Above / During the week that we were notified about Erno Rubik’s 77th birthday, quite by happenstance, we ran into someone along the Riverwalk who knew how to solve the Rubik’s Cube in about a minute.
Earlier this week one of those trivia Q&A emails arrived, but we neglected to open it until Saturday.
The email informed us that it was Erno Rubik’s 77th birthday. Rubik was born July 13, 1944, in Budapest, Hungary. The professor of architecture and sculpture had invented the Rubik’s Cube in 1974, a very popular toy in the 1980s. Most families have had at least one.
Much to our surprise, when we were turning around on the Naperville Riverwalk near the Jefferson Avenue Bridge, we noticed a Napervillian sitting on the park bench playing with a Rubik’s Cube. We had not seen anyone manipulate one so quickly in at least 20 years. He said he was able to solve the puzzle in a minute or less.
We were reminded that the highly-recognized classic toy has sold more than 450 million—and millions more are expected to sell for $10 or less every year. Rubik’s Cube consists of 26 small cubes that rotate on a central axis; nine colored cube faces, in three rows of three each, form each side of the cube. When the cube is held with both hands and twisted out of its original arrangement, the individual player must then return it to the original configuration, “one among 43 quintillion possible ones,” according to Britannica. (A quintillion is represented as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000!)
Dozens of books have been published with ways to solve the puzzle. Following the Rubik Cube’s popularity in the early 1980s, reports say Rubik opened a studio in 1984 to develop designs for other puzzle toys under the Rubik brand.
Cheers to Erno Rubik’s 77th birthday with fond memories of the challenging Rubik’s Cube that found a home in our family toy box for many years.
And wouldn’t you know? With a little playing around online, we discovered Rubik’s Cube has a website and a blog with hints, tips and solutions. —PN
