Did you ever solve the Rubick's Cube?

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Did you ever solve the Rubick's Cube?
Ever win the arcade version of Pac Man?

In order for us to accurately gauge your intelligence, please do not lie.

― ILX Survey, Friday, 11 November 2005 14:35 (twenty years ago)

I solved the Rubik's Cube every time I sat down to do it. It had nothing to do with intelligence, it had to do with learning how to take it to pieces and put it back together again with no one noticing.

― Stress Pig (kate), Friday, 11 November 2005 14:39 (twenty years ago)

A friend of mine learned how to use the tips of all his fingers to peel off the coloured stickers and reapply them to the cube.

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 11 November 2005 14:42 (twenty years ago)

i did that, too

― g-kit (g-kit), Friday, 11 November 2005 14:47 (twenty years ago)

I peeled off the stickers too, but I did finish Snapper on the Acorn Electron.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Friday, 11 November 2005 14:49 (twenty years ago)

I peeled off some of the stickers but got tired, then tried to finish the cube and now it was REALLY difficult.

― mcd (mcd), Friday, 11 November 2005 14:49 (twenty years ago)

I never did solve more than two sides at once. I was however smart enough to realize that peeling off the stickers or moving pieces defeated the whole point of it and was a waste of time.

Pac-Man. . .of course.

― Miss Misery (thatgirl), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:00 (twenty years ago)

ditto.

― not-goodwin (not-goodwin), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:05 (twenty years ago)

i rely on blind faith and on luck

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:05 (twenty years ago)

but eventually the stickers were unstuck

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:06 (twenty years ago)

How about the Rubick's Magic? It was similar to that kid's toy, the Jacob's Ladder, that has strips running between the pieces so you can flip them back and forth against each other. It was pretty cool. I would love to have one again. I solved that shit all the time.

The Cube, though, was beyond my level of patience

― Big Loud Mountain Ape (Big Loud Mountain Ape), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:19 (twenty years ago)

Hey. Did you see Die Hard?

― MESTEMA (davidcorp), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:41 (twenty years ago)

I had a friend who could solve it (for real) within a couple of minutes. Great party trick!

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:44 (twenty years ago)

..for a couple of minutes

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:50 (twenty years ago)

Are there any party tricks that last for a couple of hours?

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 11 November 2005 15:50 (twenty years ago)

Spiking the punch with mescaline.

― The Marquis of Cauliflower (noodle vague), Friday, 11 November 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)

The Cold Coffee joke.

― Stress Pig (kate), Friday, 11 November 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

i beat pitfall on atari 2600.

― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 11 November 2005 16:34 (twenty years ago)

you sticker peelers disgust me!

took me about 6 months to figure out how to do it consistently (had been lucky a couple of times before that), just getting in ahead of the first rash of 'You Can Do The Cube' books iirc. people down our street used to bring their cubes for me to do.

method i used is very similar to http://jjorg.chem.unc.edu/personal/monroe/cube/rubik.html -
top and a layer, bottom corners, bottom layer, middle layer (although his bottom corners and middle layer things are a lot more efficient than mine). can still remember all the moves.

once wrote a program to work out all the corner combinations with a view to writing a little 2x2x2 cube thing for mobile phones. there are 88 million of them... (although that's probably 24 times too many given the various symmetries / homomorphisms)

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 11 November 2005 16:54 (twenty years ago)

Without taking it to pieces, I could just about manage one side and another layer, but beyond that I got stumped. I much more enjoyed making regular patterns by systematic derrangement of an ordered cube. Especially when you get opposing coloured centres in otherwise solid sides, checkerboard patterns, things like that.

― Stress Pig (kate), Friday, 11 November 2005 16:56 (twenty years ago)

Are there any party tricks that last for a couple of hours?
-- Jordan (jordan...) (webmail), Today 3:50 PM. (later) (link)

http://www.eff.org/Misc/Graphics/Icons/ball_smiley_icon.gif

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 11 November 2005 17:00 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, yeah.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 11 November 2005 17:01 (twenty years ago)

There is a theory that the Rubik's cube brought a huge amount of money into communist Hungary and helped them have an easier and earlier revolution than the rest of Eastern Europe.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 11 November 2005 17:05 (twenty years ago)

I never finished rubiks cube. Or any computer game ever.

