Do You Hate It or Love It?If you can complete
Rubik's cube then you love it, but if you can't then you hate that piece of plastic with 26 parts and one frame.
For 18 years I fiddled and got frustrated by cube. When you are young there is lots of time to spend on this sort of thing.
At age of 21 someone showed me moves required to solve cube. I was very pleased but also highly annoyed that it took 18 years for me to find solution.
I am now 26 and I have done some research on that rigid time waster some people call a puzzle. It is way more than a puzzle!
Many people have studied maths of cube, hence algorithms available on some sites that will solve any cube so long as you enter colors in correctly.
The maths used in cube is of a higher form that is studied at school, it is called group theory. Enough of that though!
There are two ways to do cube. The short way, and long way.
The long way involves completing one side first and then completing rest of cube, using sequences of moves that move certain blocks around. There are a few different methods and they all require you to remember sequences of moves for different situations.
Each person is different and one person might prefer one method over another, but for me main criteria for a solution is ease with which solution can be remembered, so that a couple of months down line you will still be able to do cube without having practiced.
The short way involves hours of dedication and a good memory. Sequences of turns are memorized along with what sequence achieves. The difference here is there are over 40 different sets of moves, and even more depending how determined you are.
To complete cube in world record time of 16.5 seconds (averaged over 3 attempts, in front of an audience) requires you to know just right turns to get mixed up cube to completed state. I would imagine that a person would have to almost become “one with cube” to be able to achieve this consistently.
