Steven Brundage did some Rubik’s Cube tricks on AGT and there’s one that has me baffled. When he had a mixed cube (not random probably, but something he did) in front of Simon Cowell, he appeared to toss the cube and it landed in his hand solved. I watched very carefully in slow motion and don’t see how he did it. He manipulates the cube before tossing it up, but it appears mixed when it goes up and comes down solved. Ideas on how he did that?
My guess:
A cube has 6 faces. When you present it to someone they can never see more than 3 faces at a time. I’m guessing he has a scrambled cube that he quickly solves the 3 hidden faces of and then tosses it into the air and turns the 3 solved faces toward the observer.
Someone did the same trick on “Penn and Teller’s Fool Us” and with that camera angle it is easier to see the 3 faces switch as Hampshire describes.
Ahh, that makes sense. Thanks. It is a very effective trick, though.
These guys are impressive. They mix rigged cubes, switches and real rapid solving techniques making it difficult to catch just what they’ve done.
Can you solve just three adjacent visible faces without solving the others?
Not with a standard cube.
With a rigged cube you could.
As a practical matter the effort to solve the entire cube would not be any greater than trying achieve a state where only three sides are solved.
You can’t actually solve three visible faces without solving the other three. You can, however, get three visible faces into a state that looks solved without the other three looking solved.
What?
Can you explain the difference?
To me, a face is solved, and looks solved, if it is all the same color. What else does it mean?
For a cube face to be truly “solved”, the cube should be in a state such that if you placed the cube on a table with the solved side facing down, upon examining the cube from side on, you should see the entire bottom layer of the cube is also solved.
That’s an odd definition of “face”, but I guess it’s Rubik’s cube jargon.
I guess it all depends on the definition of…solved.
It also depends on what you think of a “Rubik’s Cube” as. Novices will often think of the cube as consisting of six faces, each of which has nine colored squares on it. More experienced folks, though, think of it as consisting of a core plus 20 cubelets, each of which has 2 or 3 colored squares on it. You’re not trying to get the nine squares on each face in the right positions; you’re trying to get the 20 cubelets into the right positions.
You can disassemble a cube, and reassemble it, so that three “faces” look solved, and others look scrambled. It won’t be exactly that, but my point is that by disassembling and reassembling, you can have a rigged cube that looks like more or less anything you want. For that matter, you can buy a set of stickers, and put new stickers on the faces.
And, if you are good at sleight of hand, you can exchange a solved cube for a scrambled one.
FWIW, though, there are speed solvers who can look at a cube and memorize what it looks like in its scrambled state, then solve it blindfolded. In like 15 seconds. And they are really solving it. There are competitions.
No, I see their point. Imagine taking a completely solved cube, and writing the numbers 1 - 9 on each square of one face, sequentially. You then re-arrange the cube so that that face is still a solid color, but the numbers no longer run sequentially. Despite being all the same color, the face isn’t “solved,” because each square isn’t in the exact position it needs to be for the cube to be completed.