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I am absolutely baffled by a 4x4 Rubik's cube I'm working on!

Having arrived at an almost solved puzzle bar one flipped corner, I concluded it was assembled incorrectly after reading about similar situations. (Later told by friend their kids had had it fall apart and reassemble one day)

unsolvable corner

I got to disassembly and noticed it is nothing like any of the cubes in tutorials, the corner pieces seem to be fixed to the centre ball, and not removable without disassembly of the centre ball.

disassembled cube

I concluded the only solution was to alter the tiles on the corner piece which worked fine, and reassembled the cube in its solved state

solved cube

I mixed it up then got to solving and arrived at a peculiar situation that didn't seem to match any cases the tutorial was suggesting is possible, so eventually went to an online solver and thoroughly entered my scenario several times, each time getting back an impossible solve error - cube is assembled incorrectly.

So my question is..! How is it possible that a cube that was solved, is now unsolvable regardless of how it is assembled? Surely it would be feasible to backtrack in theory and arrive solved.. I'm quite sure I haven't forced any pieces into illegal manoeuvres, no great speed or force happening.

Is there an incorrect way to assemble a solved 4x4 cube?

Thanks in advance! XD.

Josh
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  • What happened is a parody; one edge side's pieces have been placed the wrong way (for example the white-red edge has 2 pieces, however they have been arranged the wrong way). Taking out 2 of the same edge pieces and rearranging it should make the cube solvable. – Stevo Jun 24 '23 at 01:28
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    @Stevo parody or parity? – 2012rcampion Jun 24 '23 at 01:33
  • How would the online solver know the difference? I did see the OLL and PLL parity situations, the one corner unsolved didn't resemble anything like them. – Josh Jun 24 '23 at 01:41
  • https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/87595/one-corner-rotated-in-4x4x4 I think this thread shows the same situation – Josh Jun 24 '23 at 01:43
  • @2012rcampion parity, sorry – Stevo Jun 24 '23 at 01:46
  • @Stevo Swapping two identical pieces doesn't change the cube in any way whatsoever, you silly person :-) (Also, the cube was in a solved state right after the reassembly, you can't get to an unsolvable state from there, so this is almost certainly just a skill issue on the part of OP) – Bass Jun 24 '23 at 07:24
  • @Bass wait seriously? I heard that from some random Jperm video – Stevo Jun 24 '23 at 12:25
  • Well, rotating the pieces while you're at it may do the trick. (Which may be unavoidable while swapping, now that I think about it) In any case, on a 4x4x4, you can fix an edge parity by regular moves. – Bass Jun 24 '23 at 13:28
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    I’m voting to close this question because the problem it asks to fix is apparently not reproducible – bobble Aug 29 '23 at 22:57

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I ended up solving it later, accidentally shuffled past the peculiarities. I guess either I entered it wrong in the solver several times or the solver isn't full-proof. Apologies for the nonsense thread feel free to remove!

Josh
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