Rubik's Cube

[Eldritch]

Do you know how to solve it?

I myself never had one as a kid, and am just starting to learn.

51z0Tf76f3Y

[Loki]

My father worked out a formula to solve the Rubik's cube from any position, in a minimum x-amount of moves. When I get to home again I shall see if I can find it. That must have been about 25 years ago.

[lei.talk]

this is one of the devices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Cube#Optimal_Solutions)
the girl-child used
to develop her spatial-visualisation.

knot-tying (un-tying, actually) was the first.

one of my pre-pubertal employees
taught me a simple "parking" algorithm
which enabled me to sell thousands of them
to customers in my book-store
wishing to out-smart their friends.

a cube really can be unscrambled
in a minute
with only two or three days
of regular practice.

it took five-or-so minutes
to teach most customers
the "parking" pattern.

persevere!
if a three-year-old girl can... :cool:

[Beorn]

Do you know how to solve it?

Yep, take the stickers off and replace them in the correct order, or take the cube apart and reassemble in the correct order.

The thing with me solving puzzles is that I don't stick to the "approved" methods.

:thumb001:

[Silverfern]

Evil invention, I spend hours playing with those things and never got it out.

One of my sons chewed the stickers off it when he was little. We ended up with a very rare black sided cube.

As well my husband used to take it each time he was deployed.

We ended up with the ball and the snake.

The snake one I liked it was easy. :cool:

[Beorn]

We ended up with the ball and the snake.



I can't remember the ball one, but do remember the snake one.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Rubik%27s_Snake.JPG



My sister had this Rubik's clock as well, which I preferred out of them all.

http://www.passionforpuzzles.com/puzzles/rubiks-clock.jpg

[Treffie]

There were quite a few kids in my school who could solve the Rubik's Cube. I hated them, because once they had completed it, they had that 'Look at me' expression on their chops. I always wonder what they are up to now, probably working as IT managers I should imagine.:rolleyes2:

[Silverfern]

http://www.geekalerts.com/u/3d-iq-sphere.jpg

Its bad I tell you :eek:

[lei.talk]

this is an other of the devices (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GZAZ_enUS281US281&q=neocube)
the girl-child uses
to develop her spatial-visualisation
and manual-dexterity:

http://youtu.be/yxHrLzvUNZc
bi-secting (length-wise) a magnetic möbius strip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip)
down the center - excited her.

more convoluted dissections (http://www.exo.net/~pauld/activities/mobius/mobiusdissection.html)
fascinate her.

[Sigurd]

I quite love Rubik's cube. Typically takes me less than a minute to assemble one single-coloured side. I've not yet managed to solve it, but I'm currently on the right way. If I haven't figured out at the end of the month, I'll probably use an internet tutorial - but I'd much rather find out myself how to solve it. :thumb001:

[Eldritch]

To be honest, I did look at an internet tutorial. I always start with the white side, and can get the "cross" together" pretty quickly.

The problem is, this method requires the pieces above the blue and red centerpieces to be the same colour, which seems maddeningly difficult to do. :mad:

[Eldritch]

(Non-)progress report:

Is "Rubik" the Hungarian word for Satan or something?

Siggy, how are you doing?

[Inese]

I am too stupid for puzzles and things... :rolleyes: You need logical thinking and mathematic feeling and both of them i dont have ---- lol!! :coffee::D
But east asians are crazy they make weired things and many look like the freak they are!!! ;)

[Sigurd]

I am too stupid for puzzles and things... :rolleyes: You need logical thinking and mathematic feeling and both of them i dont have ---- lol!! :coffee::D
But east asians are crazy they make weired things and many look like the freak they are!!! ;)

Rubik's Cube is actually much easier than you'd think. You need logical thinking to assemble the first layer (that is, a single-coloured side and a single coloured line & middle piece for each of the sides adjacent) --- though once you know how to get a single-coloured side (which becomes easy after you've managed it once), it doesn't take logic but trial and error to get the other half of Layer 1 correct, though usually it's pretty much fool-proof.

