Message #3319

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Introductions
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:28:35 -0700

Hello Liam and welcome!

Of course it’s impressive that someone so young solves such a difficult
puzzle, but perhaps even more impressive is that you’ve made progress
against solving what Dr. Emmett Brown calls the most difficult puzzle
all: Women. :-) If you can master that one, I’m sure that particle
physics will seem like child’s play! Something tells me that that very
cool mother of yours had something to do with that.

I’m not much of a puzzle-solver myself but I don’t know the parity
problem you described. Maybe it’s possible because you solved the pieces
in a different order from Roice’s solution? I hope you will try your
hand at some of the other puzzles that MC4D supports and some of the
other puzzles that our members have created. Being a programmer yourself
I suspect you may also enjoy creating some virtual twisty puzzles.

Whatever you do, have fun!
-Melinda

On 3/31/2016 1:32 AM, liamjwright@btinternet.com [4D_Cubing] wrote:
>
>
> Hey all,
>
>
> My name is Liam, and I’m a 16 year old from the least beautiful part
> of Kent: Gravesend. As a 16 year old, I don’t really have much going
> for me yet, so I spend much of my spare time as an amateur programmer
> and geometric puzzle enthusiast, although I am hoping to move in to
> particle physics once I’m thrown out into the scary wide world. In the
> rest of my downtime, I’m an avid pokemon fan and PC gamer.
>
>
> I always found geometry to be one of the more interesting parts of
> maths, so I suppose I was destined to find myself drowning in Rubiks
> cubes and other such puzzles. I started out in early 2014, when some
> evil child scrambled my 3x3. I couldn’t bear to have it sitting around
> all messed up, so I learned to solve it. I was pretty happy with it
> myself, and it provided a good bit of entertainment for my classmates,
> so I kept at it. Fast forward 8 months, and I’d reached sub-30. It was
> at this point I decided to halt the speedcubing, and moved onto other
> puzzles. I started with the Rubiks Revenge, which was a stiff, clunky
> pain in the backside that took forever to solve. From there I moved up
> to higher order knockoff cubes, then onto other shapes like the
> Megaminx. Most of my puzzles are cubic or shapemods, many of which I
> inherited from my mother, so I have a few cool, rare puzzles, but my
> pride and joy has to be my ghost cube, a gift from my now-ex.
>
>
> I have no idea when I was introduced to the 4D cube. Probably years
> ago, long before I could even solve a 3x3. However, last Monday
> (28/03/16), I rediscovered it and found the 4D hall of fame. And it
> was in that moment that I was captured. One way or another, I was
> getting my name on that list. So, I sat down on that dark Monday
> night, and I started my quest. By the time I went to bed two hours
> later, I had a cross done,which really put into scope for me how
> different the 4D cube is to th e 3D equivalent. The next day, I spent
> 8 hours grinding away at it. In the first 3, I finished the two
> colours, using mostly intuition and applying skills from the lower
> dimensional cubes. In the rest, I completed all but one cell’s worth
> of three colour pieces. The next day, I spent another 6 hours. By this
> point, I’d got into the swing of it, and it was just a grinding
> process of commutating and rotating. Then, after a grand total of 4503
> moves, it was done.
>
>
> I can’t say that I’d be able to solve it again off the back of my
> hand. I spent so long on it that by the time I’d finished, the first
> steps were all but forgotten. But it was an interesting experience.
> The guide on superliminal proved to be invaluable, but it did miss one
> extremely important detail: the dreaded 2-colour-piece parity. The
> half-hour I spent trying to fix that infernal parity with futile
> three-cycles was not fun at all. But aside from that, the guide was
> perfect, and the experience very fun.
>
>
> Congratulations to all you brilliant folk who have completed this
> monster cube, and I am honoured to stand among you all!
>