Today I wrote a letter to the chairman of the World Cube Association; an administrative body in the field of Rubik's Cubes. As follows:
Dear Ron,
I hope you can help me. I've always been interested in puzzles and/or challenging board games, and as such recently received a 'Rubik's Cube' as a gift from my friend Clare. After she had explained its primary concepts - and thoroughly twisted / turned it so that none of its faces showed even two tiles of the same colour - I hungrily set my mind to the challenge of restoring it to its original form, with all sides uniform.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the first few days of semi-constant wrestling with both the cube (literally) and my intellectual demons (metaphorically). It's certainly a terrific challenge! But after fifteen days I'm literally no closer to discovering a solution. If anything, the cube looks worse than when I started.
Is there any chance that my cube could be defective? I only ask because I imagine that were it no so I probably would have solved it by now. I've tried to contact the independent retailer from which Clare purchased it in order to obtain a refund, but sadly it is no longer in business, and the premises has now been converted into a novelty pen shop.
Have you ever seen instances of unsolvable cubes before? Are they rare? If so, I'm thinking of selling my now-defunct cube to a local museum. It mostly specialises in paintings, but I hold some influence with the curator (as I once helped his wife obtain a discounted train fare to Ascot Racecourse), so I'm confident of securing a reasonable deal.
I look forward to receiving your views on this mystifying but hopefully intriguing conundrum.
Yours sincerely,
Worryingly he is yet to reply, although it has only been four hours and I presume Ron is based in America. I'll keep you updated.
Nothing else particularly exciting today. Jeremy, Honksy and I had to get the overground in today, as the underground was irrevocably broken due to 'signal failure.' Why are the signals always failing? Who the hell is manufacturing these things, Stevie Wonder? An army of poorly-managed handless schoolchildren with behavioural problems?
And why has no-one fixed them yet?
I'm not going to lie to you Octopus, it keeps me awake at night. That's partly due to the fact that my now-functioning radiator makes a symphony of gargling noises all the time that there's heat in its tedious metal veins. But the point still stands.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
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