[r-t] 40320 Spliced Major (3m)

[Matthew Frye]

On 2 Jul 2012, at 22:20, Mark Davies wrote:
> I soon found touches which obeyed this property, but *only* in methods where the half-lead was a true plain hunt (that is, Plain Bob, Reverse Bob, Double Bob and Plain Hunt itself) and *only* if I used special calls such as 1278 or 123456. In fact, nothing else worked other than three full hunting courses in the positive coursing orders 32....., 3..2... and 3....2. or their negative reverses. Can anyone explain why the "rule of signs" leads to these two results? We were surprised, for instance, that nothing was possible with a method like Double Norwich.

Interesting. How exhaustive was your search for other methods that might work? Obviously a theoretical explanation would be nice, but how sure of this "fact" are we already, empirically/computationally. Did you check if there were blocks that got the right rows but couldn't be joined up?

Presumably the PB half-extent will still be amenable to conventional several-lead splicing techniques that leave the paths of 1,2,3 & sign of rows unaffected. Options are limited amongst "normal" methods (particularly if you want pb lead ends), but you could for example substitute the method X18X18X18.3456.78-12 for Double Bob every time 2/3 were 6/8 pb. No doubt the Helixoid half will have some marvellously exotic splices available to it, just in case the whole composition is beginning to seem a tad too simple!

MF