After you've completed the First Layer - if you wish to go by the Layer-By-Layer method, then after that it is always a collection of the same steps, which just have to be memorised, as at that stage, there really is only "One Way Per Method". Once you have them in your mind, you practice speeding up and soon you'll be able to solve it without much thinking at all.

If you want, I could teach you the basics of solving Rubik's Cube - after you know the basics of how the thing works, it's easy. Anyone can solve a Rubik's Cube if they only know who the darn thing works. You don't even need spatial perception for that - spatial perception is the area in my Psychological/Mental Aptitude Test where I scored lowest (6/9, all others 8/9 or 9/9) and yet I know how to solve a Rubik's Cube. :)

Finally, remember though that once you know it --- if you can solve it in let's say 2-5 minutes then it makes for a good party trick. It's a good party trick perhaps till you've reached a speed of 35-40 seconds. When you get any closer than that to the world record (7.08 seconds! :eek:) then you're however in people's eyes soon transformed from a "magical genius" to a "sad geek". For the line between a genius and an idiot with no life is very slim. :D :D :D

[Inese]

Yes you say logical thinking.....you must know i am a person who has problems to solve a normal picture puzzle with only 200 parts!!! :p :rolleyes2: In preschool i was always at the slowest group it took me hours to complete it --- O.o*

I never had a rubic cube but it looks very complex!! A normal picture puzzle is two-dimensional and a rubic cube is three-dimensional or more!!! :icon12:

[Sigurd]

Yes you say logical thinking.....you must know i am a person who has problems to solve a normal picture puzzle with only 200 parts!!! :p :rolleyes2: In preschool i was always at the slowest group it took me hours to complete it --- O.o*

Jigsaw puzzles? I used to be absolutely terrible with them, too. Perhaps though because my favourite motive was winter landscapes and every piece looked the same? :D


I never had a rubic cube but it looks very complex!! A normal picture puzzle is two-dimensional and a rubic cube is three-dimensional

Only 54 coloured squares though spread out over 26 segments. And only 20 segments can really move their colours around because the middle pieces are fixed. Got to look at it optimistically --- 2D and 3D puzzles oft have 500+ pieces/segments to put together in the correct order! And better, they don't fly around loosely, they're all fixed to a small cube! :thumbs up


or more!!! :icon12:

Or more? You mean ones that include time as a pattern too? Oh my, that'd be too complex for me, too! :wink

[Eldritch]

I guess I just haven't been patient enough. I really should sit down with this thing and concentrate.

[Sigurd]

I guess I just haven't been patient enough. I really should sit down with this thing and concentrate.

A quick Google Search reveals several pages, of which I consider the following to perhaps be the most useful if you get stuck, because it's indeed fool-proof.

So, if you get stuck at the second layer, or of course the third layer, or even some common errors in the first layer you might wish to consult this tutorial (http://www.rubikssolver.com/).

The second layer and getting the top-middles correct I found quite hard to figure (that had me for over a week), the top cross and the final corner flipping (takes some trial and error but memorising your steps) were easier to figure.

If you wish to do it by yourself however, stay clear of it because it's really 100% fool proof from what I can tell. :tongue

Layer by layer isn't the fastest method, but it's the msot basic one you need to know before figuring or memorising harder ones. In fact it's the only one I can do at this stage, after all I'm still a bit of a beginner. ;)

[lei.talk]

Rubik's Cube



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Rubik%27s_cube.svg/220px-Rubik%27s_cube.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Cube)

[mvbeleg]

Mathematically, the Rubik's Cube is a problem of high difficulty involving group theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_cube_group

[Groenewolf]

Mathematically, the Rubik's Cube is a problem of high difficulty involving group theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_cube_group

Or you just could use one or two screwdrivers.:coffee:

[mvbeleg]

Or you just could use one or two screwdrivers.

