Why did YOU start cubing?

I was on an airplane with my wife and kids. The airline provided a gift bag to the kids and they each got a 3x3 puzzle cube with some cartoon characters on each face. Of course, the kids messed them up right away and handed them to Dad, cuz Dad can fix anything... Right? I spent the remainder of the flight working on it and vowed to learn how to solve it properly when I got home. I went to ToysRUs and bought a proper Rubik's cube (a huge improvement over the crappy airline cube) and set off to learn the beginners method. I got down to 2 minutes and was pretty pleased with myself. Then I saw a video of this crazy Australian kid solving it in 6 seconds... and it ruined my day. I ordered a ShengShou Aurora and looked up some CFOP tutorials and that was that. Now I'm hopelessly addicted to puzzle cubes, and have a growing collection of about 40 different cubes. I practice almost every day, and just recently set a Sub 20 3x3 PB :)
 
December 20th 2013. I thought it would be fun to learn it because It was a snow day and I wanted to kill time and here I am sitting in front of my computer getting Sub-15 averages and solves!!! (more details on my channel)
 
I bought my first cube around 2006ish, next door neighbors kid ben came and through it around and broke it. I bought another cube in 2010 scrambled it never solved it.
2012, I saw some cubing videos and tried to solve it. Only got the first 2 layers. March 2014, the nearly solved cube was on my shelf. I looked up Dan Browns tutorial, solved it and wrote down the algorithms. I got faster and bought more cubes afterwards. I'm currently sub-35 on 3x3.
 
I started cubing in my childhood, in 1983. The reason was an article in "Kvant", a popular scientific magazine for schoolchildren. My first cube (Rubik's by POLYTOYS) is still alive, recently I've cleaned and lubed it - surprisingly, it works! Even fingertricks are possible now. Sent it as a gift to my wife's Dad :)
In 80's I learned beginners methods (LBL and edges-then-corners), my avg time was about 2-3 min. Then I stopped and returned to cubing only in 2014. Currently I'm sub-50 after a couple of months.
 
Last edited:
I was never going to star cubing. One evening me and my friend were bored so we wanted to solve my Rubik's cube with some instructions. We never got that done, but few months later I remembered how fun it was to follow instructions. I solved my cube, scrambled it again and solved it again. I started to watch other cubing videos and this is how I got into cubing.
 
I was watching the first season of king of the nerds and I saw Celeste Anderson solve one. After that I was fascinated and started to watch crazybadcubers videos and it became a obsession. Finally I decided to pick up a cube of my own and learn to solve it. It took a while to learn the beginners method but I was sub 60 sec in under 2 weeks of solving. Glad I picked up this hobby!
 
My nephew received a Rubik's cube one Christmas Day and asked me to solve it. I'd never devoted any time to the cube during the 80's and figured I ought to know how to solve it.

I did have a clock back in those days and I figured out a solution without any help which I was quite pleased about at the time. I haven't touched the clock in 25 years but it's still in a cupboard along with my other childhood toys!

Around 9pm on that Christmas Day, I decided that I'd try to learn to solve the cube before I saw my nephew the next day. I hunted around the house for my Dad's original 80's cube and watched the tutorial on the Rubik's website. I managed to memorise their beginner LBL solution ready for the next morning but I needed a cheat sheet for OCLL (Sune), CPLL (A-perm) and EPLL (U-perm). I knew all of those by the following evening.

Once I could solve the cube without the notes I naturally wanted to do it faster. Two minutes and I'd be happy! Some time later, I'm approaching 20 seconds but I'm still not happy! :rolleyes:
 
I was at my friends house one day and saw that he had a cube. I had seen them before, but never played with them. I became interested, and started playing around with it. My friend told me that he had given up on trying to solve it a long time ago and said that I could have it, but bet that I would never be able to solve it. I looked it up and learned how, being able to do it in about 5 minutes without help. Then I stumbled on some videos of Feliks and was shocked, so then I thought "Man that is really cool, I want to learn to do it fast like that. So then one thing led to another.
 
I was browsing around YouTube and came across the old Pogobat video. I thought it was amazing so I persuaded my mother to go to Walmart to buy a cube. The first solve I did on my own was around 5-6 minutes.
 
Last edited:
I guess you could say I had the most idealized start to cubing since at school in year 9 I was bombarded with media footage of the 2013 World Championships and the image of Feliks solving in the region of 7 seconds stuck with me more than it did my other classmates. I had owned a really cheap substitute for a rubik's brand which was ironically called a 'Speed cube' for a few years and could solve F2L with LBL and had sort of lost interest. There was this other boy who brought a cube in and it basically went from there, we both got black Zhanchis, learnt CFOP, we drove each other on with our competing times. Then in August this year, we went to our first comp.
 
I got bored last summer(March 2014) , so I borrowed my cousins Rubik's brand and I watched a tutorial, then it just became a hobby.
 
I was in China for my holiday in 2013.I was annoying and later i saw a Rubik's Cube,so i decided to learn how to do that.My teacher was my 17's uncle.
 
PenguinsDontFly said:
YouTube. I believe that will be the answer for most of us.
Click to expand...

Most? I don't know about that. I got into cubing because I had a cube for 4 years and never could solve it. I thought two of my older cousins could, and I was jealous so I decided to learn. I learned from the instruction book that I kept all those years. As it turns out, my cousins actually couldn't solve it, but one of them has learned since. :p I had been expressing a reborn interest in the cube for a while before I learned how to solve it, but "remembering" that my cousins could solve it was the event that finally made me learn. I didn't look into cubing on YouTube until I actually learned how to solve it, to see the world records and other cool solves.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Tony Acevedo
How did you start cubing?
Replies
9
Views
2,099
Apolo
Apolo
CJCubing
Why and How did you start cubing?
Replies
8
Views
2,104
AJT17
AJT17
O
  • Poll Poll
In which decade did you first start cubing?
2 3 4
Replies
74
Views
9,163
Ninja Storm
Ninja Storm
KboyForeverB
When did you start cubing?
2
Replies
28
Views
4,416
LNZ
LNZ
Garf
Why did we even start in the beginning?
2
Replies
28
Views
2,491
Cubinginatree
Cubinginatree
Back
Top