Originally published at: Simple solutions to Rubik's Cube | Boing Boing
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Solutions?
Those are not solutions, only some simple examples that literally any sequence of moves, repeated enough times, will give back a solved cube if you start with one.
A skilled solver might learn to recognise the intermediate combinations and finish solving by applying/undoing the rest of the sequence, but a full general solution they are not.
I’m not skilled, I solved it when I was in high school and it took me quite some time to find a solution.
Some days later a classmate and friend saw me solving the cube:
“Cool! How did you learn to do it?”
“Oh, I read a book”
“Can I borrow it?”
“Sure thing! It’s from the school library!”
The morning after he was extremely disappointed when I brought “Theorems and problems in group theory”.
The set of tiles plus the possible operations form what is called a group.
A very simple example of a group might be the numbers 0,1,2,3 as elements and addition modulo 4 as operation.
Applying the operation to elements in the group you always obtain an element in the group (E.g. 0 + 2 = 2, 2+3 = 1 etc.), there is an identity element (0, as element + 0 gives you element) and every element has an inverse:
3 and 1 are inverse of each other, as 3+1=0, and 2 and 0 are their own inverse ( 2 +2 = 0, 0 + 0 = 0).
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From Indian, eh? Always wanted to go there.
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I never could solve… just couldn’t make the spatial connections.
But I could tear one down and put it in a jar.
https://www.google.com/search?q=rubik's+cube+in+jar
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Molten copper does the trick…
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