http://www.superliminal.com/cube/cube.htm

For those not familiar with this, obviously it can't exist in our physical world so it only exists as a computer simulation. I was thinking of tackling this and I was wondering if anyone could tell me from experience if it's as hard as it looks to learn.

I've solved it several times, as have several other members here. It is a little tricky to get started on since we start with no intuitive understanding of 4D objects, but it has always been my view that by just playing around with it for a while and reading some of the background on how it works, most puzzlers will get a decent understanding of how the puzzle works. After that, you can either figure out a solution method yourself (that's what I did, I recommend it. It's pretty fun since it's a different experience from figuring out a new 3D puzzle), or you can learn from the guide provided on the site. A lot of tricks and techniques transfer from 3D, all you need to do is figure out how to do that in such a way that you end up with a way of solving it (there is more than one way to do this, so be creative ). Good luck if you do attempt this, but above all have fun!

Matt

P.S. If you ever get really stuck, there are various people (myself included) that are members of the MC4D Yahoo group, and will be happy to answer any specific questions you might have.

Pretty sure somewhere there is a list of the best solves including higher order and higher dimensions.

I used to be really into these puzzles. I have solved quite a few. I started with MagicCube4D, and I solved 2^4 through 5^4, plus the pentagonal prism thing. Then I solved the Magic120Cell.
It took an entire month. Next I did MagicCube5D, solving 3^5 and 4^5. All of these were major projects which I invested much time into. I actually solved all of these without macros. The next big puzzle I solved was the 3^6 in Andrey Astrelin's MagicCube7D. This puzzle was simply too big to do without macros. I started working on the 3^7, but never finished it. I was in the middle of the 5-color corners. Hopefully I will finish it one day. I think it is interesting to note that my 4d puzzle obsession happened before my 3d puzzle obsession. While I was solving those puzzles, I had no idea that puzzles like the gigaminx existed.

One program I really recommend is MagicTile. It projects 3d puzzles and a host of others, like the Klein's Quartic, onto the hyperbolic plane. I actually solved a megaminx with it before I owned one.

I have a hard enough time with 3D puzzles that I've only toyed with 4D and higher. Someday I hope to beef up my solving skills and I may look at these again. Right now my free time goes to designing puzzles. However I want to correct the statement that this puzzle can't exist in the physical world. It CAN. It would of course look very different but I suspect there are several ways this could be turned into a physical object which had the same states and the same moves. One way is explored here.

http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=23747

You'd need MANY more tubes and MANY more marbles BUT it could be made.

Carl

It looks impossible. It isn't. Actually it's pretty straight-forward to solve and doesn't have a lot of difficult problems that many 3D twisty puzzles do have.

I first saw MC4D back in 2003 when I was a first-year college student. I could solve a standard Rubik's Cube then using a memorized solution but I didn't know anything about any other twisty puzzle. Of course at that time the solvers list was roughly 20 folks, all of whom I assumed were geniuses. I even wondered if they really understood what they were doing or perhaps they cheated.

I had MC4D in the back of my mind off and on for years and finally in 2009 I decided to give it a serious try. I went from "this is impossible" to "I'll never be able to understand this" to "there is a chance one day I could understand this" to "I think I'm starting to understand this" to "holy crap there is a chance I could solve this" to "I think I'm solving this" to "whoa I solved the impossible!".

Even after solving it the first time I didn't fully understand every aspect / property of it. For example you can have a 4-color corner look "inverted" where opposite colors have swapped. Almost like you've turned the piece inside-out. It took a long while for this to make sense to me.

I have an introduction video that goes very slow and tries to break the puzzle down for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aonf34s0Bqg
And another video that describes how to find commutators for each piece (and makes use of nesting of commutators):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxD8S49hbL8

My videos will take a lot of magic out of the puzzle but their goal is not to show you how to solve the puzzle. Their goal is to show you how to come up with your own method of solving the puzzle.

Hello Adam Ford, it's good to see you in this forum. Do you mean when you had solved the magic 120-cell, you didn't know that Gigaminx existed? That's really weird order of solving puzzles.

My solution of MC7D took about 45 hours (with macro), which is approximately as long as my solution of the 120-cell (with macro). Given that you were patient enough to solve the magic 120-cell without macro, you should be able to eventually conquer MC7D soon. Good luck!