Rubik's Cube -- Too late to catch up with a fad missed in youth?

It just went right by me. Have never even touched one. Is it too late? Is it worth it? Will it provide a form of mental acuity honing? Since solutions are out there, is there a point? The existential response might be that ANYTHING has the SAME point.

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http://www.google.com/search?q=Rubik%27s+Cube&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8

http://www.rubiks.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik's_Cube

The original 3󫢫 version celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2005, when a special edition Cube in a presentation box was released, featuring a sticker in the centre of the white face (which was replaced with a reflective surface) with a "Rubik's Cube 1980-2005" logo, and the 1976 solution book is not to be found.

Originally called the Magic Cube by its inventor, it was renamed Rubik's Cube in 1980 and released worldwide in May of that year, winning a Spiel des Jahres special award for Best Puzzle. It is said to be the world's best-selling toy, with some 250,000,000 Rubik's Cubes and imitations sold worldwide.<2>

http://lar5.com/cube/

Introduction
This is a tutorial for my method of solving Rubik's Cube. It is intended both for beginners and experienced cubers. There is no group theory or strange notation involved, I just show you how to move. You very much need a Java-enabled browser. ....

The Basic Idea
Most people solve the cube layer by layer. This is a simple way for the human mind to approach the problem, but it is useless for speed cubing. No matter how good you are, you will use more than 100 moves. Going for speed, I use 60 moves on average. Going for few moves, I average 45.

In the final of the Swedish championship, 8 of 11 competitors used a vanilla layer-by-layer method. The other 3 of us finished 1, 2 and 3!

The basic problem with the layer method is a big one, and it's obvious once you realize it. When you have completed the first layer, you can do nothing without breaking it up. So you break it, do something useful, then restore it. Break it, do something, restore it. Again and again. In a good solution you do something useful all the time. The first layer is in the way of the solution, not a part of it!

http://jeays.net/rubiks.htm

How to Solve the Rubik's Cube

So you have a Rubik's Cube, and you've played with it and stared at it and taken it apart...need I go on any further? The following are two complete, fool-proof solutions to solving the cube from absolutely any legal position. Credit goes not to me, but to David Singmaster, who wrote a book in 1980, Notes on Rubik's Magic Cube, which explains pretty much all of what you need to know, plus more. Singmaster wrote about all of these moves except the move for Step 2, which I discovered independently (along with many other people, no doubt).

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Go for it. I got one for my seven-year-old.

The cube can be a good introduction to group theory

Is making a well-deserved come-back!

It's never too late to pick one up and start playing.........

I say.........Go for it!

:woohoo: :woohoo:

She didn't. :(

i still play with it.....took a while to figure out how to solve it.....takes me about 15 mins to solve now.

Fun though :)

Now it takes a bit longer.
But i can still do it

...he pulled the cubes off the stems and simply put them back on the right way.

Now THAT'S called "thinking outside the cube". :rofl: