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Rubik's Cube Comeback

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the missing-link-still-less-popular dept.

aheath writes "Today's Boston Globe has an interesting article on the revived popularity of the Rubik's Cube. The article mentions that Winning Moves Games 'hopes to capitalize on the renaissance of the original Rubik's Cube in the next several months by rereleasing a version of the supersize 'Rubik's Revenge,' a 4-by-4 cube with 16 squares per side.' You can compare your best Rubik's Cube solution speed to the world champion's record. If the manual solution method doesn't appeal to you, you can always use the Lego Robotics automated method." I remember having a cube that had letters on each sticker instead of colors, so that the solved product spelled words across each face. That thing got me through a lot of childhood car rides.

12 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Never mind solving them by ahecht · · Score: 4, Funny

    I could never figure out how the darned things worked. I took a few apart, but it still seems like magic to me.

    1. Re:Never mind solving them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Try solving a 4-D rubik's cube. ;)

      http://www.superliminal.com/cube/cube.htm

    2. Re:Never mind solving them by surprise_audit · · Score: 2, Funny
      I used to know a guy that wouldn't let anyone bring a Rubik's Cube into his house. He said it was "because of the magical connotations". but I think it was because it didn't understand how to solve it.

      Funny thing was, he had absolutely no problem with those big felt tip pens commonly known as magic markers.

  2. did anyone actually solve it? by The+Tyro · · Score: 4, Funny

    I tried and tried to solve that maddening little cube... ended up taking it apart.

    OK, I cheated. I'm a bad person. Happy now?

    --
    Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
    1. Re:did anyone actually solve it? by Rasta+Prefect · · Score: 4, Funny
      I tried and tried to solve that maddening little cube... ended up taking it apart.

      Oh, wait, thats not what they meant by the manual method?

      --
      Why?
  3. CN, you used to be able to spell? by the+man+with+the+pla · · Score: 1, Funny

    What happened since then??? :)

    --
    The linux hacker
  4. Re:I used to have one of those by BurKaZoiD · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wrote a program in Qbasic to solve it. Is that cheating?

    Yeah, well...the program I wrote in C to solve the cube is orders of magnitude faster than your QBasic program, so I win.

    --


    Spread the RC luvin'
  5. Rubik's Party by scrotch · · Score: 2, Funny

    By a strange coincidence (unless Slashdot is watching me... ), my girlfriend called a little while ago to tell me that we've been invited (really, she's been invited and I get to tag along) to a Rubik's Cube Party. The idea is that everyone wears something that matches each of the cube's colors to the party (6+ pieces of clothing) and leaves wearing just one color.

    So, somehow the mind challenger has been turned into a clothes swapping party. Who'd have thought it?

  6. Whew! It's over again. by blair1q · · Score: 4, Funny

    In the time it took to read that submission, Rubik's Cube came and went. Again.

    You can't push a fad, you know.

    Groovy.

  7. Re:If you want to solve it. by sonicattack · · Score: 3, Funny

    You forgot about this one, contributed by Steve Rubenstein:

    Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
    Black.

    Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved.

  8. Fun hack for those insufferable solvers by G4from128k · · Score: 2, Funny

    1. Take apart a cube
    2. rotate one of the vertex pieces by 120 degrees
    3. reassemble and rotate into a mixed state
    4. give to your least favorite "cube genius"
    5. watch'em suffer as they try to solve it
    6. Profit!

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  9. Language wars by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 2, Funny
    Has so much coding in shitty slow-by-design languages made you this negative and unhappy? You sound like the Java freaks who whip out the "slow algorithm" argument whenever their favourite language is said to be slow.

    Someone wrote a program in Qbasic, and someone wrote a program in C. So far in this thread, we have reached the following conclusions from that limited information:
    • The C program is faster and therefore better than the Qbasic program.
    • Since the Qbasic program is faster than the C program, the C programmer is a moron.
    • Qbasic sucks.
    • C sucks.
    • Since lower level languages run faster, people who write programs in those languages are writing poor code to compensate.
    • Since higher level languages run slower, people who write programs in those languages are just embittered and jealous of the people who write programs in low level languages like C.
    • Java sucks.

    No matter what two languages are in the war, Java always ends up losing.