The recommended approach for solving the Unravel program cube is to align the bottom face first. Alignment of this face can be readily achieved on the front face before transfer to the bottom face. With this approach it is acceptable to allow part or all of the bottom face to be scrolled out of view.
Scrolling part of the cube out of view is not applicable to monitors with a screen aspect ratio (width/height) less than about 1.1 (i.e. screens that are approximately square). A definite figure cannot be declared as it will depend on the computer's operating system (particularly the height of the Taskbar) and the monitor's size.
The inclusion of the scroll option enables the reachable cube size limits to be the same or close to the same for many notebook computers and desktop computer systems in common use. Usually, the program cube size 99 limit is achievable when scroll is enabled for unmarked cubes with a 2 pixel minimum facelet width excluding border. Size 32 is commonly achievable for desktop and notebook computers for an 8 pixel minimum facelet width excluding border. Numerically Marked cubes require a facelet width of at least 8 pixel.
To achieve a numerically marked cube upper limit of size 32 for 8 pixel minimum facelet width excluding border, a minimum of about 740 vertical pixels and a minimum of about 1210 horizontal pixels are required. If either size is significantly lower than the applicable minimum value, the marked cube size limit will be lower than 32. Conversely, if both sizes are significantly increased above these values the numerically marked cube size limit will be greater than 32. While it is unlikely that anybody would wish to solve marked cubes of very large size, Corner marking can extend the range to the same limit as for the unmarked case.
To illustrate the above properties two examples will be compared below.
Example 1: | Notebook computer |
Example 2: | Desktop computer with almost square monitor screen |
Example | Screen resolution | Aspect ratio | Scroll-disabled numerically marked cube limit | Scroll-enabled numerically marked cube limit |
1 | 1366 x 768 | 1.78 | 22 | 33 |
2 | 1280 x 1024 | 1.25 | 31 | 34 |
Enabling scroll on the 1.25 aspect ratio screen provides little improvement on the scroll-disabled case whereas the reverse is true for the 1.78 aspect ratio screen. The achievable cube size limits in both cases are about the same.