How willing will someone be to scramble a cube, assuming they will have to solve it? The willingness is roughly inversely proportional to the personal effort one considers it will take to solve it.
In the video I show four cubes:
- a Ghost Hand regular 3x3x3 that turns very well, a gift from a few years ago
- a partially-solved regular 5x5x5, that turns ok, that I solved maybe 500 times in 2001/2, but now I've forgotten how to solve in part
- a solved 3x3x3 Tartan, that is fairly stiff
- a scrambled 3x3x3 Shepherd, that turns easily
It's easy to solve the regular 3x3x3, so I happily scramble it. I don't speed-cube, but it's only five minutes to solve a regular 3x3x3 using the beginner's Singmaster 2 method. The 5x5x5 I'm somewhat hesitant to scramble and don't change at all. The Shepherd I scramble a bit more.
There's a bit of resistance to scrambling the Tartan as I figure it will take a few hours to solve, but in the end I scramble it. Back in 2001/2 solving the regular 5x5x5 would take me about 15 minutes, and the Tartan and Shepherd about 20 minutes each.
Several hours later
Yeah, it took several hours to solve the Tartan Cube, following my own instructions. I solved the regular 3x3x3 a half dozen times first, but should have done it maybe 20 times to get the muscle memory back into better shape, as it is impossible to see what is happening with the Tartan when in the middle of a 6- or 12-move algorithm. Also a less stiff cube would make it faster but I don't fancy my chances of disassembling it (easy), lubricating it (easy), and reassembling it (hard).
New Tartan?
I researched a bit online and didn't see anyone selling new Tartan cubes. However, I think I've found a way anyone will be able to get nice new Tartan cubes that turn easily. Stay tuned!
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