If you do not know what a Rubix Cube is, simply put, it's a three-dimension puzzle with a simple setup:
I suspect that many of you, at some point, have hit your head trying to solve these. I'm willing to bet that somebody else here can solve them. (At this point, you don't have to read the rest if you want to comment.)
Me and Rubix Cubes go back a long way...
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***Cheesy Flashback Effect***
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While growing up, we had a Rubix Cube that we couldn't solve... except for mom. If I recall correctly, she would say it'd take her about an hour. Maybe it only seemed like an hour.
Anyways, one fateful year, the swim team decided to host a huge garage sale with donated items. I even remember where the house all the stuff was sold is. (Although the last time I saw that family... well, parents had alcohol problems and they were behind on paying the swim team monthly payments... gack...) Anyways, at some point during that sale there was a Rubix Cube in bad condition. Stickers missing or colors too numerous. However, while playing with it, I suddenly realized I was better able to think in three dimensions! I was better at thinking a little ahead and what impact that would have on some other parts.
Before that day was over I was able to solve one side. However, playing with it after that I was only able to get one side and the row touching the side. At this point, I knew I understood the cube a bit better and I began asking my mom how she solved it. Little by little, she taught me what she remembered. Apparently, she had learned it from a book that came with the cube. I can't help but think that was a good long time ago.
Anyways, after spending weeks (maybe a month) playing playing playing with the moves I had learned, eventually she had taught me all of them and I simply practiced solving the cube on my own.
Right now, the cube of choice is one we got while on a family vacation of sorts. Mom and dad found some Rubix Cubes for sale and got one. The booklet there contained a strategy for solving the cube but I thought it was pretty bad. (I still do.) The cube itself was a little odd. Basically, it's a little flimsier, so if you've got fast yet quick hands you can turn really fast, although it's also really easy to not quite go the right distance (or go a little too far) and you can't rotate another side. Also, it's interesting in that the green is on the opposite side of the blue where-as on what I considered to be normal Rubix Cubes the white is opposite the blue. Oh well, not a big difference.
People didn't believe me when I started telling them it really was easy and that the strategy isn't that hard at all. I managed to teach two people... my brother Joe and Jshin (that's his Gaia name... he started posting recently.) I showed them and even told them abstractly why I was doing each move (not each twist, though, since even each twist of a move is somewhat enigmatic to me.)
By the way... if you show it to young girls who have too many stickers... well, yeah, they put stickers all over it. Those are still on it, even. (Same thing happened to my youngest brother's DS thanks to his female friends, hehehe.) Funny thing about the stickers though... after they were put on people started wondering if I was maybe tricking them by using the stickers somehow. (It's kind of funny because you don't need stickers; it really is made of distinct parts with distinct positions so at best the stickers could only be training wheels.)
But yeah... I hadn't solved a Rubix Cube in a couple of years, but when I tried shortly after brining THE cube to my office... well, my hands sort of remembered the moves even though I conciously didn't. sweatdrop I had to slow down to figure out what I was explicitly doing...
Ah, but the fun... the memories...
