Yeah, I beat my previous record. Go me. The champs can do it in under ten seconds. Those guys are nuts.
That’s my mundane and pointless contribution for the day. One of these days I’m going to learn a faster way to solve that damn 4x4x4 cube I have lying around somewhere.
I can’t wait! I’m asking for one for Christmas because I can’t fathom the thought of spending 10 bucks on a plastic cube. There was a new guy at community band rehearsal last week who was scrambling and solving a cube over the course of his rests during a piece of music.
I used to be good at them as a kid but it would take me at least twice that to take the stickers off and put them back on in the right places,
My brother can do it under a minute. He’s been able to do it that quickly since he was a kid, back in the early 80s when Rubik’s Cubes first hit the world, and he’s still able to do it.
I can solve one in … Never!
I used to be able to get one side all one color. I’ve pretty much rested on that laurel ever since.
What method do you use, if you don’t mind me asking?
I’d like to get faster at it. My fastest solve to date is still in the 10-12 minute range. Not the most impressive score.
I’ve been trying to learn Lars Petrus’s solve-one-corner-then-move-on method, but it confuses the farkin’ hell outta me. I still solve it one layer at a time.
I’ve got to get me a new one… the current one, it’s not doing so well these days. Sounds like I’m frantically spinning a rock crusher. 
Try this one. It has 280 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion combinations.
Holy crap. It gets even better. There’s a 7x7x7 cube video here. The guy solves it in 6 1/2 minutes.
And here’s a four-dimentional Rubik-type puzzle. And here it is in 5D.
I’ve never solved one myself, minus taking a screwdriver to it and popping all the pieces out.
Can someone post a pattern for a 4x4x4? Sometimes I solve it all except 1 edge pair, which is in the correct location but its orientation is backwards (eg the green side faces the orange side of the cube and vice versa). Were this to happen on a 3x3x3 (one edge flipped, not 2 obviously), you would know your cube needs to be taken apart because this is not possible.
I just need that final combination of moves to finish!
That’s nothing. I can solve one in under two … oh wait, you said minutes not years …
I use the (slow) layer-by-layer method. I too have tried learning Lars’ system but got confused. I may try it again soon. For those interested in learning, I recommend starting with the layer-by-layer method as it’s the easiest to figure out.
First layer: Basic common sense. If you can’t do this after looking at the clues, you’re doomed.
Second layer: It’s all edge pieces, so you only have to memorize one move for swapping them with the third layer. (Actually two moves, but they’re mirror images of each other.)
Third layer: This is the hardest because you have to solve it while not damaging the first two layers. For this you have to memorize a lot of algorithms for:
[ol]
[li]orienting the third layer edge pieces[/li][li]aligning the third layer edge pieces with their associated sides[/li][li]aligning the third layer corner pieces with their associated sides, and finally,[/li][li]orienting the third layer corner pieces.[/li][/ol]
Back in the 80’s I had some book “the simple solution” to solve it in which I memorized the moves.
I could consistently solve it in under 3 minutes.
Can’t do it today though.
I don’t know how long it would take me to solve one now adays. I used to be able to finish one in 4-5 minutes, but I’ve forgotten a couple of basic moves.
I see to have my own way of solving it as well. I do one side, usually the red. Then finish the four corners. This leaves at most 8 pieces out. The first couple are prettty easy, the last 2-3 take some thinking.
I’ve got both a 4x4x4 and 5x5x5, but haven’t ever really played with them.
When I was a kid in the 1980s I self-published using a Xerox machine and colored pencils, a booklet called “The Cube Route” and sold it for 50p in our school bookshop. (I’d actually ripped all the moves off a magazine article.)
I charged 5p to solve someone’s cube, and 25p to teach them how. My record was 2.30, and I won the school championships with this time. I used to powder up the innards of my cube with graphite.
I also played D&D.
Thankfully, I discovered girls soon afterwards and hadn’t damaged my reputation too irreparably.
Ha. I used to dip the innards of my cube in vaseline.
You know, this thread got me thinking; just how do you solve a Rubik’s Cube?
So, I looked it up on my friend, the internet and found that…I can’t even comprehend the instructions for solving one. :o 
That particular sector of my brain either doesn’t exist, or it got overrun by all the sex stuff or something.
The solutions you find on the net like to use a lot of fancy notation which can get confusing. It begins to make sense if you actually have a cube and follow the notation move-by-move. Then you can actually see what the hell they’re talking about and it becomes clear.
Don’t sweat it, solving a totally mixed up Rubik’s is on the same level as building my own working spaceship to me.
But I could whup all your asses at Simon.
About 2 years ago I mastered a slow layer by layer technique. It’d probably take 10 minutes or so. I stopped doing it and immediately forgot how to do it. One of these days I’ll dig up my archived HTML page and refigure it out. There were about 8 moves that one had to memorize in order to accomplish it.
Obligatory videos: