Rather a silly thing to be smug about, given that it’s a skill that a lot of people have, and that (in itself, at least) it has very little practical application.
I could solve 1 side, on about 3 occasions solving for 1 made it solve for all, or at least a rotation or so away.
I had no idea that there were people who never solved it. I didn’t realize it was quite the feat of patience and problem solving.
Yep. I’ve never solved one and didn’t know anyone personally who solved one back when it was a craze in the 80s. I’m sure I have friends who solved one somewhere out there, but when it was something that people actually talked about, I don’t remember anyone figuring it out. Of course, I was in grade school then.
I had one when I was a kid in the 80s, never solved more then one side. When I was in college I did a semester in Europe and bought a cube there. I played with that thing for months. I was able to learn how to move the side pieces around, but it took me a long time to figure out how to get the corners to move properly that didn’t mess up the rest of the cube. I finally solved it on my 20th birthday.
I have a couple of books, but didn’t use them until after I could solve it. My method is to solve one side, then fix the other four corners, then move the side pieces in to place. My trouble is and always has been getting the corners in to place. I used to remember how to move and rotate two corners, but my method involves moving three. I’ve forgotten how to move around just two corners.
The three-corners move is one I use in my method, too. And the two-corners move I use is mostly just a combination of two of my three-corner moves, with a couple of moves in between to make sure that it’s the right corner that gets messed up in the right way.
Here’s how it went for me:
I saw my first cube way long ago. I actually told my parents very confidently that I’d be able to solve it, no problem. After a few minutes of messing around with it, it became painfully obvious that I didn’t have a clue how to solve it. Parents came to look at my efforts a few days later. “You said you were going to solve it!” “I couldn’t.” They were cool about it and never gave me any grief. Afterward I might play around with a cube for a few seconds, but I knew that it was futile. You either had the knack or you didn’t. I didn’t, and that was the end of that.
Then sometime later, I got a book titled “The Easy Way to Solve Rubik’s Cube” or something (I think it was a birthday present). The methodology went completely over my head, but I found something remarkable in the beginning: It was possible to literally take the entire thing apart and put it back together (and I never needed any tools, just a nice strong grip). This was a reveleation. All this time I thought I’d never get the damn thing to its pristine original state, and here was a completely foolproof method that a dimwitted 8-year-old could manage. I went to work. It was a remarkable experience finding the right pieces, putting everything in its proper place, working from the bottom up, and, the hardest part, getting the last piece in (had to push REALLY hard). And then…it was done. Just like that.
In my callous youth, I offered to impress my parents, taking this waste of time that I’d given up on months ago to another room and returning it perfectly solved in a matter of minutes. I did. Sadly, they were less than impressed, as one of them had already read about this fix. It was a bit of a disappointment, but in the sense comforting that this stupid thing wouldn’t torment anyone anymore, that there would always be a foolproof failsafe.
I eventually read through the rest of the book and tried to figure out how to do it honestly…and that’s as far as I ever got. I never got to first base with the solution. And as I futilely kept at it, one thing crept to mind over and over: why? This being years before the Internet, and me being trapped in vanilla-on-vanilla-dipped-in-vanilla 80’s Hawaii, it never occurred to me that solving the Rubik’s Cube could be worth anything tangible. Competitions? Fame? Scientific advancement? Pfft. You have the answer. Why waste days, weeks, months trying to learn a much more painful, useless answer?
So anyway, lessons learned:
- Concepts such as “honor” and “the right way” don’t apply to freaking toys.
- Toys are not worth getting into any kind of lather over.
- If a problem has an easy, workable, dependable solution, use it.
- If other people aren’t impressed by your practical knowledge, that’s a good thing; it means that practical knowledge is spreading.
Make of it what you will.
No, because I’ve never owned or had access to one, as far as I can remember. If I did get access, I didn’t try it.
I do like Rubick’s Squares, though.
I have spent the last few days memorizing the algorithms and just now finished the cube from memory in just over three minutes.
I could solve it quite easily when I was in high school, long ago, but I absolutely don’t remember how I learned to do it. I think friends advised me, but I’m not sure.
Just today scored a 4x4x6. Here it is in both solved and scrambled forms.
I actually did manage to solve it once so far in about a hours work (non-continuous).
This guy’s nickname “The Beast” does it justice.
Not my thing.
Sand the sides down, mask, spray paint? Sure.
Yes, got one during the initial craze. Tried on my for a few days, and gave up and bought a book. Was into it for a while, I could solve one in a minute or two.
Good times.
I did some modifications on cubes too. Modified a 3x3x3 so that it had 9 different colors, one on each side. Kind of like a Sudoku concept. The funny thing about this one is that it’s harder than a standard 3x3x3 cube, in spite of the fact that there are more solutions! I decided to note them with computer paint program and reached 187 before giving up. (Never solved the same way twice, but some were surprising similar.)
I also modded a 4x4x4 to have 8 colors, each one making up a corner “cluster” of one corner, three middles, and three edges. Since my initial approach to the 4x4x4 consisted of rebuilding the middle blocks of four on a side and then solving from there, this one really made me think outside that particular box.
I have a “sudokube” that was built for that purpose, with numbers on the stickers. I’ve never scrambled it, though.
I had Mastering Rubik’s Cube (linked before) a well as the little solution booklet that came with the cube, but ended up experimenting a lot to come up with my own algorithms–doing moves A, B, C, and D, then C, B, and A, and seeing what had changed.
Currently, I can solve a cube if I get all the corners in the right places. For the edge cubes, I know three sets of moves, which can be combined in different ways to produce different results. I wrote those combinations down but haven’t memorized what the results are. I figure having something to consult is good enough.
Scrambled the 4x4x6 again. Must have been lucky the first time because this time it took hours to get it back to solved. Much harder that its smaller brother the 3x3x5.
Nope, not me.
Yes–but with a book.
I got good at it–having memorize the moves I got from the book.
I can’t do it anymore, but if you give me three scrambled cubes I can juggle them.