’Net Junkie
Come on, let’s twist again
In 1974, when Erno Rubik of the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest, Hungary, designed a 3-D teaching aid to supplement his lectures, he had no idea his quirky invention would make him a millionaire by age 36.
While it took some time for the Rubik's Cube to make it past what was then the Iron Curtain, by the early 1980s, millions of his brain-twisting puzzles had been purchased worldwide and Rubik was a household name.
It is estimated that more than 100 million cubes have been sold in its 25-year history, including the innumerable knockoffs and counterfeits that flooded the market during its early boom. Of course, one good idea begets another, and the Rubik empire grew to include Rubik's Revenge, Rubik's Triamid, Rubik's Micro Cube, Rubik's Mini Cube, Rubik's Snake, Rubik's Mate (which consists of two conjoined cubes) and a slew of other similar 3-D bafflers.
In the days before the Internet, one would either have to purchase a book like "The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube" or seek out a local brainiac who'd figured out the solution on his own. These days, one can find countless methods to solving the cube at sites like www.chrisloanshome.8m.com/rubic_cube.htm, www.mts.net/~rhoffman/3x3x3/twopages.htm, www.olympus.net/personal/prmhem and www.ai.sri.com/~cheyer/rubiks/rubiks.html.
Lars Petrus is the originator of the "Petrus Method," which he claims can cut in half the number of moves used in the popular "layer method" favored by "speed cubists" in international cube-solving contests. As the first-place winner in the Swedish Rubik's Cube Championships and fourth-place contestant in the prestigious World Championship in Budapest, I assume he knows what he's talking about. Judge for yourself at www.lar5.com/cube.
I don't know how, but at some point, some egghead determined that there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations to the Rubik's Cube. That's 43 quintillion different positions -- I mean, is quintillion even a real number?
And yes, the Rubik's Cube is still around, if you're wondering. Log onto rubiks.com for updates, online games, links and downloads. Lately, I've been messing around with an online version of the addictive brain-buster at homepages.luc.edu/~gdituri/flash.html. I tossed my cubes out a couple of years ago, and I've been regretting it ever since.
’Net Junkie drops every Monday.
Contact Shawn "Speedy" Lopes at slopes@starbulletin.com.
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