Daphne Qin

12, America

1. Pictures explained

11. Tourist attraction:
These are photos from the bridge facing the waterfall named after R. B. Ricketts. There are actually 2 waterfalls here, though one is smaller than the other. The second picture gets a look that is a little closer to the falls.

Ricketts waterfalls

12. Animal:
Xavier Dog (one of the characters in my story that I am currently writing) holding a Rubik’s Cube. Xavier is from another universe, known as Universe 2. When he gets lost and makes his way into Universe 1 (our universe) and Earth, he discovers this puzzle. Scramble: F U B2 L F2 B’ U L U’ D2 L2 U2 L’ B2 R2 L F’ L2 F’ R’ B’ F2 D2 R B. (Xavier is a modified Minecraft dog. Sadly, I don’t have a pet.)

Xavier Dog cubing

13. Unusual place:
It is quite unusual for a white Shengshou Rubik’s Cube, or any Rubik’s Puzzle, to be on the piano keys. After all, a Rubik’s Puzzle can’t play the piano…. (However, it IS quite normal for a puzzle to be on TOP of the piano.) I think this cube is trying to play Debussy’s Claire de Lune (Moonlight Sonata). (I was originally going to do the bathtub or the sink, but I thought many people would do that.)
piano rubiks cube
14. Unusual cube:
This is a pattern from the 1980s that was a joke that was featured on badges that is impossible… or is it? My white Shengshou 3×3 is probably the first in history to be able to get this position. All you need is a little effort, a little love, and an abnormal cube with modified stickers on it….

impossible scramble

2. Creative challenge

21. Quiz questions

Question 1: What was the first 3×3 shape mod?
correct answer: Fisher Cube
incorrect answer 1: Mirror Cube
incorrect answer 2: Mastermorphix
incorrect answer 3: Windmill Cube

Question 2: In WCA competitions, what does +2 shand for?
correct answer: a penalty that adds 2 seconds to your solve time of one cube
incorrect answer 1: a penalty that adds 2 seconds to your final average
incorrect answer 2: part of a point system where you get 2 more points for your final score
incorrect answer 3: a reward where you get 2 seconds off your final average

Question 3: Which speedcube brand started just as MoYu was reaching its peak dominance in the speedcube market?
correct answer: QiYi
incorrect answer 1: DaYan
incorrect answer 2: Cong’s Design
incorrect answer 3: YuXin

22. House design explained:
This might be pretty expensive (and huge!), but this doesn’t need to be copied into the real world.

The diamond blocks (blue) don’t have to be diamonds in real life. So this house design is a 3×3 but if you go inside there are rooms for each cubie and even one for the very middle (where the core is supposed to be but instead is a ladder room to get to each floor).

There are 3 floors and each have 9 rooms, though all are vacant except for torches, doors, and ladders for the middle rooms. On the top of the house is the white side, and there are some wooden brown trapdoors. This is a kind of logo and I got this idea when I couldn’t open the white iron trapdoor (so it would blend in) as it requires a button and it was hard to press the button, so I put the wooden trapdoor instead. I decided that one square was not enough and seemed kind of odd, so hence the logo.

Other pictures are of the door, the floor on the first floor (which is the yellow side), the door, and all the other 5 sides. I chose the magma block for orange (it won’t burn!) because there were really no valuable items for Minecraft like iron, gold, diamond, emerald, and even redstone, but magma is pretty hard to collect even in the real world; hence the magma. This took over 2 hours to build, and there are 19x19x19 blocks on the outside (don’t do 19 cubed for the math, as I didn’t completely fill the inside). There are no windows because there is really not the best views from any of the rooms so the roof is for watching my other builds and for getting a 360 paranoma view. There are 27 5×5 rooms inside this house in total.

rubiks cube competition rubiks cube competition rubiks cube competition rubiks cube competition rubiks cube competition rubiks cube competition rubiks cube competition rubiks cube competition

23. Trick explained:
Sometimes, tricks can save some money!

You just need 2 cubes and some tape or any other adhesive. Add tape to any amount of squares on one side of one cube and stick the other cube to how you desire. (At first, I didn’t know what to do and at first decided on explaining the well-known “How To Solve The Cube In Under 5 Seconds Every Time” trick. But then I was thinking about how I wanted some Siamese puzzles. I decided to try to create my own prototype putting tape on 2 stickers for each cube and sticking them together.

magicmagic

Even better, the puzzle bandages, adding another level of difficulty in addition to how the puzzle is siamese. This idea can be used to cover even more squares or just 1 square (by corners), though if you add more tape to the sides you make the puzzle easier until you get to the 3x3x6 position, where there are only 256 positions in total. The best part, however, is that if you can’t solve it, as long as you didn’t use superglue, you can always pull the cubes apart and solve normally.

