My officemate brought his rubik's cube today. It reminded me of lots of things. During my childhood, my uncle Ben has one, and he teached me how to solve one side of it. I never thought about it other than solving a single side of the puzzle.
When I entered college, one of my friends showed me how to solve the entire puzzle. There is a certain combination of steps that will eventually lead you to get the puzzle to be completed. He said he found the solution from the puzzle by buying a cube himself. The cheat sheet was greek to me. Good thing allan was a really good teacher and I tried solving it and after a few days I was able to solve by my own. The trick is memorizing the entire combination. All of my housemates got hooked, and even my boyfriend learned how to solve it.
I never knew there are different kinds of algorithms and permutation involved in solving it. There is are different kinds of puzzles other than the usual 3 by 3 by 3 . Ernő Rubik was really way too intelligent for me. There's too much to know about it I think you need to read this.
5 comments:
My nephew, who is 10 years old, is a master of this. He does it so fast without any help. Well, no one in the family actually knows how to do this. It just comes naturally to him.
really fancied this rubik thing when i was young. lately i saw it and tried to recall my memory but cldnt work it out .....hehe...getting old??
neoauteur: wow, your nephew must be a genius! when I was that age I can only figure out one side of the cube..
johnny: memory fails me too.. I can't figure it out either.
when i was 10 - i would get amused with it seeing different colors i'd suppose. :D
though now (after years of book feeding (!!) ) i know that solving this employs some of the mathematical group theory !! ( now don't ask me about that :P)
me too like 'em..i still play with 'em :D :)
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