― jel -- (jel), Friday, 11 November 2005 17:19 (twenty years ago)

Sticker peeling is horrible.

I could (poss can?) do a cube in 5-10 minutes with a rote-type process like koogs's, but I was never good enough or smart enough to do it faster by actually paying any attention to what was on the initial random cube...

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Friday, 11 November 2005 17:26 (twenty years ago)

i beat pitfall on atari 2600.

I so call bullshit on this.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 11 November 2005 17:53 (twenty years ago)

A co-worker showed me 4 cube-twisting sequences that allow moving single blocks from one position to another, and from these I was able to do a cube in about 5 minutes. I still have my cube, and probably the hand-written sequences.

― nickn (nickn), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:06 (twenty years ago)

Stress Pig OTM.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:08 (twenty years ago)

i beat pitfall on atari 2600.
I so call bullshit on this.

-- Pleasant Plains /// (pleasant.plain...), November 11th, 2005.

i've not beaten pitfall, but pitfall II (which i like(d) much better) is quite beatable. and once you figure out how to save the monkey princess every time you sit down to play, it loses its appeal a bit. that's natural i guess.

but no, i was terrible at rubik's cube. i always felt i'd really accomplished something if i got one solid side.

recently my friend davey told the story of this guy who was a master ms pac-man player who not only beat ms pac-man, but achieved the seemingly impossible: a perfect game. and when he described for me what a perfect game meant, it blew my mind. also, i was totally hi at the time. still, impressive.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:14 (twenty years ago)

I got a Rubic's Magic when i was 9 or 10. Learned how to beat it in 12 moves.

the Rubic's Super Magic(or whatever it was) ended up snapping, so that was that.

I never beat Raiders of the Lost Ark on the 2600. Or Pitfall II.

― kingfish cold slither (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:16 (twenty years ago)

my question is: did you want to solve the rubik's cube?

I never really felt that inclined to doing so, or if I did try it was only to prove a point.

― jel -- (jel), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:18 (twenty years ago)

as far as having fun with a puzzle, i prefered rubik's snake
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/gnf/book2/photos2/rubtrocr.jpg
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/gnf/book2/photos2/rubsnakr.jpg

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:22 (twenty years ago)

Holy shit, now I'm having flashbacks to a handful of mid-80s Christmasses. I think my cousin had an Orange rubic's snake. Not sure what the "puzzle" bit about it was, but you could make cool polygons with it.

― kingfish cold slither (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:27 (twenty years ago)

Um, I beat Demon Attack on the Atari 2600.

― M. V. (M.V.), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:38 (twenty years ago)

I've beaten Pitfall II too, even getting the rat that runs down the bank to one of the first levels from one of the last. Every other song that I "compose" is basically some sort of version of the P2 theme song, having had it burned into my cortex through repeated exposure.

Still callin' bullshit on beating the first Pitfall. I'm ready to be proven wrong, however.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:40 (twenty years ago)

i would like to know what beating pitfall means. you go right endlessly ... and then?! what's at the end? if there's no monkey princess over there i just don't know if i'm all that interested.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:47 (twenty years ago)

256 screens, apparently.

― kingfish cold slither (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:48 (twenty years ago)

A perfect game is getting all four ghosts on every invulnerability, right? Holy shit.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:51 (twenty years ago)

no. a perfect game is getting every possible point on every board (dots, ghosts, fruit, etc.) ... ON ONE MAN! this guy did it. no shit. i don't have documentation or anything yet, however.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:53 (twenty years ago)

also, there is a built-in bathroom break in the game! it is far past anywhere even the above-average player can achieve though.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:55 (twenty years ago)

no. a perfect game is getting every possible point on every board (dots, ghosts, fruit, etc.) ... ON ONE MAN! this guy did it. no shit. i don't have documentation or anything yet, however.

Actually, a perfect game is getting a blowjob while you play.

― Funy Moke Jaker, Friday, 11 November 2005 18:55 (twenty years ago)

Anyone remember Pyramix? The triangular Rubik's cube? I solved that one. Over and over. It became like a parlour trick. My aunts and uncles were really impressed.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:56 (twenty years ago)

Wouldn't it be more hardcore to not use ANY invulnerability dots?

