Cube-d!

Greetings Dear Reader!

"If you are curious, you will find puzzles around you. If you are determined, you will solve them." -Erno Rubik

April has arrived and it is the month of some very interesting events. One such interesting event is that of the invention of the Rubik's cube. The Rubik's Cube was invented towards the end of April, or on the 25th of April, 1974 to be specific. This year will mark the 41st anniversary of the Rubik's Cube! Let me share some more mind-blowing facts about the Rubik's cube.

• The Rubik's Cube can be scrambled up in 43 quintillion , or 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different ways, out of which only 1 is correct.

• The notion originating in discussions of ways to solve the Rubik's Cube is called 'God's Number'. 

• While the Rubik's Cube is now known by the name of it's inventor, the toy originally started out it's life as the Magic Cube in Hungary. It was eventually licensed to Idea Toy Corp. in 1979 and rebranded as the Rubik's Cube before its appearance internationally in 1980.

• Rubik's Cube was patented in 1975.

• In 1982, the first world championship was held fueling the speed solving craze known as 'speedcubing'.

• Despite the complexity of Rubik's Cube, humans have solved the Rubik's Cube in less than 6 seconds. The current human record holder Mats Valk of the Netherlands solved the Rubik's Cube in 5.55 seconds.

• Robots, however, have been able to solve the Rubik's Cube even more quickly. The Cubestormer III robot built from Lego kits and powered by a Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone solved it in 3.25 seconds in March last year.
• The minimum number of moves to solve the Rubik's Cube are as less as 20!

• It took the inventor Rubik himself almost a month to solve the puzzle after he invented it in 1974.

Let us now dig up the past. Erno Rubik, an architect-cum-sculptor was working as a lecturer in an interior designing institute in Budapest, Hungary; in the decade of 1970s. Once he got a cube of six equal square sides prepared from 26 smaller cubes for explaining the principles of 3D design to the students. Each of the 26 smaller cubes was affixed with the adjacent ones in such a way that constituent pieces would not become detached even if the cube were to be twisted on its horizontal or vertical axis.

Erno Rubik

One day Rubik stuck stickers of six different colours on all the six sides of the cube making each side covered with the stickers of same colour. Thereafter, giving a number of turns to the rows and columns of the cube, he made a hodgepodge of colours on every side. Now every side of the cube was multicoloured instead of having a uniform colour. Having done this, without giving a thought of consequences, Rubik tried to bring back the pattern of same-colour sides which he himself had disturbed. He spent many hours turning and twisting the cube and the harder he tried, the goal of bringing uniform colours on all the sides appeared to recede farther and farther.

Racking of his brain didn't bring stickers of the same colour on the same sides but generated a unique brainwave: Why not introduce the  cube in the market as an enigma or a puzzle to solve? Without wasting any time, Rubik got his cube patented in 1975 and collaborating with a manufacturer for commercial production, started marketing it under the name Magic Cube. Market response was overwhelming. Renamed Rubik's Cube, this revolutionary toy-cum-enigma has continued to ride the crest of the wave ever since.

Rubik's Cube has seen huge developments in its design since its invention. Nowadays 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 Rubik's Cube are also available, some of which are shown in the picture below. You can take a look at 62 unique Rubik's Cube's designs here.

If you do not have a 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube, you can try solving  the virtual Rubik's Cube here. However, a physical Rubik's Cube is advisable.

You can also learn how to solve the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube in 15 minutes here.

Here is a bit of a cheat. If you have a scrambled 3x3x3 cube and cannot figure out how to solve it and still want to prove yourself smart among your friends, you just need to go here, enter the colours of your scrambled cube in the corresponding positions in the cube given on the web page and click 'solve'. By doing so, you will get the complete step-by-step solution to solve your Rubik's Cube. ;)

Well, that's brings us to an end of this discussion. I hope you enjoyed reading the post as much as I enjoyed sharing the facts with you. Do not forget to drop in your feedback/suggestions in the comments below.

The birthstone of the month of April is diamond. Therefore in the next post, I shall share the exciting, intriguing and mysterious story of Hope Diamond - the mystery and curse of the world's most infamous gemstone. Bye!