th<\/sup> grade, I owned a 4×4 cube. It was tricky to use, because if the sections didn’t line up just right it wouldn’t turn. This would lead to twisting harder to overcome the resistance, which would lead to one of the center pieces snapping off. I went through a few 4×4 cubes this way, and no longer own one.<\/p>\nFor a solution of the 4×4, I would ignore the outer rows and focus on the center area. This was, in effect, a 2×2 puzzle, and almost anyone can solve one of those. Just keep at it and they will fall into place sooner or later. From there I would pair up the edge pieces. This was more tricky, but still not too hard. Once that was done, the thing was, in effect, a normal 3×3 Rubik’s cube and could be solved thus.<\/p>\n
This 5×5 is quite a step up in difficulty. I think it would be possible to ignore the outer layers and focus on the 3×3 in the middle, which would be like working with a normal cube. Once that was complete I’d have a solved area in the center of each face, although I’m not sure where I’d go from there, or if that is even a good approach.<\/p>\n
Honestly, I’m sure this puzzle is beyond me, but I’d still love to take a crack at it.<\/p>\n
UPDATE: I’ve been thinking about it and I realized that my idea for treating the center rows of the 5×5 like a 3×3 cube wouldn’t work. It just.. they wouldn’t… geeze I can hardly picture it, but I can see I was talking nonsense. Maybe you could ignore the center and work on the corners (thus turning it into a 2×2) and then work your way in. I don’t know. I think I need to surf around and see if I can buy one of these. On the other hand, I’m concerned that it would be very frustrating to work with. I imagine it has all the turning issues of the 4×4, only more so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wuerfel2 Originally uploaded by m.helmreich. This one is not mine. I just found this picture on Flickr. I want one. Back in 9th grade, I owned a 4×4 cube. It was tricky to use, because if the sections didn’t line up just right it wouldn’t turn. This would lead to twisting harder to overcome the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pictures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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