{"id":173,"date":"2006-04-04T18:05:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-05T01:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/?p=173"},"modified":"2006-04-04T18:05:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-05T01:05:00","slug":"cubism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/?p=173","title":{"rendered":"cubism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inspired by 's Rubik cube antics, I picked one up myself last week. When I was a kid, the most I could do was one side. So this time I set about solving it properly. I'm not interested in solving it really quickly, just in being able to solve it. So I set about it without looking at any solution guides.<\/p>\n

What I did do was look at Lars' guide, just looking at the goals of each step in sequence without looking at the moves to get there. Here's how it progressed:<\/p>\n

2x2x2 is easy.
\n2x2x3 is also easy.
\nRotating the edges I figured out quite quickly.
\n2x3x3 takes me a long time but it's basically doable. I found this stage to be a bit random in progress towards the goal.
\nThat leaves just the top layer to do. Here's where I departed from Lars' method a bit.<\/p>\n

I figured out a few different variations of moves for manipulating the top layer which permute edges and corners and also turn corners, leaving edges unturned. This stage was a bit random. In fact very random. But I had a strong feeling that between the various moves I knew, some combination would solve the cube. I started by doing edges first and then corners, and ended up with all solved but 2 corners incorrectly rotated. I could also get 3 corners incorrectly rotated, or all 4, but I couldn't get none. (Just one is also impossible for parity reasons). Then I went back to Lars' steps and noticed he does corners before edges. So I tried that instead. And finally a solution occurred.<\/p>\n

Having solved it, I checked Lars' actual moves. What he calls a Sune I had discovered also. And many variations thereof which do various things to the top layer.<\/p>\n

I also have a different method from the old days: rather than starting with 2×2, 2x2x3, etc. I start with a layer (blue of course being the One True Layer) then proceed to the second layer. I have a move that is much easier to me than the 15-puzzle style second layer alignment I did when following Lars' steps. It leaves the top edges incorrectly rotated, but a variant of it can also be used on the top layer (multiple times if need be) to end up with 2 layers solved and top cross correctly rotated. From there it is just a matter of applying my move to permute 3 corners, then the Sune & variants to rotate corners and edges correctly.<\/p>\n

I'm usually solving the cube in around 5 minutes. That'll do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspired by 's Rubik cube antics, I picked one up myself last week. When I was a kid, the most I could do was one side. So this time I set about solving it properly. I'm not interested in solving it really quickly, just in being able to solve it….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}