Welcome To My World - (Rubik's Cube)

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Rubik's Cube

In this section of my website you will find all you need to know about
the legendary mathematical aide and toy, the Rubik's Cube.

Rubik's Cube

Solving the puzzle, one twist at a time.

The history of Rubik's Cube
There is only 1 correct answer and 43 quintillion wrong ones for Rubik's Cube. God's algorithm is the answer that solves the puzzle in the least number of moves. One eighth of the world's population has laid hands on 'The Cube', the most popular puzzle in history and the colorful brainchild of Ernő Rubik.

Enter Ernő Rubik
Ernő Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary during World War II. His mother was a poet, his father an aircraft engineer who started a company to build gliders. Rubik studied sculpture in college, but after graduating, he went back to learn architecture at a small college called the Academy of Applied Arts and Design. He remained there after his studies to teach interior design.

The Cube
Rubik's initial attraction to inventing the Cube was not in producing the best selling toy puzzle in history.

The structural design problem interested Rubik; he asked, "How could the blocks move independently without falling apart?" In Rubik's Cube, twenty-six individual little cubes or cubies make up the big Cube. Each layer of nine cubies can twist and the layers can overlap. Any three squares in a row, except diagonally, can join a new layer. Rubik's initial attempt to use elastic bands failed, his solution was to have the blocks hold themselves together by their shape. Rubik hand carved and assembled the little cubies together. He marked each side of the big Cube with adhesive paper of a different color, and started twisting.

An Inventor Dreams
"It was wonderful, to see how, after only a few turns, the colors became mixed, apparently in random fashion. It was tremendously satisfying to watch this color parade. Like after a nice walk when you have seen many lovely sights you decide to go home, after a while I decided it was time to go home, let us put the cubes back in order. And it was at that moment that I came face to face with the Big Challenge: What is the way home?" - Ernő Rubik

That was how the Cube as a puzzle, was invented in the spring of 1974, when the twenty-nine year old Rubik discovered it was not so easy to realign the colors to match on all six sides. He was not sure he would ever be able to return his invention to its original position. He theorized that by randomly twisting the Cube he would never be able to fix it in a lifetime, which later turns out to be more than correct. He began working out a solution, starting with aligning the eight corner cubies. He discovered certain sequences of moves for rearranging just a few cubies at a time. Within a month, he had the puzzle solved and an amazing journey lay ahead.

Every invention has an official birth date. For the Cube this date is 1974 when the first working prototype came into being and a patent application was initially drafted. The place was Budapest, the capital of Hungary. The inventor's name is now a household word, Rubik's Cube.

Although 1974 marks the inauguration of the Cube, the processes that led to the invention began a few years earlier. At the time, Ernő Rubik was a lecturer at the Department of Interior Design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest.

He had a passionate interest in geometry, in the study of 3D forms, in construction and in exploring the hidden possibilities of combination of forms and materials, not just in theory, but also in practice.

In the course of his teaching, Ernő Rubik preferred to communicate his ideas by the use of actual models, made from paper, cardboard, wood or plastic, challenging his students to experiment by manipulating clearly constructed and easily interpreted forms. It was the realization that even the simplest elements, cleverly duplicated and manipulated, yield an abundance of multiple forms that was the first step on the long road that led finally to the Cube.

When the Cube was complete, Ernő Rubik demonstrated it to his students and let some of his friends play with it. The effect was instantaneous. Once somebody laid his hands on the Cube it was difficult to get it back! The compulsive interest of friends and students in the Cube caught its creator completely by surprise and it was months before any thought was given to the possibility of producing it on an industrial scale.

During 1978, without any promotion or publicity, the Cube began very slowly to make its way through the hands of fascinated youths into homes, playgrounds and schools. The word of mouth spread and by the beginning of 1979 there were enthusiastic circles of Cube devotees in various parts of Hungary.

Undeterred by the universal rejection, spurred on by his firm belief in the exceptional quality of the toy, Tom Kremer, now armed with a convincing marketing plan, continued his search for a viable partner. After many disappointments, he succeeded in persuading Stewart Sims, Vice President of Marketing of the Ideal Toy Corporation, to come to Hungary, to see with his own eyes the Cube in play. It was now September 1979, by which time the Cube has gained a sufficient degree of popularity to be seen occasionally in the street, on trams, in the cafes, each time in the hand of someone turning and twisting and completely absorbed. After five days of convoluted negotiations between a sceptical American capitalist and an obstinate communist organization largely ignorant of the operation of a free market, with Laczi and Kremer holding desperately the two sides together, an order for one million cubes was signed amidst much handshaking and great relief all around.

Jumbled Cube

Spending many maddening hours, trying to solve the colourful cube.

The challenge of trying to master the Cube, to be able to restore all of its six sides to the original colours seemed to have a mesmeric effect on an amazing variety of individuals right across age, occupation, wealth and social standing. Grandmothers, bank managers, baseball players, pilots, librarians, park attendants could be seen working away at their Cubes at any hour of the day. In restaurants the Cube would feature on tables side by side with salt and pepper pots, handled with greater frequency than either. But it was the young, schoolboys and students, who were in the vanguard of what was fast becoming a massive movement that swept through the world. They were the ones who proved most adept at solving the puzzle, they were the ones to form special cubists clubs, to organize competitions, to suffer from Rubik's wrist playing continuously for hours and days with an object they simply could not put down. But now, in its second incarnation, the Cube is part of a family of puzzles and games which bear the stamp of the genius who created the greatest three dimensional puzzle the world has ever known.

Ernő Rubik has not changed much over the years. Working closely with Seven Towns, he is still deeply engaged in creating new games and puzzles, and remains one of the principal beneficiaries of what proved to be a spectacularly successful invention.

Variations of Rubik's Cubes (from left to right: Rubik's Revenge, Rubik's Cube, Professor's Cube, & Pocket Cube)

Rubik's Cube or is a mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by the Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. The plastic cube comes in four widely available versions: the 2�2�2 ("Pocket Cube"), the 3�3�3 standard cube, the 4�4�4 ("Rubik's Revenge"), 5�5�5 ("Professor's Cube"). 6�6�6 and 7�7�7 cubes are currently being produced.[1] The 3�3�3 version, which is the version usually meant by the term "Rubik's Cube," has nine square faces on each side, for a total area of fifty-four faces, and occupies the volume of twenty-six unit cubes (not counting the invisible cube in the centre). Typically, the faces of the Cube are covered by stickers in six solid colors, one for each side of the Cube. When the puzzle is solved, each side of the Cube is a solid color. The original 3�3�3 version celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2005, when a special edition Cube in a presentation box was released, featuring a sticker in the centre of the white face (which was replaced with a reflective surface) with a "Rubik's Cube 1980-2005" logo.

Originally called the Magic Cube by its inventor, it was renamed Rubik's Cube in 1980 and released worldwide in May of that year, winning a Spiel des Jahres special award for Best Puzzle. It is said to be the world's best-selling toy, with some 300,000,000 Rubik's Cubes and imitations sold worldwide.

If you're looking to solve the cube, go to my solutions page: Rubiks Cube Solution.

"It would take me forever to solve one of those." - Anon.

Email: jamber_15@hotmail.com