Rubik’s cube champion - or boxing?
Both…eight years running. 
I think Idid it with a book but voted “no.” I mean no offense, not solving a Rubik’s cube means YOU solved it. If you followed steps out of a book, you did not solve it, the author of the book did.
I had the cube for years before I got a written explanation of how to solve it. Without it I had no more of a chance of solving that thing than a goldfish would have.
A lady that I worked with in the fall of 1980 told me her husband had gotten one for her, since she liked puzzles. He had scrambled it before giving it to her, though. She worked on it for a while, but couldn’t get anything she tried to work.
The next morning, when she woke, he presented her with the solved cube. She knew he didn’t have the patience to figure it out, and finally made him tell her that he figured that anything that could be put together could be taken apart and reassembled in whatever configuration he desired.
After hearing that story, I had to have one for myself. I got it home, and carefully played with it in such a manner that I could return it to its pristine state. At one point, I screwed up and got lost. Totally fubar’d from that point on.
I played with it for a while, finding that it was easy to get either all of one face’s edges or corners correct, but not both. A little more playing with it and I discovered a three-part move that could get all the cubes for one face completed.
More playing with it to learn another three-move (or was it seven?) combo that put the corners of the second level in the right positions. By trying variations on those moves, I found the seven-move set for the corners of the bottom layer, and another seven-move set for the remaining sides of the bottom.
Six days, including all day Saturday, most of the day Sunday, and 4 evenings after work.
None of the books on the subject came out before 1981, months after I had solved it. I looked into a few of them to see if they had repeated any of the move sequences I had worked out, but I could not really follow along without studying the book. Since I had already devised a method of solving, I didn’t think I actually needed to buy the book.
Later, when they started showing people on TV solving it, it became clear to me that the speedy solvers were NOT solving one cube-let at a time, like I was. Because of the speed, however, it was impossible for me to tell just what they were doing.
I stayed interested for a while, someone even got the 4x4x4 for birthday for Christmas. When all of the moves I had worked out on the 3x3x3 version did not work (on the 3x3x3 version, the center square of each side does not move; on the 4x4x4 model, NO cubes were static), I kind of lost interest.
I picked one up a few years ago, but I could not remember any of my moves, even the easy ones.
Yeah, how tough a higher-order cube is depends on what method you’re using for the lower-order cubes. There are some methods that generalize well, and some that don’t. I understand that some folks start from one corner and work their way out from there, and that that mostly works (with just a few added steps) for cubes of any size.
I did solve it once with help from this book which I am now going to dig through the bookcase for. Wonder if I still have it.
Bumping this thread because I “solved” a Rubik’s cube for the first time yesterday. “Solved” is in quotes because I followed instructions from a web site.
I had the cube when I was a kid and could regularly solve two sides. Got as far as solving three sides a few times, but no further. Using a layer method never occurred to me.
So the other day my nieces got one and asked me to help them learn it. After not getting very far I finally took it home with me, having promised to study up and teach them next visit. I quickly began to regret that when I found the web site’s instructions (which are designed for kids) very confusing and difficult to follow. I nearly threw the thing out the window, but was brought back by the idea of having to tell my nieces I gave up.
So, after multiple attempts over most of a day, I finally got it to work and completed a cube for the first time in my life. Second time took less than an hour. I can now do it in just a few minutes pretty reliably. I have about half of the algorithms memorized, and am now trying to really analyze and understand what the moves are doing and how.
Even with my new knowledge and experience, I’m unable to imagine how people do this blindfolded. Speed, I can see. That’s just repetition and practice. But I cannot envision the type of brain necessary to look at a scrambled cube, put on a blindfold and solve it. Amazing.
Hope the nieces are into it when I show them.
I (without even trying) convinced my nieces and nephew that I could solve it blindfolded. But that’s just because with my method, about half the time, gets into one particular pattern just before the end, and I’ve memorized how to solve it from that one particular pattern (and so do that part behind my back).
But for competition-level speed, you do pretty much need to learn the same skills that you’d use for blindfold solving. You or I, I we look at a few small parts, solve those, take a look at what we’ve got, and then based on that pick a few more small parts. But when you’re doing the whole thing in five seconds, you don’t have time for that. You have to go straight from one move to the next, at which point you almost might as well be blindfolded.
For learning how to solve it, the key is to start with it solved (disassemble and re-assemble it if needed). Then just start playing around with various sequences of moves, and see what each sequence does. Your goal is to find sequences which move a small number of target pieces, but which leave most other pieces unchanged. When you find such a sequence, practice it until you can think of it as “all one step”. Then it’s just a matter of stringing those sequences together: Start by getting some pieces in place, while messing up others (that you don’t care about, because you haven’t solved them yet anyway). Then use other sequences that solve some of the remaining pieces, without screwing up anything you already have, and so on.
I can’t do it, but there was a young man at the karate dojo I attended who could do it in under a minute. I saw him do it. Prana was a multi-talented young man, he wasjust about ot test for black belt, and he was a straight A student in hight school.
Solved it many years ago, moved up to the four-by-four. Finally figured that one out. My new favorite is the “X Cube”.
Took me a little while to get the “corner” pieces on the extensions. But one of my moves for the middle edge pieces on the four-by-four was suitable for working those.
There is an “X cube master” with each extension going out two layers but it’s difficulty as a puzzle is compounded by the physical clunkiness of the puzzle.
I answered “yes” but that was with a book (I memorized the ~6 sequences, so I wasn’t referring to the book when I did it)
One time I think it took me ~6 minutes though that was starting with a partially solved cube
Brian
Never seriously tried. I owned one just because you couldn’t get away from the things but it never interested me enough to put more than two minutes into it at a time. It was better served as part of my GI Joes’ fortifications when the Shogun robots attacked.
Back during the initial Rubik’s Cube craze (1981, IIRC), I was able to figure out on my own how to get all of the cube except for two adjacent corners into their original positions. And one time I was able to get those last two corners properly positioned by plain dumb luck, and restore my cube to its original pristine state.
I had it as a kid when it first came out - I got as far as solving one side correctly before I threw in the towel & bought a book that made it pretty easy. I think I still remember the algorithms to solve it, but haven’t tried in years.
And remember - if you take it apart, make sure to reassemble it correctly, because there’s a good chance you’ll render it unsolvable if you reassemble it randomly.
Only using instructions. I have encountered people who could not solve it with a book so that is something. I also encountered a child (family member was babysitting) who took off the stickers but didn’t put them back in a solvable configuration.
Spin the top 1/4 turn, pry up any top middle piece to make the whole thing fall apart, put it back together correctly-45 seconds.
I read an article in Scientific American about the general theory of solving this sort of puzzle, and then worked out a set of moves to solve my cube.
There’s now a whole class of “twisty puzzles” based on the basic idea of the Rubik’s Cube.
Look up YouTube videos by Oskar Vandeventer for some really cool twisty puzzles in action. (He also does generalized mazes.)
I never tried it, but I had a student who created an algorithm that fit on a 3 by 5 card. I took it home and my two older kids learned it. My son could do it in about a minute with a fast cube. Recently he came on a Rubik dodecahedron (or was it an icosahedron?) that no one else could solve, but was able to use the same algorithm to solve it. BTW, the student never did get his PhD and now teaches at a community college.
I got one when they first came out. It took me about a month(IIRC) of on-and-off fiddling with it before I solved it the first time. Subsequent times were much faster because you remember certain patterns even if you don’t deliberately set out to do it that way.
If someone gave me a Rubik’s cube today it would be just a brightly colored paperweight.
No, but my roommate has, and he’s awfully goddamned smug about it.