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Rubik's Cube World Championships
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."
You are given the scrambled cube to study for a time and then are blindfolded. You have to perform all the moves to solve the cube while blindfolded.
...is pretty awesome. They have each of the competitors solve their cubes, then follow the same steps to mix it up. Then each of the competitors places their cube on a central pad and their hands on two pads to either side. Each person has a their own digital timer, which will be activated when they lift their hands from the pads. A ref blows a whistle, the competitors lift their cubes and solve and then stop their timers by dropping the solved cube on the central pad. The best time I've seen is 12.3 seconds. Frickin' ridiculous. (I was working during the Caltech winter 2005 competition)
.:Semper Absurda:.
It's really not that hard to solve a cube in around a minute. You can learn the basic, layer by layer method in about a day, and after a few more, you've got it down to under two minutes. Then you just keep doing it to get it too about a minute, and all your friends will be amazed!! (it's seriously fun to do it on a subway, everybody looks in amazement :D) Too get a time consistantly under a minute, you probably need to learn more advanced methods, like for instance the petrus system or the friedrich system. Variations on the latter is what all the pros use, but it is murder to learn, you have to memorize around 100 algorithms!!! Myself, I've gotten down to about 30 secs using the standard, layer-by-layer and some of friedrich's algorithms. It really is alot of fun.
I was fortunate to be one of the first people in the world to play with a Rubik's Cube. In the late '70s, I worked with a woman who's husband worked for the Ideal Toy Co. in Jamaica, NY (that's Queens). She brought a secret prototype into work and all the engineers and technicians couldn't stop fighting over this thing; trying both to solve it and to figure out the mechanism. It was supposed to be hush-hush and she could have gotten her husband in trouble, but when she realized how obsessed we all were with it, she was afraid it would disappear.
It was only a few months later that they hit the market and I couldn't wait to get my hands on one. I eventually got to the point of being able to solve it consistently within a half hour or less. Then I lost interest in the challenge.
I also remember a Scientific American cover story (c. 1980), where I finally learned about the mechanism, disassembly and reassembly. Of course, they also discussed algorithms, but I wasn't interested in that. I never use cheats. Takes most of the fun out.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.