Rubik's Cube (1 Viewer)

The paint store where I occasionally go just got a Rubik's Cube from a supplier. One of the sides has the company logo instead of a colour. Anyways, I decided to try it and the first side came easily but the second is more difficult, because I keep altering the first. Any advice? Should you go for one side at a time or is there a better way? Maybe built lines of three and then assemble them?

jeremy

Or take it apart and put it together correctly... Be careful not to break anything while doing so.

My advice: don't try completing one side and then moving on to the next. Try working on all sides simultaneously.

Here's what is usually done:

Do the top group first, taking care to make the colors match on the sides. Then, work on the center cubes along the edges dropping down.

One you have two tiers in place, do the bottom corners. Then do the bottom middle pieces.

Good luck!

Mike's right. Work in rows, not sides. I used to work from the bottom up.

When Rubik's Cube first hit the stores, I was in college. I didn't eat, sleep, or go to class - I just played with that thing until I got it figured out. It took me about two weeks, but I got to where I could solve a randomly scrambled cube in under 15 seconds. After that, I slept for about 20 hours and then resumed my college activities. I wish I had known this at the time, but I probably could have made a bit of money by being the first to write a step-by-step solution book. Oh, well. The next semester, I won a campus-sponsored speed contest and haven't picked it up since.

When I pick it up now, I can solve the first row, but I don't remember how to solve for the second.

http://www.rubiks.com/cubesolution_new.html
http://www.rubiks.com/cubesolutionother.html

Mike and Brian are correct. Do one side first, taking care that the edges match the color of the adjacent sides (the center tiles of each face do not move relative to each other) then work your way down. Once you figure out how to rotate/move certain elements without scrambling the rest of the puzzle its possible to "solve" it quite quickly.

I prefer to treat the cube as layers. You do the first layer, then the second (middle) layer, and finally the third layer.

I think my fastest time was around 16 seconds (but it was a fluke). Back when I had a good cube (well lubricated), I would easily average solving it under 40 seconds.

I also know how to do the 4x4x4 Rubik's Revenge Cube. But that's a tedious one to solve, takes me just over 3 minutes on a good day to solve it.

And once upon a time I could do the Tomi Docehedren 12-sides "cube" puzzle. This was over 20 years ago, though.
I wish I knew what happened to that puzzle because I've seen them go for $80+ on Ebay. :frowning:

16 seconds!

I bow before my betters. my best was probably in the 90+ second range. I didn't actually "solve" it myself, though, a friend had bought a leaflet with instructions, which I was able to memorise (and can actually still remember!).

funny thing is the "system" this leaflet showed seems simpler than most others I've seen (principle is the same though, start with one layer, then the next, then the final layer). the number of different sequences it required you to learn was quite limited.

but perhaps its simplicity also made it less flexible, and therefore more time-consuming to implement.

I got really good at those. When I was a kid at my aunt's place, I would just solve those puzzles. They're pretty easy and after the first time you get it, it becomes easier. It didn't matter how long they spent re-arranging it, I'd easily find a way to solve it. That was about 8-10 years ago. When I tried to do the Rubik's cube recently, I spent half an hour and got nowhere.

I think my best time (without removing the stickers) was something like a year and a half. I used to have the attention span of a ferret on a double expresso...

Once you learn to work in rows you can do it in no time.

Just thinkin' out loud...

Remember Rubik's revenge (don't know if that's the correct name) with the plastic panels with rings on them. They were held together with a clear type of string like fishing
line. The rings would "link" when you solved the puzzle.

Then there was the pyramid. Now that was pretty easy if you worked in layers.

How about the "chain" thing (don't know if it was actually a Rubik's product or not), where you had to link the colored chain on each side.

Does anyone know how to fix a lava lamp that doesn't gurgle anymore? Also, any advice for getting my chia pet to grow better?

What's more of a challenge is to solve the Rubik's Cube and then create cool colorful patterns on the cube by manipulating the corner and edge pieces.

FYI for solving the cube:

1. 1st layer - line up all of the corner pieces in the right orientation, and then fill in the edge pieces. Sure, it requires a little spacial IQ.

2. 2nd layer - you'll need to learn how to insert the 4 edges pieces in the 2nd layer without mucking up the 1st layer. Once you can do that, you'll get both layers done in no time. You just have to learn one string of moves.

3. 3rd layer - you'll need to get the corner pieces moved to the correct locations and oriented correctly. This requires a handful of different string of moves (treat it like a sub-routine in a computer program) depending on what you are facing on the 3rd layer. Then you just need to move the edge pieces around (and flipped if needed) to finish up the cube. This also takes a different set of moves to manipulate the pieces.

I still have all of the moves embedded in my brain. I'll probably always know how to solve the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube if I'm in good mental health. Once you grok it, it's like driving a stick shift transmission.

I still remember the first time I saw a Rubik's Cube. I was about 12 and I saw this guy walking down the street manipulating this thing in his hands, as i got closer, I was amazed to see the different sides slide in on each other...I couldn't imagine how it could move that way and not fall apart!

I eventually had about 10 of them, all kinds, I was a freak for the thing. I also had a spherical one (still 3x3x3), the 4x4x4 one, a pyramid one, and the dodecahedron one mentioned above...the only problem with that one was that it was kind of fragile, and it was hard to turn unless you aligned the 'sides' carefully.

I recently came accross an original Rubik's Cube, I could solve the first two layers, and center cubes of the bottom, but the corners of the bottom layer therw me, I couldn't remember the moves anymore...