Message #4203

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] New member introduction
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2019 16:04:07 -0700

Dear Ty,

A good new puzzle to start with is the Pentagonal Duoprism {5}x{4} 3. It is almost identical to the 3^4 but with some pentagons in one dimension rather than squares. Your current skills will be almost enough to solve this one and the related puzzles. Once you solve that, you may like the {5}x{5} 3 which is one more dimension with pentagons. I find myself attracted to the simplicies {3,3,3} 3 and larger. They are easier in some ways, and eerily different in others. If you find yourself proud of solving any new 4D puzzles, or if you find yourself stuck on any, please let us know.

Happy puzzling!
-Melinda

On 7/15/2019 3:29 PM, Ty Jones whotyjones@gmail.com [4D_Cubing] wrote:
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> That sounds almost identical to my life story 😂
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> I’ve yet to tackle any of the other puzzles. Does anyone have suggestions for which ones are a good intro? I’ve been thinking I should try something new one of these days
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> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 3:31 PM marnix.lenoble@gmail.com <mailto:marnix.lenoble@gmail.com> [4D_Cubing] <4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com <mailto:4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com>> wrote:
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> Hello everyone,
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> I am Marnix and I recently made the 4D hall of fame list. I was asked to write a little message on here. I am a software developer. Thirty years old.. In my free time I like reading about software related things, I play videogames, watch movies and tv-shows. Sometimes I read popularising science books.
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> I solved the regular rubik’s cube about 10 years ago. It took me a month and a week of on and off trying. I think it was around that time I found out about the 4D magic cube and it just seemed ridiculous. I remember opening the application and just going, yeah what the hell is this. I never really tried to solve it and knowing there were only dozens of people who solved it I thought it would be super hard. That is until the Mathologers video appeared in my feed with the title "Solving the 4D cube with simple 3D tricks". I didn’t watch the video but I decided to give it a try. It took me around 6 days so that’s actually faster than the regular cube.
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> My experience solving it was as follows: First I tried to get my head around what i was actually looking at. Figuring out that the sides were cubes, were connected to 6 other sides, and realizing that the cubies were actually just stickers and not pieces. This was also when I realized there were still 3 layers (I know that’s obvious but it wasn’t immediately obvious to me) and I decided to just use the three layer method to try and solve it.
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> I made steady progress and solved the first two layers using the keyhole tactic. After finishing that I had realized that moving a single piece from the unfinished layer to the finished layer wasn’t as straightforward as the regular cube because when you use the normal moves you end up moving 3 pieces to the other layer instead of 1. So I worked on making a few macro’s that can isolate hypercorners, corners, and edges. Knowing that if I figured out those then you can solve it like normal. Probably different than most but I solved the edges and hypercorners first and the corners last because that’s how I taught myself to do the regular cube too (doing corners first and edges last).
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> I made a time lapse and put it on youtube https://youtu.be/m8T2tCJ6i0k it’s not particularly interesting and it’s 10 minutes long but it’s there.
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> I am probably going to try a higher dimension one next.
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> Cheers,
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> Marnix
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