DENSITY
All right! I still can't do the Rubric's Cube thing!
Goodness knows how many Christmases ago it was that we all got at least one such colorful toy for Christmas.
By the time I had learned various different ways in which I was able to shift some of the colors around to various sides without disturbing others, the small kids in the family had peeled most all of the colorful decals from the block divisions so it did not matter which way I turned and twisted any of them.
May I digress at this moment to speak a word or so in serious gratitude on behalf of having adequate numbers of small children in the household on whom small bits of blame such as this can be placed. A home without small, mischievous and inquiring small children must be a miserable place!
Now, back to the cube... well, there's nothing to go back to, really, because I've been at a standstill since that time of long ago. ago. I marvel at those who tell me they can work the cube without any undue effort. I marvel when I hear it, not be because I believe them, but because so many such people go out of their way to tell me they can do so! They not only apply the salve eagerly and with ease, but insist on rubbing it in, as well!
I have never, yet, had nerve enough to say: “Put up, or shut up!” to such cube-sayers. Some day I may just do that and we will have a slow show-down, possible at high noon for dramatic associations, when I can also claim the brilliance of the Sun preventing my seeing how it was done.
And, lest some of you may think me to be an inept “square”, I, herewith, point out that I am more of a “cube” than a common same-sided block.
It extends to other puzzling areas...
These “Triangle” puzzles, for instance. They are a three- sided nemesis haunting me from time to-time, as well.
They usually appear in the form of two-three inch pieces of soft wood into which some diligent citizen of far-off China has worked a series of holes.. .one at the apex of the triangle, then a row of two, four, five and six until the areas is full of such holes. If your puzzle has fifteen such holes you take fourteen little wooden pegs which resemble pygmy-sized golf tees or chair-caning plugs, and insert them in all but one of the holes. One Chinese excavation is always left unfilled and you can vary that “empty “ position as you see fit, I understand.
Possibly as a sneaky trick to shift your attention away from the moves you are to make, the pegs are often painted in colored sets - three green, three blues and two whites - a mix of sorts. You can assume that this bit of hue-buggery has nothing or everything to do with the solution to the puzzle. The idea is to “jump” those pegs over each other - removing the one jumped - until just one peg remains.
Try it. It moves along real well, and you end up with four, three or two of the pages unable to move. A scale printed on the bottom edge of the puzzle or on the reverse side,will tell you what you dumb-headed score might be.
There is a redeeming factor about these “triangu-liar” puzzles, however. Just about everyone – and I claim to be one of them – has, at one time, been successful in working the puzzle to perfection. But, I have yet to find a single soul who remembers how he or she did it!
A.L.M. December 17, 2002 [c628wds]
