Shortest Solution 3^4 Finally Broken!

[charle...@gmail.com]

Hello Hypercubers,

I am here to announce that I have broken the 3^4 Shortest Solution records for both the Manual and the Computer-Assisted, followed by the Magic 120 Cell as well. The 3^4 Manual record is now 211 twists (previously 227 twists), the Computer-Assisted record is now 204 twists (previously 205 twists), and the Magic 120 Cell record is now 17016 twists (previously 19084 twists).

Beginning from a scrambled 4D cube, I first built a 2x2x2x2 cube around a 4-colored piece, analogous to the Petrus method on the regular Rubik's cube. Then, I expanded the 2x2x2x2 to a 2x2x2x3, and then to a 2x2x3x3. After this, I expanded it to a full 3x3x3x2, which is essentially the first two layers. Then, after orienting and permuting the 2 coloreds of the last face, I oriented the 3 and 4-colored pieces, which is analogous to OLL on a regular Rubik's cube. The final step was to solve the remaining Rubik's cube, which I recreated the position on a normal Rubik's cube, and solved it using various FMC techniques, resulting in a 24 move solution. After writing my solution down, I then applied it with RKT to the final cell, solving the 4D cube.

For my computer-assisted solution, I used the same method as above, however, I used CubeExplorer on the final step.

As for the Magic 120 Cell, I have solved it from a scrambled state through a block-building approach. First, I solved the cell in the center, and the inner layer that adjoined it. Next, I solved the twelve cells that were adjacent to the inner cell, and their adjoining inner layers as well. As I would continue on with solving the puzzle, I would build inner layers of blocks, and use the large amount of space to build the outer layers to join them with. During the later stages of my block-building, I would use the little space I had left to build the inner and outer pentagons, and join them together to completely solve a cell. Then, when I made it to the final cell, I first oriented and permuted the 2-colored pieces of the final cell, then used an orient-then-permute approach, by using a flipping algorithm I had devised in order to first orient certain 3-coloreds and 4-coloreds, and used RKT to solve them. Eventually, all the pieces were oriented and permuted.

It has been a great journey to take on these three records!

For those who are interested, I also have a Youtube channel, which revolves around the 4D cube, ways to solve it, and its counterparts. 

The link to my channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCATk2QlSZP4HaO1b8uuk6VA

Happy Hypercubing!

Charles Doan

[vasvaria]

Wow... it's impressive. Congratulations!

- Adrian