From tjj@lemma.helsinki.fi Mon Nov 4 12:00:58 1991 Return-Path: Received: from funet.fi by life.ai.mit.edu (4.1/AI-4.10) id AA19455; Mon, 4 Nov 91 12:00:58 EST Received: from lemma.Helsinki.fi by funet.fi with SMTP (PP) id <25881-0@funet.fi>; Mon, 4 Nov 1991 19:00:44 +0200 Received: by lemma.helsinki.fi (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA02272; Mon, 4 Nov 91 19:00:41 +0200 Date: Mon, 4 Nov 91 19:00:41 +0200 From: tjj@lemma.helsinki.fi (Timo Jokitalo) Message-Id: <9111041700.AA02272@lemma.helsinki.fi> To: cube-lovers@ai.mit.edu Subject: Square One Hi everyone! Well, now I finally had time to try and solve my Square One. After hours and hours of pondering it is now finally done. (For the first time ever - I noticed the leaflet with instructions on how to get it to square one only after I'd done a few rotations.) Now what needs to be done is to polish the 'method' a bit (a lot), and find out if I was just lucky this time... Altogether, it seems to be quite a nice puzzle, although at first I thought that it was _very_ ugly and unpleasant. (But not half as ugly and unpleasant as 'Rubik's Dice'. Perhaps I'm clumsy, but It's awful: whenever I get somewhere with it, I touch it a bit too hard, all the plates fall to the bottom and I throw the thing back to the corner in disgustment. Opinions?) But: does anyone have the number of configurations for it? I tried to count them, and got something like 2.8 E 13, but very probably there are a few factors of two or something missing. It's also a bit tricky to decide on when two configurations are different. (I mean, should one count as different a configuration reached by rotating, say, the top layer by 30 degrees? Sometimes, yes, but sometimes it seems a bit funny to do so.) Timo (tjj@rolf.helsinki.fi)