"Jerry Bryan" <BRYAN@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> writes:

For the first time in years, I have seen 3x3x3 cubes for sale in a
store. (For American readers, the store is Hills, which is a regional
chain which competes against WalMart and Kmart. The price is $8.97 --
U.S. dollars.) The box has a note signed by Erno Rubik, and gives
the proper size of the cube group. Also, and I couldn't see inside
the box to verify this, the Face centers seemed to be marked in such
a way as to support the Supergroup. Rubik's note about the size of
the problem says it is 4^4 times bigger than the regular problem.
The manufacturer (or maybe distributor?) is Matchbox Toys (or is it
Matchbook Toys?).

What you saw was "Rubik's Cube 4th Dimension." This was released some
time in the early 90s. The only difference between this and the typical 3x3x3
is that four faces have pictures on their center squares, requiring
the solver to orient them correctly.

I belive last year there was a European Rubik Puzzle series that rereleased
the cube, along with other rubik puzzles.

--
-- Wei-Hwa Huang (whuang@cco.caltech.edu)
Homepage (under construction): http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~whuang/
I have a proof that NP = P; however, it requires exponential time to write down.