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Old Rubik's Cube book rediscovered via the Internet. I love you Internet.

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crabby3:
Isn't the quickest solution ... pealing off the color squares?  An ex-friend did that to mine.   :mad:

TaoPhoenix:
Haha! This is a fun topic for me! Here's Nudone's note, ((With some insertions for comic effect!)) and then my own afterward.

I learnt to solve the Rubik's Cube during the ((third)) craze by reading this book: The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube by James G. Nourse.

It was ((1996)), I was ((20)) years old, bored out of my brain ((procrastinating studying college classes)).

((Immediately)) after, I forgot a few of the algorithm solutions ((because I was lazy!!)) but would muddle through with what I could remember and still solve the cube, albeit taking longer than necessary ((But five minutes was fast enough in 4-hour dorm hang-outs)). I couldn't ((be bothered to learn)) the correct algorithms ((Because seven can solve the cube in those five minutes but it jumps to like 20 to get your time down to three minutes)). ((I have since lost the book in the mists of time.))

So, I spent ((2)) years ((during college)) solving the cube with my messed up method. Knowing that it ((is as bastardized as possible while still working!!))  but also knowing that it would always work - eventually. (There's a moral in there somewhere. ((Yes - Sometimes it's possible to get by with the smaller things in life by just being lazy. Like not doing dishes.- Tao))

...Speedsolving the Cube by Dan Harris. ((During one month being bored at work I looked up the current theory of speedsolving about 2010. I didn't know Dan Harris had written a book.))

...I already had my own method, I haven't the time nor patience to learn a new method; ((and the Rubik's Cube is old-hat enough  that it just wasn't wasting my already feeble memory on for me.)) ...

It didn't take long to realise when and why I should use some of the half remembered algorithms, they were quite obvious in the end.

((I disagree. The key of the Nourse book is that the last algorithm is it's 30 moves long but it "Just Works" in the Apple sense. ))

Now, the sense of knowing exactly how to approach a particular pattern with a specific algorithm is very satisfying. ((No, it's not, for me. I like the 30 mover at the end because it's muscle memory and it Just Works. But there's the spot in the middle with a set of about eight patterns that actually takes work to memorize and that's the part I skipped because its only use was speed, not being essential.))

But, I knew that I didn't have the complete method for my solution - I could remember the book demonstrating more algorithms than I used; or that is what my faded memory told me - who can say what was in a book that you've not seen for 30 years.

((I DO remember exactly what is in it, 18 years later. The first chapter is about the top row, and he doesn't care "how you do it" because his point is solving the cube is not about "the top is blue", but the "blue-yellow cube can ONLY go on the intersection of those two sides. So once you get it there it just stays there. And all the moves are about you retain the progress you made at each step, barring blunders.

So the top row is a snap because you can let the entire rest of the cube go to hell to save time.

Then there's the middle row, and you just put the cubes where they belong one at a time, and the move is pretty easy.

The fun is that for the bottom row, that method's concept is it retains the progress you already have made. But now there's less "entropy" to waste, so the moves suddenly get WAY harder. See my comment about the 30 mover - it's because it has to switch EXACTLY two cubes with no room to spare. But it "Just Works". The step *before* that is the one  you're supposed to look at the series of eight/whatever configurations and pick *which one* of the eight patterns to use - BLEH!! But if you just learn two of the eight they're cyclical so if you "don't mind wasting time" it just rotates through the configurations so you just do the move three times in a row and then it works out. ))

Last night, I decided to try and find the method used in the book. I knew it was an unpopular method, cube solving has progressed over the years, but I thought that after a lot of searching online I'd find some mention of this outdated solution.

((It's unpopular because it's absolutely de-optimized for speed solving - it's designed to lock in your progress so you can't lose it at any time, barring blunders. The problem with the speed methods is you get those "decision points" where if you DO learn the 138 patterns, your time rockets down from that lazy five minutes to forty five seconds. ))

-nudone (October 07, 2010, 04:21 AM)
--- End quote ---

Whee! Does that help?
8)

Vurbal:
Wow that brings back memories!

