the two outermost layers and the inner layers, which can be further classified into two subtypes: the core inner layers, i.e. For convenience, I classify the layers of a Supercube into two types: the outer surfaces, i.e. ![]() In both types of notation, the integer n represents the number of layers that a Supercube contains, both vertically and horizontally. Thus, an nth-order Supercube means the same as an n × n × n Supercube. Altneratively, we can also denote the size of a Supercube by its "order". Supercubes come in different sizes, which are commonly denoted by "n × n × n" (or just "n × n", where n is an integer greater than 1). For this reason, in the following discussion I will use the Orbit Cube as a typical example of Supercubes. Both types of cubes are of the same nature and they are just different versions of Supercubes. However, apart from this complication, the solution procedure of the Earth Cube is in fact no different from that of the Orbit Cube. For example, a player of the Earth Cube has to recall that the corner piece made up of the following facelets should be located at the front-right-top corner of the cube, with each of the following three facelets facing forward, rightward and upward, respectively: This is indeed true for a novice player, who has to memorize the picture of each facelet. Intuitively, it seems that the Earth Cube is harder to solve than the Orbit Cube because each of the six faces of the Earth Cube has the same background color and one cannot determine which corner / edge pieces belong to which faces according to the color. For convenience, in what follows I will refer to the above two Supercubes as the "Orbit Cube" and "Earh Cube", respectively. Moreover, each facelet has a complicated picture showing a part of the Earth. In contrast, the Supercube in the right figure above differs from a Rubik's Cube drastically in that this Supercube does not have distinctive color for each face. For example, since there are 24 facelets on the "01" orbit, 24 alphabets are used to label these facelets, i.e. The alphabet on each facelet is to distinguish different facelets on the same orbit. For example, the 24 facelets of the corner pieces (a cube has 8 corner pieces each having 3 facelets) all belong to the same orbit (numbered "01" in the figure above) because they can be moved to each other's positions. Roughly speaking, two facelets at different positions of the cube belong to the same oribt if you can move one to the other. The numeral is the reference number of the "orbit" which the facelet belongs to. Each of these distinguishing symbols is made up of an alphabet and a numeral. The Supercube in the left figure above is not very different from a Rubik's Cube in that the facelets on each face all have the same color, except that a distinguishing symbol is added onto each facelet. The two most important types of Supercubes are shown below: ![]() According to the characteristics of the picture / symbol on each facelet, Supercubes can be classified into different types. For example, each of the 6 faces of a 3 × 3 × 3 Rubik's Cube is covered by 9 facelets. Here the term "facelets" refers to the small square areas covering the faces of the cube. Please also note that most figures of Supercubes on this series of webpages are captured from the abovementioned website.īy "Supercube" (also called "picture cube") I mean a Rubik's cube each facelet of which has a different asymmetric picture or symbol. Readers who wish to play Supercubes online may visit the Fun with Rubik's Cube webpage (choose "Virtual Cubes" and then a specific size (2 × 2, 3 × 3, etc.) of cubes and then "Picture Cubes"). This is the purpose of this introductory webpage. But before providing a detailed guide on the solution process, I must first introduce the basic concepts of a Supercube, the notation I am going to use, and some useful facts about Supercubes. This series of webpages provide a tutorial on how to solve Supercubes - a special type of Rubik's cubes. ![]() Tutorial on Supercube Solving (1) TUTORIAL ON SUPERCUBE SOLVING (1)
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