From gkomatsu@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu Thu Jan 16 04:08:17 1992 Return-Path: Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by life.ai.mit.edu (4.1/AI-4.10) id AA01167; Thu, 16 Jan 92 04:08:17 EST Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun490) id AA04197; Wed, 15 Jan 92 23:08:13 HST Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1992 23:08:12 HST From: Galen Tatsuo Komatsu To: cube-lovers@life.ai.mit.edu Subject: Rubik's Magic Clock & Triamid Message-Id: ...hmm new to this list, been reading some of the postings and things just seem to go *FOOM*, right over my head. But it didn't stop me from asking these..... Rubik's Magic Clock. Sister is Japan sent me this for Christmas (Have still yet to translate the instructions...as if I need it!) and solved it in a day... Well, more like "stumbled" upon the solution after a day of fiddling with it. But I continued to play with it, and came upon this..... Sometimes when I give one of the wheels a good quick "flick", one of the gears inside slips. Result is one (or maybe two) of the clock faces affected is an hour "behind" (or ahead) of the others. Deep in my mind I concluded that this rendered the puzzle unsolveable. And I ended up pulling out a screwdriver and readjusting the face (or I just "zeroed" all of them.) Was I correct in this conclusion? (...oh yea, she sent this for Christmas '88, not this past year. I'm not THAT behind the times! THIS Christmas I recieved.....) Rubik's Triamid. In the instructions it says, "It is physically possible to dismember Triamid into it's 10 constituent elements and reassemble it into a complete Triamid. A word of warning however--as there are 2 possible ways of doing this (a right and a left one) solving the puzzle after such a ressembly has an additional sting in the tail." What exactly is this "sting"? And what did it mean by "right and left"? (if there's some joke here, I missed it...) I was wondering, if I took it apart and reassembled it to a completed form, the puzzle is still solvable, I just scramble it and get back to the form I reassembled it to. So this can't be the "sting" mentioned. Unless it meant reassemble it to some unfinished form. Next question... Sometimes when I play around with it, one of the corner pieces pops off and lands on the floor. I pick it up and put it back on wondering, how was it originally oriented? And considering the 11/12 chance that I'll have put it back on wrong way. Have I just rendered the Triamid (once again) "unsolveable"? Final question, for fun... Anyone bought more than one Triamid, and put 'em together to make a "Monster(a)mid"? =^) ...also for a Square-1 for x-mas too, still fiddling around with it too. And have yet to lay my hands on Rubik's Tangle, Dice, and Fifteen. But NOT the Cube^4 (was that it?) Couls never solve the original, why should I touch this one? =^/ Galen Komatsu gkomatsu@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu !