From cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Mon Jun 2 13:10:47 1997 Return-Path: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Received: from oolong.camellia.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by oolong.camellia.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id NAA03416; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:10:46 -0400 Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970601235733.0068d4f0@pop.radix.net> X-Sender: pilloff@pop.radix.net (Unverified) X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Sun, 01 Jun 1997 23:57:43 -0400 To: cube-lovers@ai.mit.edu From: Hersch Pilloff Subject: 5x5x5 practical Q's Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello, I'm proud to say that after significant quantities of blood, sweat, and tears, I have finally solved the 5x5x5 cube. I used some techniques from the good old 3x3x3 cube as well as some general techniques I've found useful over the past (often of the form A R A' R' where A is a set of rotations preserving one face and R is a rotation of that face). One problem I faced along the way and have not been able to solve to my satisfaction is an issue of parity. I often put the big cube in a state where exactly two "equivalent" off-center edge pieces on the upper face were interchanged with one another. They had the correct orientation, I simply needed to switch the two pieces. I would like to know if anyone has an effective means of dealing with this situation. It was immediately apparent that the ARA'R' technique would not work because interchanging two pieces requires a change in parity which the ARA'R' won't produce. I tried interchanging "identical" pieces from the interior of the cube and then returning to the top face to see if any change had resulted. This was met with only marginal sucess-- after enough fiddling I was able to produce two pairs of interchanged, properly oriented, off-center edge pieces on the upper face which I could, after some further manipulation, handle with an ARA'R' scheme. Still, this isn't very satisfactory to me because I don't much like the idea of having to randomly interchange pieces until I produce a workable situation without any more definite strategy. Undoubtedly, most of you have been more successful at this endeavor than I have, so I'd appreciate any available wisdom. Thanks, Mark Pilloff P.S. I'm not using my usual account. If you email a reply to me, please send it to mdp1@uclink4.berkeley.edu and not whatever return address is listed above or below. Or just mail the list-- I'm on that as well.