Sounds like Alexander and the Gordian Knot. :)

Though to do this would reduce the Rubik's Cube to a mere mechanical challenge, and the essence of the Rubik's Cube as a mathematical system is entirely ignored. :(

[Eldritch]

Or you just could use one or two screwdrivers.:coffee:

Actually an original Rubik's Cube (not a cheap Hong Kong knockoff) can be taken apart and put back together easily and without any tools required.

[Sigurd]

Actually an original Rubik's Cube (not a cheap Hong Kong knockoff) can be taken apart and put back together easily and without any tools required.

Actually, though, to solve the Cube at speed, the cheap Hong-Kong knockoffs are easier to do. I got myself a cheap Hong-Kong knockoff for precisely two reasons: It's looser and thus faster/easier to move around the various axes. And it has the colours printed on rather than stuck on, which means that you can use it for a little longer before it goes "ugly". :D

A terribly un-preservationist thing to say, but I actually prefer my "fake" Rubik's Cube to my "real" Rubik's Cube, which is why I've lent the original one to my aunt who has been trying without much success for over two months now to solve the puzzle. ;)

My progress report: Haven't done much Rubik-Cubing, so I'm now back to taking on average 7-9 minutes to solve it and no longer 2-5 minutes. I suppose I'll have to practice more, but I've been a bit of a busy man of recent. Revising for my exam in Old Greek is fairly taxing. :coffee:

[Moonbird]

I found an old Rubic's cube to try on but I've noticed I don't have enough patience to do this. I can't sit with this cube more than ten minutes in a row. Only time when I actually feel a desire to clean the house just to do something else.:p And yeah...I don't think I'm gonna solve it.:D

[san4os]

I never had problems with Rubik's cube! I like such puzzless =)

it was impossible for me to finish it completely. only 2-4 parts. but my dad has a little notebook with his secret : 'how to make Rubik's cube'

[lei.talk]

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/about/images/popsci.gif (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science)



20 Moves Proven Enough to Solve Any Rubik's Cube Position (http://cube20.org/)
By Clay Dillow (http://www.popsci.com/category/popsci-authors/clay-dillow) Posted 08.10.2010 at 4:25 pm

The world has waited with bated breath for three decades, and now finally a group of academics, engineers, and math geeks has discovered the number that explains life, the universe, and everything. That number is 20, and it's the maximum number of moves it takes to solve a Rubik's Cube.

Known as God's Number, the magic number required about 35 CPU-years and a good deal of man-hours to solve. Why? Because there's 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible positions of the cube, and the computer algorithm that finally cracked God's Algorithm had to solve them all. (The terms "God's Number/Algorithm are derived from the fact that if God was solving a Cube, he/she/it would do it in the most efficient way possible. The Creator did not endorse this study, and could not be reached for comment.)

A full breakdown of the history of God's Number as well as a full breakdown of the math is available here, but summarily the team broke the possible positions down into sets, then drastically cut the number of possible positions they had to solve for through symmetry (if you scramble a Cube randomly and then turn it upside down, you haven't changed the solution).

They then borrowed some computing time from Google (one of the principals is an engineer there) and burned about 35 core-years to solve all the possible positions. The number 20 has been the lower limit for God's Number for more than a decade, but the team was finally able to whittle away at the upper limit (which was trimmed back to 22 in 2008).

So far the algorithm has identified some 12 million distance-20 positions, though there are definitely many more than that. Click through the source link above if you want to see what some of the hardest positions are, and how God would sort 'em out.



http://images.slashdot.org/logo.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot)

[Gamera]

I read a guide when I was about 15 years old on how to solve a Rubik's cube, and then mastered it to do it quickly. My record is 15 minutes to solve the whole cube. It wasn't that hard, truly. Nowadays I have forgot how to do it though, but it's just a matter of learning how to.