From ronnie@cisco.com Wed Dec 11 18:04:35 1991 Return-Path: Received: from wolf.cisco.com by life.ai.mit.edu (4.1/AI-4.10) id AA06760; Wed, 11 Dec 91 18:04:35 EST Received: from lager.cisco.com by wolf.cisco.com with TCP; Wed, 11 Dec 91 14:56:01 -0800 Message-Id: <9112112256.AA20600@wolf.cisco.com> From: ronnie@cisco.com To: Cube-Lovers@life.ai.mit.edu Subject: A Sam Loyd Rubik puzzle unearthed!!! Date: Wed, 11 Dec 91 14:57:25 PST Sender: ronnie@cisco.com An original Sam Loyd puzzle involving the Rubik's cube has come into my hands; somewhat surprising, in that Sam Loyd died in the early years of this century, but no more so than the truly astounding circumstances by which the puzzle came to me, which I would detail if I believe that anyone were interested. However, as this list consists only of people interesting in things Cubic, I will limit this posting to the puzzle itself. Crooked Gambling in Puzzleland by Sam Loyd Tommy Riddles has challenged King Puzzlepate to a game of dice, using Rubik's Cubes as dice. However, Tommy is planning to cheat by changing the ordinary Rubik's Cube into tops [ tops are dice which are misspotted, by having only three different numbers on them, each appearing opposite to itself, such that it is indetectable without turning the die around -ed ] spotted 1-2-3, which he is able to make from a standard cube in 14 moves. King Puzzlepate, however, has learned from the General of his plans, and has figured out to convert Tommy's tops into 2-3-4 tops, which are favorable to His Majesty, in only 3 moves. Can you duplicate both these feats? [ Note that Loyd appears to consider a move as moving any of the nine slices any number of degrees. Thus the move we would designate as L2R2 and count as four, Loyd would count as one move of the center slice by 180 degrees. ]