Hypercubing community in-jokes¶
Like any niche internet community, we’ve accumulated some in-jokes over the years. In an effort to be welcoming to newcomers, here’s a list of them!
This page is specifically for in-jokes that have been used by multiple people over a relatively long time, and wouldn’t be obvious to newcomers.
My carrerr¶
On 2022-10-31, Grant did a one-handed solve of the physical 24 on a whim and immediately set a world record of 3:55.62, beating Rowan’s prior record by two and a half minutes and breaking three minute barriers. In response:
Rowan: I worked so hard for my sub-7:00
Rowan: wth is this
Grant: first try too
Grant: lol
Grant: it’s uploading rn
Rowan: wow
Grant: first sub 6, sub 5, and sub 4
Luna: rowan in shambles
Luna: what will he do
Rowan: my carrerr
Rowan: it’s over
Sticker soup¶
Hactar: You can always just make a soup of flat stickers with rules about how to move them around. It just becomes less and less usable. Physical 24 is special because the rules are fairly straightforward.
In the wake of the Rowan’s video The Quest to Build a 4D Rubik’s Cube, many people joined the server proposing “3D physical” puzzles, which are flat 2D constructions of 3D puzzles. Generally, hypercubers are only interested in these as a way to explain how 4D physical puzzles work, since “3D physical” puzzles aren’t mathematically interesting in their own right and they’re more difficult to use than real 3D puzzles. They tend to become a “soup” of stickers that move according to arbitrary rules, a generalization of twisty puzzles that throws away all geometric relations.
Luna: how many times do I have to say this
Luna: dimensional 👏 analogies 👏 don’t 👏 work 👏 for 👏 physical 👏 puzzle 👏 design 👏
Designing physical versions of 4D+ puzzles is generally very difficult and is usually mathematically impossible to do well. In the end, most end up becoming sticker soup.
Dunning-Kruger graph¶
From Dunning-Kruger effect - Wikipedia
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is especially common in hypercubing, which lies at the intersection of puzzle theory and higher-dimensional geometry, two niche mathematical fields. Of course, you don’t need to be an expert in math to solve 4D puzzles, but if you have no 4D mathematical foundations then your understanding will probably be wrong at first.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is sometimes described using this graph, where “competence” increases to the right and “confidence” increases upward:
Of course, in reality the effect is not quite so extreme, and varies from person to person.
Jambling¶
On 2023-01-03, in Hypercubers voice chat, a very sleepy Hactar mispronounced the word “jumbling” as “jambling.” Since then, some hypercubers have been using the phrases “jambling” or “jamble” instead of “jumbling”.
Fake Anderson¶
On 2023-01-12, in Hypercubers voice chat, Hactar and Luna were conversing with Anderson Taurence. During that time, a user named Jedi Cabanna Boy (Andreas Thompson) joined and continued the conversation, and Anderson left. But, their voices were similar enough that Hactar, who was distracted speedsolving 54, didn’t notice the switch, and repeatedly addressed Jedi as Anderson. Luna noticed and did not correct him.
Once Hactar finally realized what was happening, Jedi changed their nickname on the server to Anderson (Beta), and later 🅱a n d e r s o n.
Cactus¶
On 2023-02-19, several members were brainstorming possible shapes for physical 5D puzzle pieces and named one of them “Cactus.”
Banderson: then yeah I think (compound of four cubes)-generated tetragonal icositetrahedron is good; C4CTi or something
Banderson: C4QTi ?
troller: 🌵
Banderson: oh wait no C4Ct.I
Banderson: or better yet I’ll let akkei make a shorthand/pick a better name to describe it lol
troller: Cacti
Rowan: squeez cheezahedron
Grant: Your shape, your name akkei
Akkei: i still like the
Akkei: we Do Not Have A Scheme for the cactus
Grant: Cactus LOL
…
Grant: I don’t care what actual name we end up giving it, I’m calling it cactus in this channel
Silence, derivative¶
In early 2018, at the 13th Gathering for Gardner, Melinda’s physical 2x2x2x2 was shown to Ernő Rubik himself. It was reported that his only comment was that none of the derivative puzzles matter and that only his original invention is important.
On the night of 2023-06-25, Kitcen lay awake, unable to sleep, their mind plagued with the thought of Ernő Rubik with lasers coming out of his eyes to blow up a physical 24 while denouncing it and calling it “derivative.”
30 minutes later, Akkei responded wordlessly with this image:
Grant Standingslice¶
In earlier versions of hypercubing.xyz, individual letters such as R, F, etc. showed tooltips indicating their use in common notation. On 2023-01-06, Hactar posted a screenshot of the leaderboards page in which the “S” in “Grant S.” had a tooltip that said “Standing slice (parallel to F).”
Hactar: Fun fact: the “S” in Grant’s name stands for “Standing slice”
Mimcaf and Celse pign¶
Many hypercubers play Minecraft and Celeste, and have adopted common misspellings of those games. Akkei was the first to use “mimcaf” on 2022-12-03, and Rowan was the first to use the phrase “celse pign” on 2023-09-30 as a misspelling of “Celeste ping.”
That may I can¶
On 2024-11-09, OmnipotentEntity sent the following message in #offtopic-or-memes:
I don’t often remember my dreams. Last night I dreamt that xkcd started including puns of the phrase “that may I can.” And it was supposed to be a reference to something. And everyone but me got it, and no one would explain it to me.
Several members then responded with various images punning on the phrase.
