RUBIK MADNESS
January 4, 2007 1:45 AM   Subscribe

 
Good lord. Great mother of Jeheebus, Joseph and Mary. I. Had. No. Idea. There. Were. This. Many. Variations. On. The. Rubik's. Cube.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:49 AM on January 4, 2007


Oh my god! I have one which is (I'm pretty sure) NOT ON THIS GUY'S PAGE! Which is pretty impressive cause it's the only one I have, and this guy has umpteen kazillion!! It's a globe. Yep, a square, Rubik's Cube globe. The continents are all there, and all that. But I think it's a very recent design, from here in Japan, so, it's probably just a matter of time before it's added to this page. BUT I GOT THERE FIRST!

And actually, I bought it for my spouse. I hate Rubik's Cubes.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:32 AM on January 4, 2007


Wow. I really had forgotten how dominate the Rubik's Cube was in the 80s. I mean it was - in some variation - everywhere you went. Friends had them, they were at the checkout counter at the convenience store, there were entire isles in the toy / game department devoted them... hmm...

Did video and computer games kill the Rubik's?
posted by wfrgms at 5:08 AM on January 4, 2007


Did video and computer games kill the Rubik's?

I asked Santa for a Wii this year, but I got a Rubik's Cube in my stocking instead. I'm stoked to reread the Magic Cubology article in Metamagical Themas. For those who are inspired by this collection, you can read some of the backend for exotic 'cube' manipulation in Hofstadter's other Magic Cube article, Crossing The Rubicon. Excellent collection, it's cool to see pictures of the exotic 'cubes'. Thanks!
posted by carsonb at 5:38 AM on January 4, 2007


When I was young, we couldn't afford to go out and buy cube after cube, so the guy my mother was seeing at the time devised a way to make the cubes we had more interesting.

Using an Xacto knife and some colored stickers, we created decorative cube after decorative cube, mixed them up, and looked for designs that were inheritly more challenging. Ultimately, you'd solve the cube in the same manner, but many designs fooled you into thinking in more complex terms. My favorite was a simple deisgn that created four triangles of unique colors on each face of the cube.

My best time was something like 1.5 minutes on a regular cube, which I figured was pretty good for a 13 year old kid. I had a better time, but that was on my brother's cube, which I'd torn apart and coated the insides with Vaseline.

Yea, I didn't kiss a girl for a while. What of it?
posted by thanotopsis at 5:49 AM on January 4, 2007


For those of you with time to kill and the ability to visualize > three spatial dimensions, check out the links you find when you Google "rubik hypercube."
posted by pax digita at 6:00 AM on January 4, 2007


I admire this guy's collection but I wish he'd stop talking about things that aren't cubes as "cubes". TETRAHEDRAL 2x2x2 CUBE indeed.

I suppose it's not entirely his fault though.
posted by mendel at 7:13 AM on January 4, 2007


Oh lordy, do I ever want one of the DIY kits. So many layers of rich, subtle geekery. Here's how you put one together.
posted by phooky at 7:15 AM on January 4, 2007


I loved my Rubik's Snake. I think I still have it somewhere.
posted by SisterHavana at 10:38 PM on January 4, 2007


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