A one person game is a sequence of moves following certain rules satisfying

• there are finitely many moves at each stage,
• there is a finite sequence of moves which yields a solution,
• there are no chance or random moves,
• there is complete information about each move,
• each move depends only on the present position, not on the existence or non-existence of a certain previous move (such as chess, where castling is made illegal if the king has been moved previously).

1. for some n > 1 depending only on the puzzle's construction, each move of the puzzle corresponds to a unique permutation of the numbers in T = {1, 2, ..., n},
2. if the permutation of T in (1) corresponds to more than one puzzle move then the the two positions reached by those two respective moves must be indistinguishable,
3. each move, say M, must be "invertible" in the sense that there must exist another move, say M^-1, which restores the puzzle to the position it was at before M was performed,
4. if M₁ is a move corresponding to a permutation f₁ of T and if M₂ is a move corresponding to a permutation f₂ of T then M₁*M₂ (the move M₁ followed by the move M₂) is either
   • not a legal move, or
   • corresponds to the permutation f₁*f₂.

This page contains information about such puzzles.

Werner's installation instructions:
If you unzip rubik.zip, you find a directory containing three further directories and four files. The file installrubik.bat is an installation file to install the rubiks package on a windows computer. To use this file to install the package you must adapt the Maple 6 path and the path of the rubiks package (e.g. c:\rubik). If you have a unix or a linux computer, you can use the Makefile to install the rubiks package. Here, you must change the Maple 6 path and the path to the rubik directory, too. Both installrubik.bat and the Makefile activates the file makerubik.mpl. Here, you must adapt the pathvariable of your rubik directory, too. The name of the pathvariable, you must change is "rubikpath". You don't have to change anything else in this file. Last but not least, there is a file rubikhelp.mpl. This is a file to install the helppages. The file makerubik.mpl activates this file. If you use a windows computer, just click twice on the file install.bat, if you have a linux or a unix computer open a terminal window change to the rubik directory and type make. Furthermore, there are three directories. The directory with the name lib contains the rubik lib files, the directory with the name src contains the source code of the package and the directory web contains the html pages of the package.

Here are some interesting educational links. There are all free and non-commercial. (I cannot and will not post commercial links on this site so don't ask!)

• Some cube-related sites .
• Some lecture notes on the Rubik's cube (Math 485, Fall 1996).
• The masterball page
• The hockey puck puzzle page
• The megaminx page
• Coryanne Rickwalt's term project "The fundamental theorem of the megaminx" ,
• The skewb page
• The jewel page
• The orbix page
• A paper on the square one puzzle, "The homology group of the square 1 puzzle" written with Jim McShea.
• A pretty patterns page for the 3x3 Rubik's cube
• A pretty patterns page for the 4x4 Rubik's cube (patterns by Rainer aus dem Spring)
• Mr Dunivan and Mr Conrady's vertex cross group of the cube page
• Mr Gomes and Mr Montague's skewb group page
• Mr Gettys and Mr Pritchett's Rubik's two squares group page
• Ms Mullen and Mr Robinson's Masterball group page

3x3 and 4x4 Rubik's cube There is a MAPLE implementation of both the 3x3 and 4x4 Rubik's cube. The commands were purposefully designed to be very similar with the rainbow package. The MAPLE text file for the 3x3 package is rubik3 (~12K) and for the 4x4 package : rubik4 (~22K). Some MAPLE rubik3 commands are in the example text file and some example MAPLE worksheets using this package are in rubik3 pretty patterns. A text file containing a very brief description of the strategy and moves I use to solve the cube by hand are in solution . Here are some pictures of some MAPLE 3d plots created using rubik: solved 3x3 cube (front) (~19K) solved 3x3 cube (back) (~16K) an edge 2-cycle with a flip (~18K) Some MAPLE rubik4 commands are in the example text file . A MAPLE worksheet using this package: rubik4 help/examples A text file containing the strategy and moves I use to solve the 4x4 cube by hand are in solution . Here are some pictures of some MAPLE 3d plots created using rubik4: solved 4x4 cube (front) (~17K) solved 4x4 cube (back) (~17K) solved 4x4 cube (view from below) (~20K) 2-cycle on edges (~19K) (also moves some centers but no corners or other edges - due to Thai) 3-cycle on centers (front view) (~18K) (moves no other facets - due to J. Adams ) 3-cycle on centers (side view) (~22K)