The first time I saw that book was a couple weeks after the first time I saw a Rubik's Cube. A friend bought one and then spent 2 weeks trying to solve it before giving up and buying the book. He was pissed when he figured out he had gotten within about a dozen moves on his own.

TaoPhoenix:
Wow that brings back memories!

The first time I saw that book was a couple weeks after the first time I saw a Rubik's Cube. A friend bought one and then spent 2 weeks trying to solve it before giving up and buying the book. He was pissed when he figured out he had gotten within about a dozen moves on his own.
-Vurbal (February 19, 2014, 03:25 PM)
--- End quote ---

Heh depends on "Which Dozen"!

That method in the Nourse book is interesting as a semi IQ-test. Provided it is "an important goal" (to prevent things like my brand of laziness!), "any bright person (including child sub-prodigies!)" can do the top row as long as they get the concept of the difference between a "color" and "cube placement". I'll leave it for another day about what it takes to discover that "on your own". But kinda like "free advice" from a business, even if you didn't get that concept because you were stuck on a blind alley, a five minute explanation is enough and then the Bright Person *can* work out the easy combos but it's far from giving the show away.

A "Dedicated" bright person can get the middle row. The moves to do that are slightly longer, but still pretty easy relatively. Only a genius would see it "pure" and do it right the first time instantly, but good intuition and some fiddling for "moderate" lengths of time should be enough.

It's that last row that's the real cruncher. I could not possibly have gotten any of the move sets required. And I don't care to spend eleven hours diagramming that last 30 mover!
:o

I think I recall Mr. Nourse said he only got the last bit of inspiration because his day job was as a chemist and he was used to large interactions of swirling elements.

TaoPhoenix:
Misc notes:

- Long after that college hobby, I had no use for the cube for a decade. But I like "projects of the week/month" and a couple of different times in homage to the nostalgia I checked up on the evolving theory of the speedcubing world a few years ago.

- The Cube really was prone to a bit of "Sequel-itis" more often seen in movie theory. The Cube is stunningly brilliant. See this snip from the Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Cube
"In the mid-1970s, Ernő Rubik worked at the Department of Interior Design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest.[12] Although it is widely reported that the Cube was built as a teaching tool to help his students understand 3D objects, his actual purpose was solving the structural problem of moving the parts independently without the entire mechanism falling apart. He did not realize that he had created a puzzle until the first time he scrambled his new Cube and then tried to restore it.[13]"

Heh Oops... total "What Have I Done" moment! So, brilliance part 1 is that it was a structural study in a professional environment!

- The complete set of "basic" solving concepts really is pretty tough to get "cold out of the gate". See my note above - "Any dedicated child can get the first two rows", but then that last 80-20 conceptual wall kicks in and you get hosed. (By "Basic" I even mean the current speed-cubing practice. See below.)

- The cube still holds important study material for professional mathematicians dealing with combinatorial-informational theories etc.

Whew!

Unfortunately, his later projects rapidly went downhill.
- Rubik's Magic has a stunning "technology concept" in the link pattern of the vinyl fibers, but the actual solution is pretty rudimentary.
- Rubik's Clock was even more basic. Even lil' ol' me in *high school* figured that out and I even created a term paper enabling my English teacher to solve it.

(Spoiler: Rubik's Clock is two sided, has mechanical wheels, and each wheel moves two sets of four clocks out of two sets of nine laid out in a three-by-three pattern on each side. The innermost clock moved by all four mechanical wheels on the object is the center clock. 9 clocks. Move 4 at a time. The middle one is the common linked data-point. Go on, take a beer, fiddle with it for an hour just to see the movement, and then the solution comes to you. Your "One minute advice" clue is that it's really similar to Algebra's isolating down to one variable in a multi set of equations and then you fill in bit by bit. In Rubik's Clock, you can do it intuitively. Come on, 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 9. Even. Odd. Right.

Yes, it really is as simple as you think it is.)

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