Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great challenge!, October 28, 2007
Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars
My 13 year old can solve the 3x3 cube in under a minute consistently, and was looking for a new challenge. I was happy to see this was only a few dollars more, and even happier it was made by Milton Bradley. It's been 4 days now and he cannot solve the 4x4 yet! It appears to be well made, and glide easily around the pivot. The price here on Amazon cannot be beat!
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best 4x4 ever made, November 1, 2007
Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally a Rubik's brand 4x4 that doesn't pop or lock. If your a fan of the Eastsheen 4x4 clone, you'll find this cube just as smooth, but with the solid feel of the 4x4 product distributed by Winning Moves.
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
And, no, I haven't seen "Pursuit of Happiness" yet, but I'll keep my eyes peeled., April 24, 2008
Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars
Of course you should follow your own interests and do what you enjoy, but there's also something to be said for having a few skills that seem more impressive than they are.
It's not that doing the Rubik's cube is easy, but it isn't as mysterious as it seems at first. It actually doesn't take a genius. There is a method for solving it, and it is learnable. It requires no more effort than solving one of those video games that you sit in your basement and play for hours with your buddies. A handful of your aimless buddies might be impressed when you beat a video game, but I promise it doesn't travel any further than that. Video games link a little bit more directly to your brain's reward system, with their immediate bonuses for good play and game-over consequences for mistakes. The cube might take a little bit more discipline to stick with, but it certainly won't take up any more time.
Being a bigger cube, with more moving parts- just 56 though, since the center is a sphere- Rubik's Revenge is easier to break. It's not conducive to trying to beat your previous time. You have to make sure all the planes are lined up before giving it a turn. The 4X4X4 seems like it would be much more complicated than the 3X3X3, what with 10 to the 45th possible permutations, versus just 10 to the 19th for the smaller version. But, in fact, it isn't much harder. Here's the trick, and stop reading if you want to figure it out on your own: any N cubed puzzle can be solved by simplifying it to the (N-1) cubed puzzle, and then just solving it from there. (I'm not pretending I figured this out on my own. There are countless blogs and videos devoted to this stuff. Getting help does not devalue the accomplishment. As I keep trying to say, even with the formulas, you still need to struggle and practice in order to really internalize how and why they work.) With the 4 across version, you solve the centers and pair up the edge pieces, then you never have to turn any sections down the midline plane, and the cube converts to a 3X3X3. It turns out any N cubed puzzle can be solved by reducing it to the N-1 cubed version. It's still a different skill and you have to play around with it to get the hang of it, but it's not like a black belt trying to move up a degree. It only took me a couple of weeks, although that did include an airport day. And, it isn't quite as simple as that sounds. There are a few distinctions that require different tricks. Since the 4X4X4 lacks fixed centers, there are a few possible novel situations that can come up called `parity errors.' It looks sort of like when someone takes apart the regular cube but puts the pieces back in wrong and it can't be solved. But the 4 cubed parity errors are solvable although they require some extra fancy little algorithms to memorize. People grumble about these algorithms on some of the web sites, but I actually find them very elegant, in their near-symmetry, with repetitive doings and undoings and minor little twists and turns putting things into place. I could sit and turn that into a metaphor for things in life but right now that feels like a boring idea. Springtime in New England.
I feel like I didn't really get the 3 block cube until I mastered the 4 block. The Rubik's 4X4X4 is fantastic. You will feel grandiose when you solve it, and most people will be impressed. Some percentage of people won't give you the satisfaction of being impressed, but it's still a positive accomplishment since it is always important exactly who those people are. Still, I continue to have trouble knowing what to say when people asked me how I learned it. I used to tell the truth but that leaves people disappointed, like finding out how a magic trick is done. So I've experimenting with various more mystical answers. I'll let you know if I settle on one.
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