rubiks cube fans, advice and stories wanted!

The Game Room
1

Hi all,

This is a strange thread for me, as I received my first rubiks cube in 1980, the year they came out. After spending countless hours with this puzzle, the rubiks revenge, and a few other puzzles, I moved on and forgot about these types of puzzles.

I recently stumbled onto the cube again, and have started doing research. Apparently, the cube and interest in cubing has come around again, and new cubes and new cube and puzzle designs have made the twisty puzzle world full of amazing puzzles.

To give some of you an idea of what’s out there now, a standard cube is a 3x3x3. Rubiks revenge is 4x4x4, There are cubes that are now up to 11x11x11 (no joke… you should see how big it is!) that can be bought on the internet. The world record so far is a 17x17x17 monstrosity that was built by a puzzle designer that is just amazing, even though it is just a prototype and too big for competition.\

If you are interested, spend some time on youtube checking out these things. If you are into this stuff, I’m looking for some information.

  1. for the 3x3x3 cube, which one is the best for speed cubing? Most of the cubes are now made in china, and there are a ton of choices.

  2. Are any of you currently into this hobby, and if so, what do you do?

  3. What’s the biggest cube you own, and the biggest you have solved?

anything else you might want to add.

Cheers!

2

I still have my genuine Rubik cube bought in mid-80s (have it here on my desk). Can solve it in about 2 minutes which is pretty rubbish I guess. I read somewhere that a messed up cube can be solved in a maximum of 20 moves but I take many more than that prefering a top down approach to solving it rather than a holistic one!

I love this page/video of a lego cube solving robot could watch it all day
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/10/18/lego_robot_resolves_rubiks_cube_in_record_time/

3

I got a story.
I brought my Rubik’s Cube to high school one day, showing off in Geometry class, a classmate grabbed it. He took one sticker off, cycled the cube a bunch, then stuck the sticker back. :rolleyes:

4

To answer your questions:

  1. no idea. I do it more for fun than competition.
  2. If you mean speed-cubing, I don’t but if you mean cubing in general then yes I do. I enjoy learning new methods for solving it and also trying to create unique patterns with the cubes.
  3. the largest one that I own is a 5x5x5, the largest I’ve solved is an 8x8x8.

There really isn’t anything special about the different size cubes for the most part. The even numbered ones (4x4, 6x6, etc.) can result in parity problems but once you know how to solve them they aren’t anymore difficult than a 3x3. For the uneven ones (5x5, 7x7, etc.) you just need to know how to get the centers and edges in place then you can just solve them like a standard 3x3.

The best part about the larger ones though is you can make more intricate and interesting patterns.

5

I used to do something similar to annoy my friends, turn a face half way and you could twist a corner piece so the colours never match up. You then mixed it up and watched them try for ages to solve it.

6

I remember taking Rubik’s Cubes apart to solve them. It was actually kind of fun rebuilding them, though that’s not the intended method, obviously.

7

If it was only one sticker he took off, this shouldn’t make any difference at all-- It’s the same as if he had scrambled it without ever removing a sticker.

I have a 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5, but I can only solve the 2 and the 3. My fastest time is about 3 minutes, which I know is a lot slower than competition, but the method I used is one I mostly developed myself, which I’m a bit proud of. Unfortunately it doesn’t generalize well to the larger ones.

I also wrote a virtual cube for a class project once. It’s pretty crude-- The graphics are all spritey, not rendered, and it doesn’t have an input feature or a solver or anything like that. The most interesting thing with it is that, while I was demonstrating it to the professor, one of the stickers peeled off: Apparently, a computer glitch zeroed out a byte of memory, leaving that spot black instead of the color it was supposed to be. From there out, it behaved exactly like a real cube with a missing sticker would.

Oh, and to anyone who favors Intergalactic Gladiator’s solution method, don’t try it with an even-order one (2x2 or 4x4, etc.). They’re very fragile, and you’re likely to break off a fiddly bit that’s very difficult to repair.

8

I’ve done that as well. We did it with a super Rubik’s Cube, one of those ones with 4 cubes on each row.

9

Exactly. The guy was an idiot. I should have been more clear.

10

I don’t speedcube or anything, but I’ve had a Cube4U brand for awhile now, and it’s held up pretty well. It moved a lot better out of the box than my old Rubik’s brand did after being lubed and broken in. I think it’s mostly down to individual preference.

The biggest one I own so far is just a 4x4x4 cube. I’m probably going to get a 5x5x5 one soon.

11

Thanks for the replies and stories so far. I thought I was the only one out here who still did these things.

YouTube has some great videos, including world record solves. The 2x2x2 record is 6.xx seconds. It’s a joke. I think for the 2x2x2’s, scrambling is vital. The record has only 4 turns or so, and the solver gets to inspect the cube before solving. For these great solvers, they can look at a cube like a chess grandmaster and see 20 moves ahead. So scrambling is vital.

