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V-Cube 7
Today, Friday 29th August 2008, I picked up my (very early) Xmas present to myself: a V-Cube 7, imported from Greece. This is a 7x7x7 Rubik's Cube type puzzle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Cube_7
http://www.v-cubes.com/index.php
Initial thoughts: -
* slightly smaller than I expected
* incredible build quality
* very sturdy - good weight to it
* some stickers not fully stuck down due to bits of backing paper on them - easily fixed. Some stickers with annoying little creases in them - some not easily fixed. I think the sticker application part of the production line could be improved.
I don't own a 5x5x5 or 6x6x6 so I've not got the required background in solving these larger puzzles! However, I've recently learnt some simple techniques to solve the 4x4x4.
I've got to the stage where I've worked out the techniques to solve 3 centres and now I have the 4th to tackle. That was with the clues from a few YouTube tutorials: -
The first: http://www.therubikzone.com/V-Cubes.html
And the second: From http://uk.youtube.com/user/Mindstormscreator starting with http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qkmXVuvfhcM
Here's an old page with a walkthrough solution that may be of help...
http://www.rxdeath.com/vc/solution/centers2.html
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OK, I have it solved 24hrs later! My first set of techniques...
* solve first center by simple intuition
* solve second center opposite first using the technique to avoid breaking the solved slices by rotating them on the back face
* solve third and forth opposing centers using the half-and-half technique from http://www.therubikzone.com/V-Cubes.html
* solve last pair of opposing centers using a pendulum type technique - l'2,F,r2,F',l'2,F,r2 (and mirror) with appropriate slice depth
* solve tredges with the edge swapping technique described by TheRubikZone in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4bPz8GmYas -- Arrange edges with tredge cubies to swap on upper face Set up with R2,L2,D then l', U2 repeated 5 times (becomes more obvious when performing it!)
* fix final tredges with mystery dance - http://www.bigcubes.com/5x5x5/lastedges.html has a "edge flip/swap" that serves well for both inner and outer tredge wings: (Ll)' U2 (Ll)' U2 F2 (Ll)' F2 (Rr) U2 (Rr)' U2 (Ll)2 -- use the appropriate depth of slice
* solve as 3x3x3
Four months later...
It's just turned 2009 and I've had the V-Cube 7 for 4 months and I'm totally impressed. I've only had two unintentional pops and luckily those only involved a couple of pieces and were easily remedied. I've discovered a few new techniques for forming centres and edges but it still takes me the best part of half an hour to solve!
"More permutations than atoms in the universe"
I sometimes mention this in conversation and it is usually met with disbelief (quite naturally). Let's look at some numbers here...
The number of permutations of the V-Cube 7 is 19 500 551 183 731 307 835 329 126 754 019 748 794 904 992 692 043 434 567 152 132 912 323 232 706 135 469 180 065 278 712 755 853 360 682 328 551 719 137 311 299 993 600 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 or about 19.5 duoquinquagintillion, or 1.95 * 10^160.
There is general consensus that the total number of atoms in the universe is much less than a googol, or 10^100, and is probably more in the range of 10^78 (various sources below).
I stand by my statement but don't ask me to prove it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Matter_content
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/glossary/indexg.shtml
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=352789