[next] [prev] [up] Date: Mon, 03 Aug 81 12:50:00 -0700 (PDT)
[next] [prev] [up] From: Stan Isaacs <ISAACS@SRI-KL >
~~~ ~~~ [up] Subject: another new cube

Last week I saw still another type of new cube that a friend had picked
up on a chinese boat. Each face was a magic square - that is, each facelet
contained a number from 1 to 9, and, when solved, each line of 3 facelets
added to 15. This particular cube was also colored, so wasn't very
interesting (you could solve it by colors and the magic-ness was automatic),
but it should be a very difficult problem with the numbers colorless.
Apropos to this, my son says he saw two other new types (but by the
time he went back to get them for me, they were gone). They were both
related to the 10-sided one that essentially cut off 4 parallel edges;
one cut off all EXCEPT 4 parallel edges (how?), and the other cut off
corners. Has anybody else seen thesed? Can you describe them more
accurately?
By the way, there are lots of "do it yourself" variations on the cube.
For instance, a good present (though it takes a lot of work to make, and
I still don't know what the best glue to use is) is a picture cube. Find
6 family photos (or other appropriate pictures) of the right size and glue
away. Or (and this is based on earlier discussion of a braille cube), make
a tactile cube - put a different material on each face. I've tried cloth
(which doesn't work too well because of the glue and the fraying), misc
stuff (washers, broken toothpicks, etc), and next want to try with different
sandpaper grades (the ideal tactile cube would be ONLY solvable by touch, and
have the faces look the same to the eye). Another, more difficult to make
suggestion, would be to make each face a different thickness, or perhaps
a different contour. Any ideas on how to actually construct these? Any
ideas on a really good glue for cube faces?
--- Stan Isaacs
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