Monday, August 3, 2015

Bandage Kit Cube

I wanted Annie to play with a corners only cube. She had ideas of her own. Pretty soon it was covered with tiles so big it wouldn't turn. We made some slight adjustments and two sides would turn but each blocked the other. After further modifications one layer has two positions that do not block the other turntable layer. And the other does no blocking as it is made up of all 1x1x1 cubies. 

It does not scramble very much. The Move and Sune can both be done so it is easy enough to solve the 5 edges. The Move X 3 can be used to do double swaps of edges to permutations the edges. It was challenging to come up with a corner twister for me and the ones I have come up with are pretty long. 

At first I could only find ways to twist four corners. I wanted to be able to twist two corners, so I didn't keep track of how to twist four. Now I can twist two, but usually during a solve four or five need to twist once the edges are solved and corners permuted. 

A discovery (rediscovery?) made last night is that the edge swapper routine I learned once upon a time done twice in a row does a double swap of corners. Combining that with The Move X 3 twists two corners. Specifically (U R U Ri U R U Ri U) (U R U Ri U R U Ri U) U (R U Ri Ui) X 3 Ui twists FLU anti and BLU clock.

Another way to twist two corners uses Sune. (R U Ri U R U2 Ri U) X 2 R U2 (Ui Ri U R) X 3 U2 Ri twists FRU anti and BLU clock.