From ishius@ishius.com Fri Jan 14 14:17:29 1994 Return-Path: Received: from holonet.net (giskard.holonet.net) by life.ai.mit.edu (4.1/AI-4.10) for /com/archive/cube-lovers id AA25577; Fri, 14 Jan 94 14:17:29 EST Received: from DialupEudora (ishius@localhost) by holonet.net (Anton Dovydaitis) with SMTP id LAA17654; Fri, 14 Jan 1994 11:13:42 -0800 Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 11:13:42 -0800 Message-Id: <199401141913.LAA17654@holonet.net> To: Cube-Lovers@ai.mit.edu From: ishius@ishius.com (Ishi Press International) Sender: ishius@ishius.com (Unverified) Subject: 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cubes. I've been getting a lot of requests for 4x4x4 cubes, and we're looking into getting them. However, I have a couple questions. 1) Why are 4x4x4 cubes so interesting? Do the additional symmetries make for interesting questions, are they more fun, or easier to solve? 2) It appears to me that if you know how to solve the 3x3x3 Rubik's cube, then you can easily solve the 5x5x5 rubiks (i.e., the solution is derivative). For example, you can treat the inner 3x3 faces of the 5x5x5 as a single 3x3x3 cube. Alternately, you can treat the edges/faces along with the the middle three slices combined into a single slice as its own 3x3x3 cube, and this would not really disturb the "inner face" 3x3x3 cube. Is this really so, or am I missing something? Is the 5x5x5 cube simply the group product of two 3x3x3 cubes and one or two sub-groups of a 3x3x3, or is it more complex than that? How does this relate to the 4x4x4? I do have a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and am familiar with abstract algebra. I appreciate any light you can shed on these questions. I would like to be able to converse intelligently about the cubes; that is why I subscribed to this list. Anton Dovydaitis ======================================================================== Ishi Press International 800/859-2086 voice, 408/944-9110 FAX 76 Bonaventura Drive ishius@ishius.com The Americas San Jose, CA 95134 ishi@cix.compulink.co.uk Europe