Rubik's Cube World Championships 202
cadaeibfed writes "Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the iconic puzzle's introduction to the world was the second Rubik's world championship, held in Orlando, FL this weekend. Competing under official World Cube Association rules, competitors from around the world vied for recognition in this nerd olympiad. Some new world records set include the 4x4 solve, solving using only feet, and blindfolded solving. The winner, Jean Pons of France, finished with an average solution time of 15.10 seconds on a standard 3x3 cube. Here are the full results."
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What's that for a standard ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cube Theory = Group Theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Friend of mine can do this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's that for a standard ? (Score:2, Interesting)
some people take things TO THE EXTREME!!!@11!1eleven [speedcubing.com]
Here's something on the origins of the thing, and (Score:5, Interesting)
The history of it is interesting. It seems multiple folks developed similar items around the same time.
how... (Score:1, Interesting)
braille, perchance?
enlighten me
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So 1980 (Score:2, Interesting)
My observation was that most people eventually learned how to solve it - one way or the other. In general, the boys usually used a screwdriver, while the girls just moved the stickers.
In fact, I came across a dusted 20-year-old cube this summer, and finally learned to solve it the right way for the first time. It was actually quite satisfying not having to use a screwdriver. Just twisting the cube is faster, too.
Fun with Rubik's Cube geeks... (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Put back together in random order so it can't be solved.
3. Give to cube geek.
4. Watch them sweat as their moves don't work.
5.
Of course, these serious cubers would probably take one look at the cube and immediately tell you it had been tampered with.
Sad news. I'm old enough to remember these when they first came out. I feel very, very old. Anyone remember Rubik's snake?
Re:Fun with Rubik's Cube geeks... (Score:3, Interesting)
Pocketeers were a much better toy craze
Talk about nerd porn (Score:3, Interesting)
Cube can be solved in 29 moves or less (Score:4, Interesting)
I originally worked out the solution to the cube when the Scientific American article by Douglas Hosfstader appeared. I never got my speed much below one minute. I did manage to win a T-Shirt at a Cube contest though - a contents with several hundreds of participants...
How about a 20x20x20 cube...... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.speedcubing.com/chris/20cube.html [speedcubing.com]
Speed cubing pioneer (Score:2, Interesting)
Watch her solve cubes!
http://www.ws.binghamton.edu/fridrich/video.html#
Been There, Done That (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously you cannot have just five faces "solved", but it is also not possible to have just four faces "solved". You can render a cube insoluble by reversing one of the two-sided pieces, or rotating one of the three-sided pieces. The easiest way to split a cube apart is to rotate one side by 45 degrees, and push the protruding corner piece until its latch pops out. Reassembly is done by inserting one of the two-sided pieces last. I have also seen evidence of very bad sticker-peeling, where one of the two-sided pieces carried the colours of opposite centres and one of the three-sided pieces carried the same colour on each face!
Rubik's Snake was boring: all you could really make with it was a dog and a football.
Rubik's Magic was a little better, because there were two different puzzles on the go: arranging the eight hinged squares to create a shape {4 x 2 rectangle, 3 x 3 square with corner missing, or various solids} and orientating the components of the shape to produce a picture {three separated rings on the rectangle, or three linked rings on the 3-3-2}.
I remember Rubik's Clock best of all. I was given one of the first ones in the country, which my parents got from a toy shop in Yorkshire. It took me nearly two days to crack it -- and then I could not believe just how daft I had been in not spotting it sooner. The secret is to ghea gur pbeare onpxjneqf, ratntr vgf ohggba naq ghea rirelguvat sbejneqf gbtrgure.
Re:15 seconds (Score:3, Interesting)
The real speed is in planning out the 7-10 moves for the first step in your head before starting (you get 15 seconds to do this), and starting the next step's algorithm as soon as possible once you finish each step. You don't have to plan out the whole solve from the start.
I created an additional step to get the edge pieces showing a cross on the bottom layer before getting the colors on the corners oriented, reducing the number of algorithms to memorize for step 3 from 41 to 6, but it hurts my time (my current best is 54 seconds).
Now, to solve blindfolded, on the other hand, you do need to memorize the cube first. But this could take 90 minutes to commit to memory and plan out, vs. the 15 seconds to only plan the first move. It's really an entirely different approach. I've heard that it's easier to memorize faces as numbers (1-6) instead of colors, but either way I find the whole thing baffling.
Re:True Story (Score:3, Interesting)
Last time I checked, which was a couple years ago, I could solve any rubik's cube in roughly 1:30 or less.
That said, one thing I've never really understood was people who say "oh, yeah, took me weeks and I only ever solved it once or twice."
Trial-and-error, with a very few exceptions for very clever people, just doesn't seem realistic. When you get it to the point where you have nearly every piece done, there are generally long and extremely complicated sequences to move the last few pieces without disturbing anything. I understand a lot of people are smarter than me, but I could never get anywhere NEAR getting the final sections without looking at sets of instructions. It seems likely to me that a handful of people studied it very hard and worked out various move sequences, and those got passed around in instruction guides and booklets and were eventually built on by enthusiasts, leading to the guides that I learned.
But: I'm a reasonably smart guy with an eye for puzzles (who has been messing with Rubik's cubes for years), and I just can't imagine toying with the cube for a couple days -- having been told nothing about it -- and stumbling upon a whole set of final sequences to get the last few parts of the cube done.
So, question to Slashdot: Has anyone here, who considers themselves a fairly normal albeit intelligent person, solved the cube by just messing around with it for a while, having been told nothing about it? It seems like a semi-guided trial-and-error approach is like finding a needle in a haystack*, **. Every time someone says "oh yeah, I solved it a few times back when, but it took me days" I just can't quite believe it. But maybe I'm wrong.
* Or, for the modern day, breaking an SHA-1 hash in only 2^40 operations.
** Tangent: I've heard it said that looking for porn on the internet is like looking for hay in a haystack.
Original (Score:3, Interesting)
So even if they were not cheating (that is mostly possible because the Magic Cube was produced before patenting and the American and the Japanese patents are newer the the Hungarian) they could not create a working unit and support it with a documented development process.
Rubik's greatest invention on the Cube was that inside the Cube there's a sphere so the construction can turn around on the 3 axes easily.
He had - and only Rubik had - documented, working predecessors like the rubber string solution that didn't last long.
There were some fun incidents on the road, eg. when the Hungarian manufacturer could not produce enough units they bought a lot from Taiwan or Hong-Kong but they were bad quality even if there was a "Made in Hungary" on them
I remember very well because I could not manage to buy one but the radio, TV and newspapers were soon full of it
At work my boss stopped supervising us when I lent it to him
I still remember the ache in my arms and fingers...
I know a Mathematician who got an early example and she was the very 1st person who looked at the cube on 3 sides, turned the cube to verify that she thought it's positions then hided the cube behind her back and could complete it without seenig it until finished. I was very impressed
She showed me that solving the cube is not reversing it to the original positions, "only" making the squares on all sides of the same colour.
You can verify it if you write a letter or number on every square of the same colour in the same position, scramble it and solve the puzzle. you will see that the numbers/letters are in wrong position.
Btw. she wrote the 1st program in Fortran that solved the puzzle just a few months later.
Re:Original (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not true. There is only one position for each block of the Cube. The center squares of each face do not move, only rotate. If you write a number on each square, then scramble and solve, you will end up with everything in the original positions (although the center square of each face will probably have rotated).