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 11 November 2005 18:56 (twenty years ago)

Wouldn't it be more hardcore to not use ANY invulnerability dots?

-- Jordan (jordan...), November 11th, 2005.

i guess you could get a record for stalling on the first board without dying. there's no built-in bathroom break for this, however, so you'll need to hook up a catheter.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 11 November 2005 19:00 (twenty years ago)

Oh, for some reason I didn't think those were required to beat the level.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 11 November 2005 19:01 (twenty years ago)

Koogs is smarter than me by a lot.

― Caught Red Handed at Sam's Hofbrau (Bent Over at the Arclight), Friday, 11 November 2005 19:03 (twenty years ago)

yeah, i want to stand near koogs and seem smarter by association

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 11 November 2005 19:06 (twenty years ago)

no. a perfect game is getting every possible point on every board (dots, ghosts, fruit, etc.) ... ON ONE MAN! this guy did it. no shit. i don't have documentation or anything yet, however.
-- andrew m. (westernis...), November 11th, 2005.

Holy shit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

also, there is a built-in bathroom break in the game! it is far past anywhere even the above-average player can achieve though.
-- andrew m. (westernis...), November 11th, 2005.

Haha awesome!

I really love videogame experts, I wish I could watch more.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Friday, 11 November 2005 19:08 (twenty years ago)

I never solved the Rubik's Cube by myself. But I bought one of those books that explained how to do it, and solved it using that.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 11 November 2005 19:13 (twenty years ago)

three weeks pass...

http://www.sixspace.com/gallery/invader2005/

Rubik's Cube mosaics as art

― kingfish hobo juckie (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 2 December 2005 07:36 (twenty years ago)

Skipping 10 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

(x-post)

You've got to remember I'm ~~tight~~ poor.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Friday, 2 December 2005 12:19 (twenty years ago)

I solved mine with a hammer.

― mei (mei), Friday, 2 December 2005 12:37 (twenty years ago)

I used to spend a lot of time with the Rubik's snake. That was one of my favorite toys for a while. Kids at school would lend me their snakes so I could make them into the ball shape for them. I learned how to make all different kinds of shapes, like the swan and the turtle.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 2 December 2005 16:22 (twenty years ago)

and the machine gun!

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 2 December 2005 16:25 (twenty years ago)

that snake thing wasn't a rubik's game was it? there was no point to it. it was perfectly easy to put it back in that shape. it was just a bendy toy

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 2 December 2005 19:53 (twenty years ago)

yeah it was a rubiks thing. i had a red and white one. you had to straighten it then turn it into a a truncated octahedron.

― sunny suxessor (katharine), Friday, 2 December 2005 20:17 (twenty years ago)

swans too, yo

― sunny suxessor (katharine), Friday, 2 December 2005 20:21 (twenty years ago)

Hey, it took me a while to figure out how to make that octahedron shape! Of course I was only about 8 at the time, but still, there was some challenge involved.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 2 December 2005 20:24 (twenty years ago)

I learned how to do the moves from the book on the cube. Honestly, I can't imagine being able to solve it from scratch.

― Hunter (Hunter), Friday, 2 December 2005 20:27 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

i beat pitfall on atari 2600.
I so call bullshit on this.

-- Pleasant Plains /// (pleasant.plain...), November 11th, 2005.

i didn't notice that my atari integrity was being impugned! somewhere in my parents' house is a photo of me, grinning fit to burst with pride, standing next to (and pointing at) the tv screen with the final score. if it ever surfaces, before i get it framed i'll scan and post it.

i would like to know what beating pitfall means. you go right endlessly ... and then?! what's at the end?

you go on and on for quite some time, with a lot of fast rolling logs and crocodile jumping. eventually, the game kind of pooped out - harry wouldn't run anymore and the score started flashing and the screen turned a funny color.

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:37 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I can do a Rubick's cube once you know the moves to rotate corners, swap corners etc and you can move your hands quick enough they are doable in under five minutes.

― MitchellStirling (MitchellStirling), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:43 (twenty years ago)

!
I've never even come close. When I was a kid my older step-brother did one and i thought he was a god.

