Thank-you everyone for all the feedback. That includes
Roice for the gravitational simulation web link (I've
played with it a little myself and I think it does a
very neat job - congratulations on it - and I've
passed it onto the Museum as well. They are always on
the lookout for sites that are cool, or relevant, or
both!)
Also, thanks Daniel for the link to the 6x6x6 et. al.
site. I must admit that my best time for the 5x5x5 is
at least 30 minutes; and part of this is the fact that
it has to be turned very gingerly less the whole thing
flies apart. (Funnily enough, I learnt this feature
very very soon after first playing with it, but it was
a quick way to check out the internal workings of the
thing!). I'm sure this will become a worse and worse
physical problem with any bigger cubes, and these web
sites may well be the way to go.
The other issue, as Daniel (Dan?) points out is that
after a while the increasing number of cubes per edge
becomes 'more of the same': what I mean by that is
that you are either going to have a set of moves to
shuffle corners/edges or you are not; and if you do
then they seem to be fairly applicable to each member
of the family. Perhaps the centres are the newest
challenge on these bigger cubes?
On a related point to this, I always feel I am severly
under-using the set of all possible moves on the
larger cubes: multiple slice moves etc. I'm sure there
are solutions on (say) the 5x5 where one turns both
one face and the next slice 'down' as as single unit,
but I have never used these. Is this just me? (Of
course, using such 'half cube turns' on the 4x4 gives
the 2x2 cube again).
Finally, on the 4x4 I sometimes end up with just two
edges swapped, so it appears initially to be the
single edge flip not possible (and thus disorientating
the first time it happens) on the standard 3x3. Does
anyone have a short(ish) set of moves to reverse this?
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