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Rubik's Cube: 40 Years Old and Never Meant To Be a Toy

Posted by samzenpus on from the don't-peel-the-stickers dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The greatest geek toy ever invented turns 40 today and to celebrate there's an interactive Google Doodle, and the Telegraph has a short history of the toy. 'There are only a handful of toys that last more than a generation. But the Rubik's cube, which celebrates its 40th birthday, now joins the likes of Barbie, Play-Doh, Lego and the Slinky, as one of the great survivors in the toy cupboard. What makes its success all the remarkable is that it did not start out as a toy. The Rubik's cube was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian architect, who wanted a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry.'"

29 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Hajrá Magyarország! by stoolpigeon · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hajrá Magyarok!

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    1. Re:Hajrá Magyarország! by StripedCow · · Score: 4, Funny

      I take it that means "first post"?

      --
      If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
    2. Re:Hajrá Magyarország! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, it means in English "Go Hungarians!".

    3. Re:Hajrá Magyarország! by shikaisi · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, it means "My hovercraft is full of eels"

      --
      No left turn unstoned.
    4. Re:Hajrá Magyarország! by stoolpigeon · · Score: 2

      Magyar is Hungarian. Magyarok is plural, Hungarians and Magyarország is Hungary.

      I figured that was a better first post than the norm given the subject matter. Most any tourist gift shop in Budapest will happily sell you an over priced Rubik's Cube.

      --
      It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    5. Re:Hajrá Magyarország! by jfdavis668 · · Score: 2

      I will not buy this record, it is scratched

  2. 40 years and I still can't solve it by jfdavis668 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Never did learn how to solve it.

    1. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is easy: remove all the coloured stickers from each cube face, and you get a cube with each face having a uniform colour.

    2. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by LocutusOfBorg1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is easy: remove all the coloured stickers from each cube face, and you get a cube with each face having a uniform colour.

      I did exactly this when I received my first cube. Still not able to solve it :)

    3. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by umafuckit · · Score: 4, Informative

      Then learn! RubiksPlace has one of the better tutorials on the net. Good cubes can be purchased for under $15. Buy one by Dayan, or a similar company. The official Rubik's ones mostly suck. Follow the instructions on the site and you'll have a solve within half an hour. Then you can proceed onto learning and understanding the process. It's rather fun. I've just started and my goal for this year to get a sub one minute solve. I'm busy, so if I can nail that I'll be very happy.

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      soylentnews.org
    4. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by Thanshin · · Score: 2

      Or the brute force solution. Break it apart and reform it in the correct color order. It leaves less permanent damage than fiddling with the stickers.

    5. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by OakDragon · · Score: 3, Funny
      As a person who was jealous of those that actually could solve it, this was my favorite joke on them:
      1. Take one of their solved cubes.
      2. Break it apart
      3. Put it back, EXCEPT rotating one edge piece so that the colors would not align
      4. Mix it up good
      5. ???
      6. Profit!

      I'm not sure, but I imagined this would make it unsolvable.

      --
      Dark Reflection
    6. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by LostOne · · Score: 4, Informative

      If one edge piece is flipped as described, the cube does, in fact, become unsolvable. It is not possible to flip a single edge piece without affecting at least one other piece on the cube.

      --

      If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
    7. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 2

      Then learn! RubiksPlace has one of the better tutorials on the net. Good cubes can be purchased for under $15. Buy one by Dayan, or a similar company. The official Rubik's ones mostly suck. Follow the instructions on the site and you'll have a solve within half an hour. Then you can proceed onto learning and understanding the process. It's rather fun. I've just started and my goal for this year to get a sub one minute solve. I'm busy, so if I can nail that I'll be very happy.

      Having tried some, I'm willing to state that there is no tutorial in the world that would enable me to solve it, either. The cube is filed in the same folder as juggling, having a baby, and curling up my tongue -- under "stuff I just can't ever do". I tried 13 moves on the google doodle before just angrily clicking all over in frustration to see how high I could drive the counter.

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      I am not a crackpot.
    8. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by datastew · · Score: 2

      I can solve it, and I can say for sure that if you only rotate one edge piece, the whole puzzle will be unsolvable.

      Back in grade school, I used to solve people's cubes for them. When I got to the point where it was solved except for the unsolvable part, it would be obvious what had happened. I would show them where they pieces or stickers had been changed and offer to change it back for them.

    9. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by ZeroPly · · Score: 2

      This is not "solving" it, it's just following an algorithm which guarantees a solution. It's the equivalent of calculating a binary sum for Nim on each turn and removing the correct number of stones. You don't have to understand anything about Nim, or look more than a move ahead, you just have to mindlessly calculate that sum and remove whatever stones the algorithm tells you to do.

