An original Sam Loyd puzzle involving the Rubik's cube has
come into my hands; somewhat surprising, in that Sam Loyd died in
the early years of this century, but no more so than the truly
astounding circumstances by which the puzzle came to me, which I would
detail if I believe that anyone were interested. However, as this
list consists only of people interesting in things Cubic, I will limit
this posting to the puzzle itself.
Crooked Gambling in Puzzleland
by Sam Loyd
Tommy Riddles has challenged King Puzzlepate to a game of
dice, using Rubik's Cubes as dice. However, Tommy is planning to
cheat by changing the ordinary Rubik's Cube into tops [ tops are dice
which are misspotted, by having only three different numbers on them,
each appearing opposite to itself, such that it is indetectable
without turning the die around -ed ] spotted 1-2-3, which he is able
to make from a standard cube in 14 moves.
King Puzzlepate, however, has learned from the General of his
plans, and has figured out to convert Tommy's tops into 2-3-4 tops,
which are favorable to His Majesty, in only 3 moves.
Can you duplicate both these feats?
[ Note that Loyd appears to consider a move as moving any of the nine
slices any number of degrees. Thus the move we would designate as
L2R2 and count as four, Loyd would count as one move of the center
slice by 180 degrees. ]