For weeks my grandson Hank has been working on his cubing skills. He talked his mother into purchasing speed cubes for each of his friends and some of the family. How hard could it be to solve a 3D combination puzzle. It is a 3 x3 cube with colored tiles on each of its rotating sides. The original cube had the white cubes opposite yellow, blue is opposite green, and orange is opposite red and those are arranged in a clockwise fashion. Each row rotates in all possible directions. Once the puzzle is fully scrambled your job is get all nine slots on each side back to the same color. What are the possible permutations – well 43 quintillion is the answer and there is only one solution. To put this into perspective, “if one had one standard sized Rubik’s cube for each possible combination it would cover the Earth’s surface 275 times, or stack them in a tower 261 light-years high.” Hank was undaunted by the odds and he watched videos and practiced for many hours. This morning, I picked him up for his last day of school, and he excitedly told me he solved the cube. Boompa, I did it in 3 minutes and 15 seconds. He proceeded to re-scramble the cube and solve it again. How did you do that I asked? Hank informed me, “it is a series of algorithms”. Now that I know the secret I should be able to join the ranks of those who can solve the puzzle.
A bit of research tells you that since the creation of the Cube by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture, in the late 1970’s he has sold over 450 million of the creative toys. It is the world’s best selling puzzle game and toy. The cube has generated so much interest that there is an ongoing quest to solve it against the clock. To date it appears that 3.22 seconds is the fastest time to return all six faces of the cube to the same unique color. Hank will keep working on this skill and he has his father hooked on finding that secret algorithm. I can tell you that a person with spatial relations deficiency, like me, is unlikely to ever find the discipline and process necessary to succeed.
It is Memorial Day week end. Each of us owes our freedom to those who have fought and served to defend our country and the liberty we enjoy. It is not enough to just thank our veterans, we must assure they have the necessary resources to return to physical and emotional well being in society. Surely our legislators and citizens can find common ground, a simple algorithm, to support our Veterans.
Enjoy the long week end. Mike