This can be a magic trick if before you do the trick you put on the adhesive (ideally a clear adhesive), and when showing it you don’t show any tape and declare that you can stick the cubes together without any adhesives. Then you stick them together slowly so that the cubies match as much as possible (not all cubes are the same size) and turn it carefully. Then pull them back apart.

24. Advertising plan:
Ads can be boring and a nuisance at times, but if the ad is really catchy it becomes really interesting. I would put up several ads of speedcubers solving the cube with a bunch of other people messing with the cube, not knowing how to solve it; also include some stunning facts (this cube has 43 quintillion positions). Rubik’s cubes should also be taught in class, as well as the math behind it, since it has lots of math and science behind it. After all, the concept is so simple, yet there are 43 quintillion positions. Additionally, put on some Rubik’s Cube memes as for attraction for older (and some age-appropriate ones for younger) kids as well.

25. Task for the third round:
Draw a picture of a Rubik’s Cube in a fantasical land. The land can be abstract. It can be based off of something in our universe (like something from Minecraft), but it has to be different in a way. The cube does not have to stand out but has to be visible.

3. Hard-working challenge

31. Title of the movie:
I watched youtuber ExplodingTNT’s “Lost Island” movie that is 31 minutes and 57 seconds long.
Link: https://youtu.be/Reayma84GA0
And the scene(s) described: (Scenes 1, 2, 3 and 4 are actually the first 4 scenes in this movie!)

Scene 1 with the Rubik’s Cube: Notch and a bunch of other people are sitting on a plane. The cube is on Notch’s table and is messed up (picture). Right after Herobrine says, “Wow thanks Notch. Business class is awesome.”Lost Island - Full Minecraft Movie
Again the cube appears with Notch replying, “I own this plane bruh.” After that, Pink Sheep says “I need two seats because I’m very fat.”
Then the pilot’s voice is heard from a speaker that is filmed on screen. After that, the scene shows Notch again with the cube in front of him. The pilot speaks again with the speaker on the screen, and the cube is showed shortly after. Again the pilot speaks but this time about being very allergic to farts. Then Notch is shown close up with the cube partially cut off the screen. The pilot then wishes everyone to enjoy the flight and then Notch is again shown with the cube in silence. This silence is broken by ExplodingTNT (the guy with the red “coat” with the buck tooth). Very soon after, after Herobrine is shown, the cube is shown in front of Notch from Notch’s point of view (first person view, picture). Next to the cube is a computer with code on it, though the screen is too pixelated to see what the code says. The plane gets ready for takeoff. Once the plane is in the air, the screen again shows Notch behind his Rubik’s Cube. This ends the scene.
Lost Island
Scene 2 with the Rubik’s Cube: This scene is right after the first scene with the cube (and the first scene in the movie). It is 4 hours into the flight and it shows Notch asleep with other sleeping passengers. Notch still has a scrambled cube in front of him. After taking a close-up of other sleeping passengers the cube is in the bottom right corner (still in front of Notch) and it disappears after less than one second. The screen then shows a man in a bathroom (all clothes still on) sitting on the toilet and saying “Oh no no no. I need to fart so bad. The pilot will notice…” He then gets out of the bathroom and sees everyone else sleeping. Here the cube appears again, though it is hard to tell unless you look for the computer right next to it. The man then goes back inside the bathroom and says “I CAN’T HOLD IT IN.
WHAT DO I DO?” He makes a small fart and asks “Did anyone hear that?” He then gets out again and after a moment the screen is turned towards the computer and the cube (which is still hard to tell without the computer). He then says “I guess nobody heard it” and gets out through a side door.

