Rubik's Cube - My Journey

I am old enough to have be around when the Rubik's cube was a phenemon back in the day. It was invented and patented in the 1970s but it is mostly associated with the 1980s. It is claimed that it has since gone on to be the world's best selling toy.

My first cube was not an official one but a "wonderful puzzler". This cheap piece of crap soon fell apart and went into the bin to be replaced with the more expensive real thing. I still have my Ideal Games branded cube. It is showing signs of wear and tear but considering its age, it is holding up very well.

 

I did not manage to solve it on my own. To do that I had to refer to Patrick Bossert's book: You Can Do the Cube.

You Can do the Cube by Patrick Bossert

It is still available today but is probably of interest to most cube enthusiasts for historical reasons. The solving methodology is the most ineffiecient that I know but it does the job and is useful to get to know how the cube works...

Step 1: Solve corners of one side
Step 2: Solve the side's edges
Step 3: Permutate corners of opposite side
Step 4: Orientate the corners
Step 5: Permutate remaining edges
Step 6: Orientate remaining edges

To cut costs the book was printed in black and white therefore the different coloured faces were represented with different styles of shading. I cannot imagine a publisher getting away with that nowadays!

The method that everyone else used (at least everyone who I knew) was slightly more efficient, a precursor of the layer method used today...

Step 1: Solve corners of one side 
Step 2: Solve the side's edges
Step 3: Solve the edges on the next layer
Step 4: Permutate corners of last layer
Step 5: Orientate corners
Step 6: Permutate remaining edges
Step 7: Orientate remaining edges

I never got a cube with numbers on the stickers (thereby adding the complication of orientating the centres) but I did get Rubik's World...

Inevitably there was the 4x4x4 Rubik's Revenge. I went through a period of getting on the school bus with a scrambled cube and alighting it with a solved one. Alas, my original cube is broken but I do have a Rubik's-branded replacement.
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My interest in the cube waxed and waned over the years (along the way I acquired the Rubik's-branded 25th anniversary cube) but more recently I have become more interested in learning new and more advanced methods. I am working on mastering the Roux method (my prefered way of solving it) but I also like the slightly more difficult Petrus method.

The standard colour configuration has changed since I got my Ideal Games' cube. On my old cube, yellow & white and green & blue are adjacent instead of opposite.

It is interesting to see how solving methodology has evolved and changed over the years. The layer method (a.k.a. beginner's method) is now slightly different from the one I learned in the 1980s...

Step 1: Solve corners of one side 
Step 2: Solve edges of one side
Step 3: Solve next layer
Step 4: Orientate edges of last layer
Step 5: Orientate corners of last layer
Step 6: Permutate corners of last layer
Step 7: Permuate edges of last layer

I now have a new, modern cube, made in China. It is a fraction of the weight of my old Ideal Games cube and turns much more easily: no more painful Rubik's thumb!

The circle of life continues. I have bought a cube for grandson No. 1 and printed out the solution for him. I have challenged him to learn how to solve it with a monetary reward if he succeeds

There are now more puzzles out there than I could hope to collect. Puzzle inventors are very inventive and evil individuals. I am sure there is a layer of Hell with ever more difficult and fiendish puzzles to keep them occupied. Solving the one below did not, thankfully, open up a short cut to it...