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Comment by udev | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those cases that neatly separates the (ivory-tower) academic types from the (getting-hands-dirty) engineer types of people.

People who say that drilling the wholes in the cube diminishes the achievement, the perfect-or-nothing crowd, belong to the first group.

People who see the drilling of holes as a valid tradeoff to achieve higher performance are more pragmatic and belong to the second group.

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This doesn't seem to be a question of pragmatism -- they're going for a world record, not trying to solve a practical problem. I'm no expert on this, but it seems to me like the criteria for obtaining a world record title would include not modifying the object used. To me this is like trying to beat the record for furthest soccer ball kick by modifying the materials used in the soccer ball.

Agreed. The holes invalidate their record attempt. It's like drilling channels into a football so you can throw it farther.

Or deflating a ball to beat the Colts...

How about lubricating the cube so that it rotates faster? Lots of people do that. Would that count as a modification?

Not true, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970673

/u/qwerqmaster on reddit:

  According to the Guinness World Record's article[1] the 
  cube has to follow the World Cube Association's 
  regulations[2] on competition legal cubes. The WCA allows 
  modified/custom made cubes as long as they meet a list of 
  guidelines, which this modified cube does.

[1] http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2015/11/robot-creat...

[2] https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#article-3-...

As someone who solves cubes and is a "get-shit-done" engineer, I think its not as neat as you make it sound. I'm horrified by the drilled holes, but amazed at the build and engineering.

What if the cube would be manufactured so that the middle squares were removable, and replaceable with alternative ones with holes? Would that still be horrific? Or would that cube be considered easier to solve? If so, would you solve it faster vs a regular cube?

You can actually buy speed cubes which the center squares can be pulled off so that you can adjust the tension on the cube with a screw driver. It'd be pretty easy to modify the machine turn the cube with the center caps pulled off without having to actually modify the cube itself. I personally still feel like that is cheating.

I think this comes down to this; either you think the act of solving the cube is impressive, or you think the ability to turn the cube quickly is impressive. As someone who can solve the cube in 40-45 seconds (and I'm admittedly pretty slow), the part that really bogs me down is I'm not good at finger tricks or turning the cube quickly. If I had a device (other than my fingers) which would let me turn the cube more quickly, I'm sure I could probably cut my solve times down dramatically. Solving the cube itself isn't all that interesting.

It'd be even faster to solve a simulation of a cube.

once you can modify the cube you basically break the whole point of this excersize. I mean almost all the kids i knew who messed with these when i was a younging would pull the cube apart and then put it back together in the correct shape, or take off the stickers and stick them back...

doesnt really count...

If parts pop off during a competition, you're allowed to put them back together. I'm not sure if that includes a full explosion (when a majority of the pieces come off the cube). It probably doesn't matter because it would take too long anyway.

https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#article-5-...

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