# Turning the cube into part of a puzzle - need suggestions



## Kabuthunk (Aug 6, 2010)

I wasn't entirely sure what forum to post this is, but going off the descriptions of the forums, this seemed to be the best bet.

In either case, to make a long story short, I'm trying to find the best way to put a set of coordinates onto a Rubik's Cube, so that it needs to be solved in order to get the coordinates. Those familiar with Geocaching will know what I'm talking about. Otherwise, if you're not familiar, I basically have two strings of characters, each one being 10 characters long ideally (ie: "N49_51.327"). I can pare that down to 9 by removing the space, which I've done below in a few test attempts:







I've concluded that having the strings of characters down the middle rows is bad, since you get the middle-square rotation which could be an issue, and they don't need to solve any corners. Going along two edge rows forces a full solve, but I was hoping to cross over all colours of the cube... which doesn't work well when trying to stop things from intersecting eachother.

I suppose I could remove the dot as well, and strip it down to 8 characters. I need the letter at the beginning however, so 8 is the shortest I would be willing to go. Can anyone think of any better way of arranging the strings of characters over the cube?


tldr: See picture. Got two equal-length lines of 10, 9, or 8 characters each that I need on a cube without them intersecting. Best suggestions that require a full solve?


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## hawkmp4 (Aug 6, 2010)

Well, if you want to use all 6 faces, you could put 3 letters on four faces, 4 on two of them. 

The way to do the messages so that they don't intersect is to, on a standard color scheme cube, put one string on the yellow, green, and white faces (and running in that direction) and the other string on the orange, blue, and red faces, again, running in that direction. The orientation of the letters then will distinguish the two strings.


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## jiggy (Aug 6, 2010)

This is an interesting idea, but I feel the need to point out that anyone familiar with a Rubik's cube colour scheme could probably figure out the sequence without solving the cube, but just by know where each of the cubies belong.
Having said that, anyone that familiar with a cube could probably solve one quickly enough, so the point is fairly moot.

Using the Rubik's cube as an encryption tool...nice! (If a bit unsecure! =P)


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## Kabuthunk (Aug 7, 2010)

Yeah, I figured it's possible someone could just take a picture of all the faces and then kinda... put it together at home in that manner. Although at that point, it'd almost be faster to just solve it, or failing that go back with someone who can .

I haven't had a chance to try out any other configurations yet due to being busy, but I'll let you know what I come up with in case anyone wants to use the idea for their own devices.


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## musicninja17 (Aug 8, 2010)

i've been working on a schematic on my ideas of how to build something around a modded cube that acts like a lock, where you have to solve the cube as one step of opening it.


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## Zubon (Aug 11, 2010)

musicninja17 said:


> i've been working on a schematic on my ideas of how to build something around a modded cube that acts like a lock, where you have to solve the cube as one step of opening it.




This has already been done with the 3x3 and pyraminx by Oskar Van Deventer.


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## musicninja17 (Aug 11, 2010)

Zubon said:


> musicninja17 said:
> 
> 
> > i've been working on a schematic on my ideas of how to build something around a modded cube that acts like a lock, where you have to solve the cube as one step of opening it.
> ...



Not in that sense  Yes i've seen Oskar's stuff, it's so inspirational.
But my ideas lie with thinking outside the box.


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