are most glad for simply existing? My answer
> is fairly clear though I don’t want to influence anyone by naming it
> up front.
>
> -Melinda
>
> On 1/19/2014 9:17 PM, andreyastrelin@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> > If there exist any puzzles that humans really can’t solve, I don’t
>> know of them. Do you?
>>
>>
>> What about "dotto" game from this page:
>>
>> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=puzzles-simple-groups-at-play
>>
>> It’s the game in 24 dimensions!
>>
>>
>> Andrey
>>
>>
>>
>>
>