Scene 3 with the Rubik’s Cube: The pilot is apparently having a party. Then he pauses and asks, “Wait a second. Is that smell what I think it is?” The pilot gets out of the cockpit and asks the passengers, “Did one of you… did one of you people fart?” The passengers then claim it wasn’t them (and one of the passengers, named Failboat, blames Herobrine) and the cube is visible in front of Notch, and the pilot says, “Silent but deadly. It’s the perfect combination.”
He starts screaming and suddenly dies. The screen gets a close-up of Notch’s face and then of Herobrine (and the people behind him, including ExplodingTNT’s suprised reaction), and then of everybody behind one of the Simpsons and here the cube is visible again.
Then everyone starts screaming and the screen is moving shakily as though someone cannot hold it as they are shocked. After the screen shakily shows the plane going down the cube appears but is only visible if you look for it at the middle of the left edge (it disappears behind the edge quickly!). After that there is a close-up of Notch’s face and he asks, “WHERE’S THE CO-PILOT??” and the cube is cut but visible to the lower left corner of the screen, disappearing and reappearing very quickly (the screen is still shaking).
The screen then shows the co-pilot (not shaking anymore) calmly watching a video of a panda while saying “I love this show!” while all of this commotion is going on. The screen shifts to ExplodingTNT with a gun asking “HOW’D I GET THIS GUN??” with the screen shaking again and the cube to the lower left edge of the screen. There is then a close-up of a man laying on the floor. The plane is then shown going down again, the passengers are running around (there is no cube here, though the fruit shown for only milliseconds might be mistaken for the cube) and the screen is shakier than usual, the plane is going down again with normal shakiness, the passengers are running around again but this time the cube can be seen in the bottom right corner, and a close-up of ExplodingTNT’s face is shown as he says “SOMEONE HELP!!” The head of the plane is seen now with the text “I’m trying” in front of it with a person with a light blue coat in the cockpit (he probably didn’t have a license), and the words disappear as the plane gets closer to the ground on an island. Only about an inch fron the ground (as seen on the screen, but probably not the real length from the cockpit), the screen blacks out with a loud crash noise. (It is surprising to say that the screen was still shaky before the screen blacked out, and even more surprising to say that the cube was in the same scramble the whole ride. Notch probably didn’t touch his cube and possibly not his computer either. Even more surprising than that, the computer was always on for the four hours the passengers were on the plane). The scene closes with a survivor walking with his vision swarming around so he cannot walk properly.

Scene 4 (with no Rubik’s Cube): The screen shows, shakily, the burning plane and the dead bodies with screaming as the background noise. It was day. Then the screen blacks out again and then the screen shows four people (of five survivors) standing around a campfire. It is night. Herobrine begins the conversation by saying “I can’t believe this…” and faces towards the ruins of the plane; he then says “dead bodies everywhere.”

32. Pattern algorithm:
U’ B2 U L2 D L2 R2 D’ B’ R D’ L R’ B2 U2 F’ L’ U’

Pattern Description: I am naming this puzzle the “Broken Snake“. In the beginning, I tried to make new patterns out of the algorithm D2 M2 S2 (already on ruwix.com). I did that 3 times and got a position where if you did U2 you would get the easy checkerboard. Then I accidentally did M2 S2 first and got 4 Ys! I tried it again and found out that if you did D2 M2 S2 2 times and did D2 after that you would also get the Ys. So I tried to get the Ys on all 6 sides and I couldn’t do it. I used my 5×5 to try and see if it would work by using RedKB’s method to making mosaics in the middles of the cubes. It turned out to be impossible. Then I thought about using the 5×5 to show a U on every side. The 5×5 showed me that it was possible. This pattern turned out to be similar to a pattern when people do the 6 spots pattern (6 sided snake eye) incorrectly and ask me to help solve their cubes. However, each side was only 2 colors instead of the usual 3 or 4, and it kind of looked like a broken reptile (reference from the patterns page); hence the name.

33. 15-puzzle link:
[Link not available]
15-Puzzle explanation: It would be pretty hard to piece a 15-puzzle back together, especially with unevenly tiled pictures and memes. The uneven tiles make the puzzle pretty hard without the numbers (if there were no numbers), and memes are very distracting. Picture: the picture used for the 15-puzzle.

34. URL with our backlink: https://rubiks.fandom.com/wiki/Ruwix.com#Cube3x3.com

35. Solution algorithm:
F U2 D2 R L U’ D F B R U2 R2 U2 F2 L2 U2 F2 L2 B2
(19 steps, not moving it from the position it was scrambled from)

If you did, thank you for taking the time for reading my response!