The Rubik's Cube

 by Attish Das

Did you know that there is more to the Rubik’s cube than you think there is? Did you know the standard Rubik’s cube is not the only type of Rubik’s cube?

First let's look at the History of the Rubik’s cube. A Hungarian design teacher and a serious puzzler Erno Rubik assembled his first cube puzzle in 1974 (around 47 years ago) and then called it the magic cube. After a toy agent pitched the puzzle to Ideal Toy and Novelty company, it renamed the puzzle the famous name Rubik’s cube! 6 years later in 1980, they began putting the Rubik’s cube into stores. After a while puzzlers all around the whole world wanted the cube. After only 2 years they had sold 100,000,000 of them, making the Rubik’s cube the most popular toy in History!  Its success encouraged the development of hundreds of spin-off products, from best-selling books on how to solve it to patent actively breaking the terms of the Rubik’s cube by making unauthorized look-alikes by other manufacturers.

Although the media first thought of the Rubik’s cube to help to teach students about 3D objects, Erno Rubik himself told the media that he purposefully set out the design the Rubik’s cube as a puzzle based on geometry. The 27 tiny cubes, called cubies, produced a challenging puzzle to do Each side of the cube contains 1 of 6 different colours, White, Red, Blue, Orange, Green and Yellow, and when they were assembled, they formed a square. Rubik’s challenge was to allow the cubies to slide and rotate alongside one another while holding together as a unit. He then found out that if the blocks hinged around a rounded core, they could move freely while still maintaining the shape of a cube.

Young puzzlers, who were known as ‘cubers’, are attracted to the look of the puzzle and how simple it looked, and are often skilled at spotting the patterns, which ‘cubers’ call algorithms, which are necessary to solve the cube. Since 2003, cube – solving speed records, held by ‘speedcubers’, have been governed by the World Cube Association (WCA).

Since its inception, numerous variations and designs have been developed. The modifications include changes in the size, colour, number of moving units and medium. Today, there are multiple types of Rubik's Cube available, and new ones are constantly developed for both commercial and research purposes. 

Although the original Rubik's Cube has a 3x3x3 configuration, there have been other sizes inspired by it. Here are a few:

(1) The Pocket Cube, also known as the Mini Cube, is a 2x2x2 Rubik's Cube, with a total of eight pieces. It is a smaller variant of the standard Rubik's Cube and is easier to solve. 

(2) The standard 3x3x3 cube is also known as the Size 3 Cube and is the original cube designed by Erno Rubik. 

(3) The 4x4x4 cube is known as Size 4 Cube or the Rubik's Revenge, most probably alluding to its difficulty and complexity. 

(4) The 5x5x5 cube is often referred to as the Professor's Cube, which suggests the Size 5 is definitely harder than usual cubes to solve.

(5) The 6x6x6 cube or the Size 6 Cube is called the V-Cube 6, while the 7x7x7 cube, or the Size 7 cube, is known as the V-Cube 7. 

(6) There are larger cubes ranging from 13x13x13 to 17x17x17 and even 33x33x33. At the moment, 19x19x19 is the largest mass-produced cube available commercially. 

(7) You can also find Rubik's cubes with pictures on them! They are called picture cubes. 

(8) Also, there are other types of shapes of puzzles like the Rubik's cube. The most popular one out of the different shapes is the Pyraminx. The Pyraminx is a Pyramid puzzle. 

Hybrid Cubes such as the Go Cube make use of both a physical cube and a corresponding software application, usually on a mobile device. Users can twist and manipulate the physical cube, while it syncs the data to the application, where it can be tracked or shared with others. The Go Cube comes with social networking features as well, so that players can connect with other cubers across the world. An application installed on the user's smart device tracks and simulates the cuber's moves in real-time, which can be viewed on a smart device. It gives a detailed analysis of the player's skill levels.