      Truly solving a cube would be working out a plan based on that _particular_ initial combination, rather than something like "move all the yellow to one side". I only knew two people who could do that, and it took them on the order of 2-3 hours each to solve a given cube.

      --
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    10. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by David_Hart · · Score: 2

      Or the brute force solution. Break it apart and reform it in the correct color order. It leaves less permanent damage than fiddling with the stickers.

      Yeah, I did this too. In fact, the first thing I did was to see if I could take it apart without breaking it. Being able to solve it this way meant that I didn't have to waste time try to solve it the normal way. People considered this method cheating, but I preferred to refer to it as thinking outside of the box.

      Just for fun, I did, much later, solve it the normal way using a strategy guide.. The strategy guide was included in a box lot that my Dad won at an auction.

    11. Re:40 years and I still can't solve it by umafuckit · · Score: 2

      Not strictly true. There is a family of algorithms that are used to solve the cube. If you follow them, you need to identify the correct ones as you proceed. Not all steps in the process may be needed, depending on the initial state of the cube. A good speed solver learns a large number of algorithms and plans ahead as they solve, merging one algorithm into the other. i.e. they do what you say: work out a plan in advanced based on the initial combination of the cube. The best in the world can solve the cube in under 10 seconds this way.

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      soylentnews.org
  3. Did it survive? by wisnoskij · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You used to see them everywhere, not really the case for the last decade or two.

    You cannot compare the Rubik's cube to Barbie or Play-Doh on that front.

    --
    Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    1. Re:Did it survive? by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      You used to see them everywhere, not really the case for the last decade or two.

      You cannot compare the Rubik's cube to Barbie or Play-Doh on that front.

      It's been on a comeback lately. So has Tetris, I think.

    2. Re:Did it survive? by jonwil · · Score: 2

      If the number of videos on YouTube dedicated to something is an indication of how well it has survived, the Rubik's Cube is most definatly a survivor.

      Not to mention the many world records that exist related to the Rubik's Cube (I wonder what the record is for the largest Rubik's Cube ever made and for the smallest ever made)

  4. Greatest geek toy by hubie · · Score: 2

    I can't say I think of it as the greatest geek toy. Cool puzzle, but not geek toy. When I think of a great geek toy, I think of something that demonstrates some physical property (like a gyroscope, or one of those glass tubes with a colored liquid that boils when you hold it in your hand), or something like a Mindstorms set where you can explore computing and robotics.

  5. Hmm by Richy_T · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Rubik's cube was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian architect, who wanted a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry.

    I've heard this before but it makes no sense to me that the cube would in any way help to explain three dimensional geometry (any more than would a static cube of wood). Can anyone elucidate on this?

    Not that I'm complaining. Love to play with one myself.

    1. Re:Hmm by tkuCheck · · Score: 5, Informative

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...: "Although it is widely reported that the Cube was built as a teaching tool to help his students understand 3D objects, his actual purpose was solving the structural problem of moving the parts independently without the entire mechanism falling apart. He did not realize that he had created a puzzle until the first time he scrambled his new Cube and then tried to restore it."

  6. 4 d version? by rossdee · · Score: 2

    Did he ever make a 4 dimensional version (Rubik's Tesseract)

    1. Re:4 d version? by umafuckit · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is the closest you're likely to get to a 4-D Rubik's cube.

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      soylentnews.org
  7. toys that last more than a generation. by rossdee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'There are only a handful of toys that last more than a generation.

    Oh, come on, there are many 'toys' that have been around for more than a century
    Like the 'stick with the horses head handle, the bicycle and tricycle, the spinning top, the soccer ball, the oval football, the bucket and spade (sandcastles) the swimming pool, the Y shaped catapult, dolls (and toy soldiers for boys) chalk, crayons and other drawing stuff, the seesaw (aka teeter tottor) slides, playing cards (the classical 4 suits kind) dice (6 sided, not the crappy company that owns slashdot, the skipping rope, the kaleidoscope, the boomerang, model trains, cars and boats, and the box that the toys came in

  8. Bad link in summary by mgemmons · · Score: 4, Informative

    You would expect that a link named "an interactive google doodle" would link to, you know, that and not an engadget article which has a decidedly non-interactive screenshot of said doodle . But hey, this is slashdot. Go here instead: http://www.google.com/doodles/

  9. Re: toys that last more than a generation. by MozeeToby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Child culture doesn't change much over the years. Look at your list and think about how many of them have been in existence for over 100 years or even 500. Many of them can be traced back to the dark ages or even further. Managing to insert your toy into part of child culture is an accomplishment worth noting; to me it remains to be seen if Rubik's cube has actually managed to do so (despite being a fan, I suspect the answer is no).