The surface is not flat, it's spherical!!

Naa!! I'm not talking about the earth being spherical or the old misconception that it's surface is flat. If indeed, it is information on that that you are looking for, I advice you to click here! :)

What I have in store is something that will quite fit your hand, but still, going to leave you as baffled as the surface of the earth had centuries earlier...

One of my friends got in touch with me, asking for my mail address (though we meet each other quite frequently) citing that he wanted to send the link of a page to me. After much difficulty (me email id has got 24 characters in it!!), he did manage to send it. And then...

He had briefed me as to what to expect and it was, once again, something to do with Rubik!! It was an article from the Times telling about the new puzzle that Ernö Rubik has come up with...

Here is a man, who, after 20 years or so, has come up with yet another puzzle, that is bound to create waves, as the first one had. With a promise of lesser mathematics being involved, a hint saying gravity plays its own part(!!) and a suggestion that the manual dexterity of the solver (which if you would like to know, has no place with the cube) has a role to play; the "Rubik's 360", as it has come to be named, is surely going to appeal and irritate the masses, as much (if not more!) as the cube had done during its hay days.

Next up, it is for us to wait till the official release in August happens. Till then, let us just chant the mantra :
"Six squares made THE CUBE; now, three spheres make 360!!!"

Gifts for thought!

It's been almost a year since my last entry. But still, it seems as if it was all bound to be this way. For what I write now, seems to sprout from where I'd left it last.....

Having just passed out of college, it seems as if I wake up each day after an extended farewell! Yes, it is one of those things that happened during those last days at college that I wish to write upon.

About a month ago, as early as five in the morning, a number of my precious juniors had been to our hostels to leave us our farewell gifts (Their intention being to leave the gifts while everyone was still fast asleep. Unluckily for them, I'd not gone to bed yet!). Pitying their plight, I gave them time enough to sneak into my room and leave what they'd brought. And so they did...

And now comes the reason why I believe this to continue from where I left...

They'd gifted me a Rubik's cube! Not just another cube, but one in which six of their faces were etched as caricatures. Having identified the moment I saw it what it was that they'd intended, I quickly tried to solve it and see the finished product. Overwhelmed by emotion, it took me longer than usual, and by the time I was done with it, I myself couldn't wait any longer!

And then I had it, the completed cube. Only to find that though the cube was solved, the problem wasn't, for the six caricatures were not rightly alligned.

And then, it set in! While in a normal cube, the orientation of the centre pieces in each face is irrelevant, the cube that I'd been gifted with had an added constraint. Not only had I had to solve the cube, but I also had to keep in mind the position of the centre pieces!

Unaware of it themselves, my juniors had bumped me into a problem, the solution for which had become one in a septillion rather than one in a quintillion!

It took me a couple of days to get working on it and solve it such that I could picture the six caricatures properly. But when I did it, it did give me a sense of satisfaction, more than ever I've felt at completing a cube!

So, next time, when someone gifts you something, don't be too happy! You might after all be pushed into a chain of thought you've never had before!

And now its an obsession!

It was the last day of our sixth semester. With the exams already out of the way, the only real work that we had to do was to get packing to our homes. Amidst all this confusion, there was one of our seniors who had come to our hostel, Pearl, to see us off. And it was then that it all started...

There he was, sitting and talking to us while we were rummaging everything and stuffing them into our bags. It was now that he spotted a Rubik's cube, lying alone in the corner of one of our rooms, in memory of the Nittfest(our intra-collegiate cultural festival) that had gone by.

At first, no one took notice. But as he started solving the cube with ease, soon a group started forming around him! Believe me, almost every single person were in awe, and every one wanted to know the 'trick' immediately. It ain't that easy though...

I had made a mental note that when I return to college for the seventh semester, I should be able to solve the cube with ease.

It was as I guessed, difficult. Time passed before I actually got my hands on a Rubik's cube. And once this was done, I searched the net(the faithful servant who promises to be of help whenever needed) and after some work ended up with the right site for me, a beginner's guide!

Still, I was not through. The first time I did solve, with the algorithm in front of me in the computer screen, it took me almost four hours! Worth it, for I just didn't solve, but tried and understood the intricacies of the cube.

What started as a mere whim, was slowing becoming an obsession!

I was spending a lot of hours everyday on the cube, and slowly but steadily brought down the time that I needed to solve it. I was able to better the algorithms that I knew, to suit to my methods of solving. And with this done, next in line is speed solving, and solving it blindfolded!

What more, it gives you a satisfaction when you think of it in the following manner :
The solved Rubik's cube is one out of 43 quintillion (43,252,003,274,489,856,000) permutations that are possible on the cube!
Well, its not just another toy any more!