Message #3418

From: t.schmude@t-online.de
Subject: Re: My introduction
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2016 10:45:53 -0700

Hey multidimensional puzzle enthusiasts,

my name is Tobias Schmude and I am a 20 years old physics student from Konstanz (Germany). I’m currently working on my BA thesis in theoretical physics (at least when I’m not solving weird puzzles or trying to learn full CMLL for the 3^3 Roux method). Until now I’ve used 2-look CMLL (just 9 algs) for 3^3 speedcubing because I’m terrible at memorizing stuff that doesn’t immediately make sense to me. I average at about 18s with my best time being 11.22s. Besides cubing I love playing Ultimate Frisbee in my university’s team, climbing/bouldering outside and in the gym and sometimes slacklining, juggling and playing the diabolo. I’ve also been playing badminton for a long time, but didn’t find the time to do that for quite a while now.

Every now and then I also enjoy gaming, when I play a game I always play it excessively for a while between a few days and a month until I get bored of it. Some of my favorite games I’ve played this way are Desktop Dungeons, Dwarf Fortress, the Earthbound series, I Wanna Be The Guy/Boshy, TrackMania, the Patrician series, Witch Blast and many games developed with one of the RPG Makers. There’s just one game I’ve kept coming back to over the years, Unterwegs in Düsterburg. There sadly is no English version of it yet, but there should be a remake coming out soon! It’s a freeware RPG made with the RPG Maker 2000, so its graphics are just slightly better than for example Earthbound 2’s, but the story and the characters are so unique and funny that it’s definitely my favorite game. I can’t recommend it enough, so if you speak at least a bit of German, GO PLAY IT! ;-)

I also listen to music a lot, mostly metal. I like most subgenres except Grindcore, Power Metal and those very similar to either of them, and my main focus is on proggy death or black metal. Sometimes I also listen to classical music. I especially like Strawinsky’s compositions!

I also like reading, even if I don’t have as much time for it as I would like. Some of my favorite books include the Zamonia series by Walter Moers, LOTR and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

(As probably everyone) I also like watching movies, and my favorites are Silence of the Lambs, Heat, Wall-E, The Dark Knight, most of Miyazaki’s movies, Mary&Max, the Sherlock series and the first season of True Detective.

Now to the 4D-cubing:
After recently noticing Mathologer’s video on the 3^4 cube I knew I also had to try it. I didn’t know of cubes in higher dimensions before, but I’ve always been using commutators before for solving puzzles that are new to me since I got to know them from a tutorial on the Heise method (approximately 5 years ago I guess, shortly after I learned LBL) and I also knew Mathologer’s video on their application to 3D-Puzzles. I think they’re a really elegant tool because they’re a way to generate your own algorithms while completely understanding what they’re doing.

For the 3^4 cube used some kind of LBL-like method, so I first put together the first face of the 3^4 cube intuitively (first the center pieces, then the edge pieces, then the corner pieces), then I used commutators of the standard 3^3 commutator algorithms for the second and then the last layer of the cube. In the end I ran into the single corner twist which really freaked me out because I intentionally didn’t watch most of Mathologer’s video so I didn’t know this was possible! It took me a while to see why such a permutation is even possible and that it isn’t hard to solve.

When I next find enough spare time, I think I will attempt the 2^5, but I really should be working on my BA thesis right now instead of puzzling, but I’m just too lazy…

Keep on cubing!

Tobias Schmude