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Show HN: A puzzle I couldn't solve for a year – cubers cracked it in an hour

skimmiq.com

18 pointsPawel_SkimmIQ17 comments

Dev here. I created a puzzle that looks like Rubik's cube but works differently. Instead of turning faces, closed bands of 12 stickers slide around the cube. Every scramble is solvable. I built on-device AI solvers that solve it in about 60 moves (sometimes substantially less than that)

I'm not even a cuber so since I created it I've been thinking that no human can solve it. Until this Tuesday when I showed it to r/Cubers. It took them about an hour to find a solution. The first human solve was about 240 moves using mostly (how they call it) 4-move commutators: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cubers/comments/1vrq8zk/

So my belief died, but a better question was born: nobody has a teachable method yet, let alone approaching 60 moves.

The link is a 60-second browser demo. The math and the first recorded solve are at https://skimmiq.com/human-method/.

I'm 60, not a professional programmer, and AI helped me create the puzzle and with the heavy math. Happy to answer anything.

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I have no idea what I am trying to even do? I got a red and white cube.... Ok now what? What does winning look like? There is no indication of what it means to solve this puzzle or what I am supposed to do.

Fair point, and you are right. The demo starts solved because its only job is to show how one move works: nothing turns here, bands of stickers slide. The goal is the classic one, one color per face. The page does not say that and it should. I will fix the text. If you want to actually try solving in the browser, here is a scrambled state:

https://skimmiq.com/s/?alg=D1-1%2CR3-1%2CR3-1%2CD1-1%2CD2%2B...

lol same I think OP got tunnel visioned and forgot that nobody even knows wtf the point of the puzzle is.

Fun idea on the cube. I tried it on my laptop and:

* Found it hard to select the tape and drag it with the touchpad. If I happened to click in between two tiles I would rotate instead of moving. Very frustrating.

* Your link starts out solved? So I moved it around and then got bored.

Not a complaint or anything. I could simply not be the audience but I figured you'd be interested in just hearing from a rando normie.

On second thought: still that between-tiles click is real feedback. Drag outside the cube must rotate the view (with no tile hit I cannot guess which band you meant), but the gaps between tiles should probably just ignore the click instead (That's how the actual app works)

Hit the r/Cubers page, thing is humbling ...

Darn, got to https://skimmiq.com/about/ (the making of) it's a good story too.

Boy that's actually great. Thanks for linking it!

Thank you! :)

Anyone remembers Geranium ? I used to be besotted with its underlying design.

Here is a simulator

https://github.com/grigorusha/GeraniumsPot/

I did not know Geranium, thank you. Looking at the simulator now. And you are right - it really works on a similar idea. And I see people rate Geranium 10/10 difficulty with Hungarian Rings at 1/10. Now I am curious where mine sits on that scale ;)

Very strange choice to present the player with a solved puzzle and no "scramble" button...

The demo is a 60-second teaser, it was never the game. In the app you get a free pool of scrambles, then one rewarded ad refills it. The next update makes it about ten scrambles per ad, and nothing ever interrupts a game. It is a one-man company, the solvers and servers are paid from this.

scramble is a paid feature on their app.

Even now when you turn off the Solver Menu in settings you have 10 free scrambles within one ad refill (unless you use another premium feature in the meantime)

I love this lol

Thank you! And if you ever solve it, I want to hear about it ;)

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