The Time: 1974
The Place: Budapest
The Man: Erno Rubik

Some time ago I was hanging with family looking for something to do. There sitting on the arm of the couch was a Rubik's Cube. I hadn't seen one for years. So I picked it up and thought sweet I'll just solve this real quick to pass the time.

Yeah! So an hour later I am still sitting there feeling like an idiot because this thing is kicking my butt.

In walks one of my relatives, he picks up the cube and starts spinning the faces around and about 60 seconds later he says here you go and handed me the solved cube.

Now, I recognize that I am not a genius, (in every area, LOL) but I know he is not either and I could easily see that there is a set of patterns that he was using to solve the cube. So I asked him what that was. He wouldn't tell me of course. So, being the curious type I had to figure this out, and that I did. But first, a little history about the Cube.

Invented by Hungarian sculptor and Professor of Architecture Erno Rubik, the Rubik's Cube, originally called the "Magic Cube", was popularized in the late 1970's in Budapest, Hungary.  Shortly after, it hit the international stage with a fury. It was introduced at the toy fairs of London, New York, Paris and Nuremberg in 1980. Between 1980 and 1982 an estimated 100 million cubes were sold worldwide. As of January 2009 over 350 million cubes have sold making it the worlds top-selling puzzle game.

People began to develop algorithms for solving the cube quickly, they began to compete against each other.  Whala!! The sport of Speed-cubing was born. 

The first championships were held in the UK in 1981. Nineteen different countries took part with the title going to Vietnamese-American Minh Thai who solved the cube in 29.95 seconds.

Shortly after, interest in the cube began to wane and it became a long-lost artifact of the 1980's.

More recently, (2003) interest in the sport revived and competitions continue to be held.

The current world record was set by Erik Akkersdijk in 2008, who had the best time of 7.08 seconds at the Czech Open.

Most people only get frustrated when they sit down and try to solve the cube. However, the reality is that with just a little knowledge one can learn to solve the cube every single time and in less than a minute.

The secret lies in algorithms. Don't let the scary word algorithm make you stop before you ever even start. In this case the algorithm is simply a pattern of moves one must make to solve the cube and these algorithms are written in basic letters such as U R U' R' F R'  F' R.

If you're interested, leave a comment and I will post some instructions for solving the cube.

Attachments:

File	Description	File size	Downloads
RubiksCube.ai	Rubiks Cube .ai	95 Kb	2

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