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:46 (twenty years ago)

Madchen, you finished Snapper? What happened?

(Snapper on the Electron is Pac-Man, folks)

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:03 (twenty years ago)

That sounds more like the timer just ran out.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:06 (twenty years ago)

fine.

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:07 (twenty years ago)

four weeks later and the 4x4x4 i bought for christmas (cheers Onimo) remains about 10 squares away from being solved. it sits there staring at me from the arm of the sofa, mocking my abilities. (turns out the 4 centre squares of each side don't act like the corners of a 3x3x3 cube because they aren't physically connected. i need to work out new moves but my 20 years older brain is refusing to come up with anything useful)

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:09 (twenty years ago)

some kid solved it in 11.3 seconds at one of those (cal-tech?) speed cubing contests.

― no bones, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:11 (twenty years ago)

I don't mean to completely contradict you, lauren. Hopefully, you can find that picture!

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:15 (twenty years ago)

some kid solved it in 11.3 seconds at one of those (cal-tech?) speed cubing contests.

Makes you sick, doesn't it?

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:16 (twenty years ago)

I thought Pitfall was completed when you found the last treasure item (which was easy to miss if you took the underground routes). I can't remember if any of my friends completed it but we spent forever trying.

Was the original Pitfall included with the woeful Pitfall 3D game that came out for Playstation?

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:21 (twenty years ago)

my one achievement, pp! have some sensitivity.

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:27 (twenty years ago)

i beat pitfall blindfolded.

― no bones, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 18:35 (twenty years ago)

i for one believe that you conquered ptifall, lauren. i would still like to see this picture though.

pitfall II really is a breeze by comparison, i suppose. once you rescue the hideous monkey princess once, you quickly discover that you can do it each and every time in around 15 minutes. so then you just find ways to entertain yourself down in the caverns. leap from the balloon off on the wrong ledge and see where it takes you, swim around at the bottom for a while. stuff like that.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 20:27 (twenty years ago)

Man solves Rubik’s Cube in 11.13 seconds:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10865197/?GT1=7538

― Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 05:44 (twenty years ago)

the agonizing part of pitfall II for me was dipping under the flying bats. the rest of it was cake.

― HAKKEBOFFER (eman), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 15:26 (twenty years ago)

Those flying bats were the "jumping onto alligator eyes" of P2. It's all about timing.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 17:43 (twenty years ago)

i forgot about that. the up-and-down bats. you have to watch the arc of their swooping and time your run just right. otherwise it's back to the last starting marker for you, harry. (it was harry, wasn't it?)

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 18:57 (twenty years ago)

yup. pitfall harry.

― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 19:01 (twenty years ago)

i have decided, lying in bed last night, to conquer the Rubiks Cube this year. It is my density.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Thursday, 19 January 2006 09:31 (twenty years ago)

I got Pawanjit to do it for me.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Thursday, 19 January 2006 09:33 (twenty years ago)

six months pass...

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

― def zep (calstars), Saturday, 29 July 2006 13:10 (nineteen years ago)

― youn (youn), Saturday, 29 July 2006 13:13 (nineteen years ago)

Anyone ever beaten that pacman clone minigame inside the Deftones' "White Pony" CD? Impossible!

― Simon H. (Simon H.), Saturday, 29 July 2006 14:26 (nineteen years ago)

Arrgh! I bought a 4x4x4 Rubiks Revenge and know I remember how tedious it was trying to learn how to solve a 3x3x3.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Saturday, 29 July 2006 16:50 (nineteen years ago)

I just liked the creaky sound the cube made when you twisted it.

Me too, that chunky plastic sound.

The only games I remember completing were the piss easy ones on the Speccy - Mikey, Saboteur, Dan Dare, Sodov the Sorceror and so on.

