RUBIK'S Cube

[BrotherBuzz]

I played with one for the first time today. Eight hours of labor, and I have determined it is an impossible task.

Has anyone HONESTLY completed one?

(How do you take them apart?)

[MrSlayer]

1. Yeah there is a pattern.

A friend of mine used to be able to do it behind his back in as little as 38 seconds. I'm sure someone has it posted on the net. To take it apart just pull off one of the corners.

[Champ]

3. So that's how those people do it in like 12 seconds

I swear to god I seen someone complete like 30 of those in one minute, over 150 in 15 minutes.

[Old and In the Way]

2. I went crazy with that damn thing about 20 years ago.

I got one for my 15 year old son whose now going through the same experience.


And no, I never figured the damn thing out...got real close except for 1 or 2 colors....

[DieboldMustDie]

4. Makes a pretty good paperweight.

I've never been able to solve it though. ;)

[unblock]

5. definitely solvable

many solutions all around the internet these days.

here's one i found via google, it seems pretty easy to follow:
http://jjorg.chem.unc.edu/personal/monroe/cube/rubik.html

the thing came out when i was in high school and i solved it after a few weeks. then i got good at it, i could regularly solve it in 35-45 seconds.

my very first college lecture was during orientation, a math professor had a whole lecture about rubik's cube. he asked for volunteers and, fool that i was, ....

the bastard made me try to solve a rubik's cube that he had rotated ONE of the corners on (by peeling and resticking). that renders the puzzle unsolvable. i pretty quickly figured out that i couldn't solve it, and i somehow knew that that meant it couldn't be solved, by i had no idea how to prove it.

that was most of what the lecture was about.

very interesting puzzle.

[BrotherBuzz]

9. Cool

I'll check that link tomorrow when I'm rested.
The hot puzzle we had when I was a kid was that two dimensional sliding puzzle. You know, the fifteen numbers in sixteen spaces. You were supposed to slide them around to align in sequence. I couldn't do it back then and everyone else claimed it was easy. Funny, thirty years later I read an article in Smithsonian magazine that explained it was mathematically impossible to solve despite the urban myth of everyone being able to complete it. A long drawn out explanation about their being an odd number of moving pieces in an even playing field. My friends lied to me.

Hey, I did get one side of my cube completed!

[Skeptical Democrat]

6. Not without the instructions

Its impossible!

[SmileyBoy]

7. I peel off the coloured stickers and put them in the right places.

:evilgrin:

[lazarus]

8. heck, yeah

Under a minute, no problem.

Then there's Rubik's Revenge, the one that's 4x4, instead of 3x3. I could do that one in about 3 minutes. I saw one in a B&N yesterday, probably going to get it this weekend.

I could do all those cool Rubik's puzzles.

To get maximum speed, I took mine apart and lubed it up. First I spread it with vaseline, put it back together, worked it out some, took apart, then coated the workings with graphite powder. That sucker'd spin for days. :evilgrin:

[BrotherBuzz]

10. Hmmm

now you've got me thinking silicone spray. Still, I'll have to use a calendar to time myself instead of a watch.

[lazarus]

12. that'd work

The key is to do the upper centers, then upper corners, then middle, then lower corners, then lower centers, in that order.

:evilgrin:

[sweetheart]

11. It took me a few months without help but i figured it

out. (a little graphite powder to lube the cube helps) as it takes
a lotta practice to get to consistent under 1 minute times.

Solve the 8 corners first. Learn to see the cube "only corners"
and notice how certain motions rotate the corners.

Don't copy solutions from the web... it really defeats the
satisfaction of sorting it out yourself.

Geez, its been 20 years since i last had one... i'd have to start
all over... but it would come back fast.

A fun game is to take the completed cube and turn it 4 to 5 turns
and see if you can "un-turn" those... rather than re-doing it from
scrambled...

or i guess "fun" for nerdy people who like spacial problems like that. :-)

[Dees]

13. Yes....I figured it all out but

had one last move to finish. A friend who had consulted a "how to" book showed me. I actually felt sad it was completed.

[ET Awful]

14. Yup, I solved it back when I was in Jr. High or so. . .

Haven't picked one up since :), nor am I very good at math. (I was a bit of a nerdy kid, hell I still am).

Damn that seems like a long time ago though.

[Ladyhawk]

15. Yeah, a long time ago with a "how-to" book.