A second edition, co-written with Jaap Scherphuis is planned. The publication date is possibly late 2007 or early 2008.
SM485c lecture notes, Mathematics of the Rubik's cube (283 pages): dvi, pdf, ps. The dvi, pdf, ps file of a set of notes which uses group theory to describe mathematical models for many mechanical permutation puzzles such as the Rubik's cube. It is an early version of the ``Adventures in group theory'' book above. The index is separate. For a compressed file of the latex source and jpg illustrations, download cube.zip (760K).
Thanks to Roberto Lopez Gulliver, there is now a compressed ps file with all the figures: cube0_ps.gz. On his page there is also a compress latex file containing the figures as jpgs.
Last modified 2-23-2007. Homepage