Date: 5 Dec 1980 1038-PST (Friday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: Cube approach survey?
To: cube-lovers at mc

  Top edges, top corners, middle edges, bottom edges, bottom
corner placing, bottom corner orientation.  Takes me about 4
minutes, but I'm out of practice.   None of the steps requires
any real unusual tools.  I suspect I got in the habit of
solving the cube in that order because the initial challenge
was "get one face".  Then I realized that the next step must
surely be "get one face so that it matches the center
faces of the sides".  
  The beauty of the cube is that, unlike Instant Insanity
or its cousins, the Cube's solutaion can not be stumbled
across by accident.  Instead, it's a learning experience,
as you learn to manipulate things, then to manipulate
cubies without messing up what you already have
done.  This gets progressively more sophisticated as
more of the cube comes into place.  Definitely the
most satisfying puzzle I've ever dealt with.  However,
I'd be interested to find out how many as-yet-unsolved
Cubes are sitting even now on the shelves of disgusted customers
who thought they were great puzzlists because they solved Soma,
but weren't patient enough to figure out how to get those
last two corner cubies oriented right.

	Mike
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