A little while back I wrote about my new Lego toy – a Mindcuber
designed by David Gilday… for this non-twisty-guy, definitely the least painful
way to solve a 3*3*3 Rubik’s Cube.
David recently released a string of updates to the software
(along with a version for the Educational kit) which
have significantly improved the scanning speed, improved the solving algorithms
and added the ability to solve directly to a number of patterns...
… so now you
can instruct this little contraption to give you:
- a cube with a snake around all six sides,
- a chequerboard pattern,
- six spots,
- a cube-in-cube (my favourite) and
- a Super-Flip pattern (every single edge piece is flipped 180 degrees – the stuff of nightmares for padawans like me!).
If you’ve already got one made up, make sure you grab a copy
of the new software, and if you’re considering building yourself one – it’s
EVEN BETTER now!
Cool. I've not seen the snake pattern before. I see that the White-Yellow side has a vertical path. One can deduce that the Yellow-White side has a horizontal path, and the other four sides each have a 90-degree turn in the path. But now I am curious: is there a second snake-like pattern which has a 90-degree turn on each of the six faces; or is there a parity restriction that prevents that? I'll have to investigate...
ReplyDeleteI have solved a snake pattern with all faces having a 90-degree turn along the path. Thanks for the diversion.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff Tyler! I am impressed ... care to hack some Mindstorms code to reproduce it? :-)
Delete