― David Orton (scarlet), Saturday, 29 July 2006 23:16 (nineteen years ago)

Jesus, I found finishing a side of Rubick's cube impossible. I'm really bad at games. I've never won Connect Four either.

http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/connect4.html

― paulhw (paulhw), Saturday, 29 July 2006 23:22 (nineteen years ago)

> Arrgh! I bought a 4x4x4 Rubiks Revenge and know I remember how tedious it was trying to learn how to solve a 3x3x3.

yes, i did the same at christmas and it's been lay there with about 8 squares yet to do for the last 6 months, just mocking me and my 20 or so years of brain deterioration. (it's the 2x2 middle squares that are bugging me, there's no centre anymore, no eigensquare)

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Sunday, 30 July 2006 17:10 (nineteen years ago)

whoo, back to being solid colours for the first time since christmas.

http://www.koogy.clara.co.uk/photos/cube.jpg

turns out there's one sequence (and its symmetry) needed for edge squares (l D2 l' U2 l D2 l' U2), and one for the middles (r' d r U' r' d' r U), the rest is pretty much my usual 3x3x3 method. from here: http://www.geocities.com/xulfrepus/rubik/cube.html

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 9 August 2006 07:27 (nineteen years ago)

two weeks pass...

They're taking the piss now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJz02Nh99Cs&NR

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Friday, 25 August 2006 07:55 (nineteen years ago)

I think Koogy should show us the view from *inside* a Rubik's Cube, blow our minds.

I have it as my desktop wallpaper.

I would like it as a t-shirt (and I'm sure I'm not alone - Dragon's Den for Deano!).

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Friday, 25 August 2006 08:03 (nineteen years ago)

isn't there a movie with a great visual joke of a not so swift person working on a full sized but 2x2 cube?

or did i just pull that out of thin air?

― mr. brojangles (sanskrit), Friday, 25 August 2006 13:50 (nineteen years ago)

there are still over 88 million combinations for a 2x2x2 cube

(8! * 3^7 to be precise, i counted)

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Friday, 25 August 2006 16:40 (nineteen years ago)

three years pass...

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/1044/rubik.png

I finally beat this thing after a couple weeks of not-too-dedicated effort. can solve it in about 10 moves and 30 seconds, which is piffle compared to the world record of 0.77 seconds. but I won't be trying to better my time because I am kinesthetically retarded and just don't have the patience.

I remember fooling with one of these things when I was 11 or so & coming up with nothing brighter than "hey look, it's a sofa!" or "hey look, it's a treasure chest!" or "hey look, it's a jack-in-the-box descending a staircase!" it was a lot more fun that way tbh.

― 'I Was Bees,' Says Hiker Stung 300 Times (unregistered), Monday, 8 February 2010 02:01 (sixteen years ago)

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/4867/rubiks.jpg

this (Mr. Rubik's latest creation) looks interesting. anyone tried it?

― 'I Was Bees,' Says Hiker Stung 300 Times (unregistered), Monday, 8 February 2010 02:03 (sixteen years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaRcWB3jwMo

:OOOO

― ←→ + P = ☽☽☽☽☽☽☽ (dyao), Friday, 19 February 2010 09:33 (sixteen years ago)

five months pass...

http://www.cube20.org/

God's Number is 20
Every position of Rubik's Cube™ can be solved in twenty moves or less.

With about 35 CPU-years of idle computer time donated by Google, a team of researchers has essentially solved every position of the Rubik's Cube™, and shown that no position requires more than twenty moves.

Well done on all the maths and computers and stuff but I can't get my head round 20 moves being as hard as the cube can get.

― sorprendentemente noioso (onimo), Tuesday, 10 August 2010 10:31 (fifteen years ago)

it's like the rice on a chessboard thing - the possibilities multiply up really quickly. and there's a finite number of combinations and it turns out that 20 moves is enough to exhaust all the possible combinations - after that you're just repeating yourself.

8! * 3^7 for the corners
12! * 2^10 for the edges
multiply them together... 43,252,003,274,489,856,000
(which is slightly more than the grains of rice on the 65th square of a (bigger than normal) chessboard)

― koogs, Tuesday, 10 August 2010 13:40 (fifteen years ago)

a 65 square chessboard would be insane

― dyao, Tuesday, 10 August 2010 13:42 (fifteen years ago)

it's for when a piece gets tired

― "It's far from 'loi' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Tuesday, 10 August 2010 14:17 (fifteen years ago)

imma play this one out guys

― "It's far from 'loi' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Tuesday, 10 August 2010 14:17 (fifteen years ago)

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