I bought a real cheap 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cube off the Internet last month, and they aren’t the best quality. But they do work, and helped generate my interest back into cubing and puzzles in general.

When I was a kid, the 4x4x4 (rubiks revenge) was as big as they came, and it was pretty easy to take apart and put back together. My new 4x4x4 is made cheaply of course, but thisncube is a marvel in engineering. Nothing like the rubik cube on the inside, and when I was turning it to try to loosen it up, it exploded, and I hadna major mess on my hands. It took me well over three hours to put it back together, because I had to figure out how the inside pieces went together before trying to get the outside pieces to stay where they belonged. Seriously, I got these two cubes from china, and they both cost less than five bucks each, including postage. I can’t imagine what the poor guy who puts this thing together gets paid for each cube, but it can’t be much.

The 5x5x5 came apart after my daughter gave it a go, but that one is much easier to put back together. Still, for the price, it’s amazing.

The reason why I asked what brands everyone uses is because it does make a difference with speed cubing. Rubik brand cubes are not even close to being the best out there, although they are much better than my two hunks of plastic. I also bought a GHOSTHAND 3x3x3, and right out of the box it is faster than any cube I’ve ever held in my hands, and that’s with no lube. This cube also has six tension screws that can be adjusted to make the cube looser or tighter for speed cubing. Most of the larger dimension cubes are like this.

Most of the speed cubes are made in china now… In fact, I didn’t see one brand that isn’t. But apparently they all differ in some way, to improve speed solving.

The coolest thing is that now there are all kinds of puzzles out there which are based on the original rubiks cube. When I get my laptop back, I can post some links, but one I remember from the top of my headnis mefferts.com (not sure in spelled that correctly). If you are interested at all and have some time, dig around this site. It gives a good sample of what’s out there.

The cool thing is the turning mechs for some of these new cubes are amazing. They also have puzzles of “off” dimensions, like a 3x4x5. When you see them, if you have an engineering background, you’ll love trying to figure out what these things look like on the inside!

Sorry for the long post. I haven’t found anyone in my real life that is still into these things, and like I mentioned, before a couple of months ago, I didn’t know any of this stuff even existed.

If anyone wants to see something specifically mentioned posted in a link, let me know. I’m having a hell of a time typing this thing on my iPad, so I recommend searching for yourself on YouTube under rubiks cube and go from there.

There is one guy by the name of oskar something, and he has invented a ton of new puzzles, and some of the cooler ones aren’t cube-based.

12

Sorry for any typos, but my iPad has some very interesting default words, so if it doesn’t like rubiks, it will substitute rubies for it. I’m sure my last note has a bunch of bad substitutions.

Apologies.

13

Oh, and I presume you’ve seen the Lego cube robots? There’s one now that can solve a fully-scrambled 3x3 in something like six seconds, including looking at the faces.

14

Here’s a thread I started on Rubik’s cube for its 30th anniversary. (Over a year ago! I was thinking it was just last spring.) You can read my (and some other’s) stories there.

The biggest cube I have is 4x4x4. I solved that in a few days, but then I scrambled it, and it’s been about half a year now without being solved a second time. I also have a Megaminx (think “Rubik’s dodecahedron”). That one I’m able to solve more than once.

You were asking about speed. Here’s a world record page for Rubik’s cube and variants. Just over 7 seconds for a 3x3x3, but I’m most impressed with the 30.58 seconds blindfolded.

You’re right about some cubes being better than others, and that was true even back when they were new. I was fortunate to have (still) one that is well-made, and easy to turn.

15

I didn’t see these until today on youtube. Those are very cool.

Legos are much different than they were when i was a kid.

16

I have an original 3x3, totally suck at solving it.

Go ahead and laugh.

I also still have a book about making cool designs on a 3x3.

17

I had a 3X3 when they were popular back in the early-80s, could solve in just over a minute… now I look at the one I got for Christmas a few years ago and can’t be bothered to spend the time learning the tricks all over again.

18

I saw a guy on “That’s Incredible” solve it with his feet. I was pretty good with it at the time, and so I determined to do it as well.

After maybe a week or so practicing I managed to do it in under 5 minutes.

WITH MY FEET!!!

The proudest moment of my adolescent life.

19

Oh, yeah, I know a few of those. Over Christmas, I taught my nieces how to do the checkerboard (of course), and how to put a dot into the center of each of the faces. Unfortunately, I’m not sure they know how to get the dot out of the centers of the faces, and none of their relatives out that way can solve it, so they might not get much practice until the next time I visit.

20

Anyone remember the rubiks magic puzzle? It was the six squares tied together with fishing line puzzle.

There are a bunch of videos on YouTube showing sub-one second solves, but I only posted one. If you want to see more, especially one in real time, just search on rubiks magic. Real time solves are cool to watch, but are so fast, you can’t see a thing.

I don’t know what the wr is, but this is pretty amazing. I’m particularly impressed with the first person who came up with this solution method (whoever that may be)

Overhead slo-mo view