Retro

Remember The Rubik's Cube? He Solves It In Just 1 Minute

If you grew up in the 80s you probably owned this devious little puzzle. With just six different colored sides, but 43 quintillion possibilities (that's 43 followed by 18 zeroes), the Rubik's Cube tortured a generation of children and adults with its surprising complexity.

They say the average person can manage to solve two sides just through trial and error, but to complete the puzzle you have to memorize a long list of very precise steps.

"Speedcubers," who spend hours practicing their technique, share videos online to compare their best times. As you can see in this video by stewartps, this isn't kids' stuff anymore.

The Rubik's cube was originally created by Hungarian architect Ernő Rubik, to help teach his students about 3D objects. He didn't realize it was a great puzzle until he accidentally scrambled the cube himself!

When the Rubiks cube was released in America in the 1980s it became a cultural phenomenon. At the height of the "cube craze" in 1981, the puzzle was appearing on magazine covers, and 3 of the top selling books in the country were about solving the cube. That includes the bestseller for 1981, The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube.

The cube was so popular, a cartoon starring the puzzle even premiered on ABC.

Amazingly, as fast as stewartps was, he doesn't even come close to the world record. Just a few days ago, Australian speedcuber Feliks Zemdegs set a new world record, solving his cube in only 4.73 seconds!


For speedcubers who feel like adding an extra challenge to this frustrating game, there are all sorts of other wacky records. The world record for solving the cube using your feet is 20 seconds, and the record for solving the cube blindfolded is 21 seconds. A robot specially designed to solve the puzzle did it in just 0.88 seconds - try to top that!

Were you able to solve the cube?