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

Just as well, you'd have been disappointed. As I wrote on 8 Jan 92,

: While most people are content to make each face a solid color, some
: cubes have markings that display whether the face centers are twisted
: with respect to the rest of the cube.
: [This has recently been done commercially in an spectacularly
: braindamaged way, in a product known as ``Rubik's cube--the
: fourth dimension'' or some such nonsense. The mfrs have marked
: only four face centers, breaking symmetry while they fail to show
: the surprising invariant of the Supergroup. What bagbiters!]

Rubik's note about the size of
the problem says it is 4^4 times bigger than the regular problem.

And it could have been 4^(11/2).

And worse, it's not even 4^4, since there are two ways to align the face
centers so that the puzzle looks solved. The two unmarked faces are
opposite each other, and the four marked faces are marked with symbols
(Rubik's signature, his silouette, "C*4^4", and the "Rubik's Cube"
trademark) that have a definite "up", but don't tie in to the rest of the
cube at all. If all four are upside down, to "solve" the cube simply
requires turning the cube over.

Dan
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil