Garmon
Veteran
There's a article in the Guide (The Guardian) about speedcubing.
I'll type it up if I can't find it online. There are pictures of Matyas Kuti and Erno Rubik, and it talks about Erik's 7.08. It's a bit stereotypical, they probably didn't interview Erik properly, only David Hedley Jones and Dan Harris. It's an OK atricle.
Here it is.
Hip to be square
Want to avoid a Rubik's wrist? Then get out the cube lube, says Jon Axworthy, as he enters the weird world of competitive speedcubing.
As world record holders go Erik Akkersdijk isn't exactly a household name. The 19 year old set his in July this year at the International Chess and Games Festival so you can be forgiven if it passed you by. It didn't have the headline-grabbing potential of Usain Bolt's 100m record but that doesn't mean it's any less impressive. In the time it takes the Jamaican to dash from pistol to finish line, Erik will have solved a puzzle with 43 quintillion possible configurations and only one solution. And he will have done it with 2.61 seconds to spare allowing him to ride off into the sunset on his Segway. Possibly.
Erik is one of a rare breed of speedcubers who, last weekend, in an Old Trafford hospitality suite, came together for the UK Open, the kind of championships known only to those working at Games Workshop; he holds the world record for solving the Rubik's Cube. And the good news for the speedcube set is that the puzzle has broken out of the geek ghetto. It's cool to be a cuber.
The Rubik's whole is more than the sum of it's 26 working parts. It's a pop culture icon that has been exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was voted the second-greatest playground game of all time, narrowly pipped to the title by conkers. It's a viral phenomenon too. Type "Rubik" into YouTube and you will be treated to Micheal Gondry's fabulous fake virals where he solves the cube with his feet and his nose. Then there's the sight of Tiger Woods holing a 10ft putt with one. It's even been claimed by new rave clubbers who accessorise their fluoro fibers with Rubik's necklaces.
But it's applications aren't all so frivolous. The cube was used this year by marine biologists who dropped it into tanks of octopi to determine whether creatures favour a particular tentacle, or if they are octidextrous. But to understand how the cube has outlasted everything else the 80s vomited up let's get some insight from David Hedley Jones, director of the Rubik brand.
"A lot of the 1980s was about indulgence," he says. "The cube has always been about simplicity of design and simplicity of enjoyment. That will always resonate, no matter what the decade." Hedley Jones expects to have sold another 12m cubes by year's end but it's been a long, strange trip for a puzzle more frustrating than the communism from behind whose iron curtain it rose to become a capitalist's dream.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. And in 1974 interior design lecturer Erno Rubik needed to liven up his lectures. He was teaching at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest and decided to inject some life into his 3-D design class by constructing a teaching aid: a crude cube, made up of smaller individual cubes, that could demonstrate the possibilities of 3-D design. He needed the layers to twist and turn on two axes and to track the progress of these twists he marked each side with brightly coloured squares. One year later, patent number HU170062 was filed with the Budapest patent office. It took four more years and over 20 rejections for the cube to become anything other than something to annoy Hungarian children with. Toy manufacturers didn't want it for variety of reasons: too cerebal, too abstract, not noisy enough or too difficult to demonstrate on TV. Finally, the vice president of marketing at the Ideal Toy Company was persuaded and ordered 1m cubes. It could have been a very different story as other patents for similar puzzles had already been filed around the world from Canada to Japan. And, were it not for some quick thinking and explosive marketing from Ideal, it could have been Ishigi's Cube or Nichols's cube that took the world by storm. Instead, Rubik's Cube debuted at the toy fairs of London, Paris and New York in January and February 1980. Over 300m have now been sold worldwide, making it the biggest-selling toy ever.
Not that speedcubers at the World Cube Association (WCA) sanctioned UK Open regard what's in their hand as a toy. It's more serious than that. "I change the cubes I practise on untill I find the right one for the Championship," receals Dan Harris, the fastest speedcuber in Britain.
This master of perstidigtation who is also a fully qualified Met Office aviation forecaster, began his obssesion with the puzzle laid up in his bed after a bike accident in 2002, which is when he first cracked Rubik's code. Six years on he can solve it one-handed, blindfolded and with his feet and went on to set the fastest time at the World Speedcubing Championship in Budapest last year. It took Harris two years to get down to 20 seconds and two more to get it under 20 seconds.
"I try and practice for two hours a day but for a major event I step up the intensity," he says. Which means he has to be careful to avoid injury, the biggest pitfall of any professional. RSI-related injuries such as "Cubist's Thumb" and "Rubik's Wrist" are commonplace among speedcubers, which has given rise to the practice of "cube lubing" that is a lot less suspect that it sounds. "A lot of speedcubers lubricate their cubes to get more efficient manipulation," he admits. "it's totally legal; it's just something that can give you an edge." To the speedcubers in the pressure cooker atmosphere of the Hospitality Suite, the Rubik's Cube is anything but child's play.
I'll type it up if I can't find it online. There are pictures of Matyas Kuti and Erno Rubik, and it talks about Erik's 7.08. It's a bit stereotypical, they probably didn't interview Erik properly, only David Hedley Jones and Dan Harris. It's an OK atricle.
Here it is.
Hip to be square
Want to avoid a Rubik's wrist? Then get out the cube lube, says Jon Axworthy, as he enters the weird world of competitive speedcubing.
As world record holders go Erik Akkersdijk isn't exactly a household name. The 19 year old set his in July this year at the International Chess and Games Festival so you can be forgiven if it passed you by. It didn't have the headline-grabbing potential of Usain Bolt's 100m record but that doesn't mean it's any less impressive. In the time it takes the Jamaican to dash from pistol to finish line, Erik will have solved a puzzle with 43 quintillion possible configurations and only one solution. And he will have done it with 2.61 seconds to spare allowing him to ride off into the sunset on his Segway. Possibly.
Erik is one of a rare breed of speedcubers who, last weekend, in an Old Trafford hospitality suite, came together for the UK Open, the kind of championships known only to those working at Games Workshop; he holds the world record for solving the Rubik's Cube. And the good news for the speedcube set is that the puzzle has broken out of the geek ghetto. It's cool to be a cuber.
The Rubik's whole is more than the sum of it's 26 working parts. It's a pop culture icon that has been exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was voted the second-greatest playground game of all time, narrowly pipped to the title by conkers. It's a viral phenomenon too. Type "Rubik" into YouTube and you will be treated to Micheal Gondry's fabulous fake virals where he solves the cube with his feet and his nose. Then there's the sight of Tiger Woods holing a 10ft putt with one. It's even been claimed by new rave clubbers who accessorise their fluoro fibers with Rubik's necklaces.
But it's applications aren't all so frivolous. The cube was used this year by marine biologists who dropped it into tanks of octopi to determine whether creatures favour a particular tentacle, or if they are octidextrous. But to understand how the cube has outlasted everything else the 80s vomited up let's get some insight from David Hedley Jones, director of the Rubik brand.
"A lot of the 1980s was about indulgence," he says. "The cube has always been about simplicity of design and simplicity of enjoyment. That will always resonate, no matter what the decade." Hedley Jones expects to have sold another 12m cubes by year's end but it's been a long, strange trip for a puzzle more frustrating than the communism from behind whose iron curtain it rose to become a capitalist's dream.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. And in 1974 interior design lecturer Erno Rubik needed to liven up his lectures. He was teaching at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest and decided to inject some life into his 3-D design class by constructing a teaching aid: a crude cube, made up of smaller individual cubes, that could demonstrate the possibilities of 3-D design. He needed the layers to twist and turn on two axes and to track the progress of these twists he marked each side with brightly coloured squares. One year later, patent number HU170062 was filed with the Budapest patent office. It took four more years and over 20 rejections for the cube to become anything other than something to annoy Hungarian children with. Toy manufacturers didn't want it for variety of reasons: too cerebal, too abstract, not noisy enough or too difficult to demonstrate on TV. Finally, the vice president of marketing at the Ideal Toy Company was persuaded and ordered 1m cubes. It could have been a very different story as other patents for similar puzzles had already been filed around the world from Canada to Japan. And, were it not for some quick thinking and explosive marketing from Ideal, it could have been Ishigi's Cube or Nichols's cube that took the world by storm. Instead, Rubik's Cube debuted at the toy fairs of London, Paris and New York in January and February 1980. Over 300m have now been sold worldwide, making it the biggest-selling toy ever.
Not that speedcubers at the World Cube Association (WCA) sanctioned UK Open regard what's in their hand as a toy. It's more serious than that. "I change the cubes I practise on untill I find the right one for the Championship," receals Dan Harris, the fastest speedcuber in Britain.
This master of perstidigtation who is also a fully qualified Met Office aviation forecaster, began his obssesion with the puzzle laid up in his bed after a bike accident in 2002, which is when he first cracked Rubik's code. Six years on he can solve it one-handed, blindfolded and with his feet and went on to set the fastest time at the World Speedcubing Championship in Budapest last year. It took Harris two years to get down to 20 seconds and two more to get it under 20 seconds.
"I try and practice for two hours a day but for a major event I step up the intensity," he says. Which means he has to be careful to avoid injury, the biggest pitfall of any professional. RSI-related injuries such as "Cubist's Thumb" and "Rubik's Wrist" are commonplace among speedcubers, which has given rise to the practice of "cube lubing" that is a lot less suspect that it sounds. "A lot of speedcubers lubricate their cubes to get more efficient manipulation," he admits. "it's totally legal; it's just something that can give you an edge." To the speedcubers in the pressure cooker atmosphere of the Hospitality Suite, the Rubik's Cube is anything but child's play.
Last edited:
