On a September afternoon in 1980, I boarded the Coromandel Express at Howrah station. The train arrived at Chennai Central (then ‘Madras Central’) the next evening. I caught another train from Egmore that night and got off at my destination, Cuddalore, the next morning. I remember little of that 45-hour journey as I was in the grip of an infatuation that continues intermittently even today.
Before boarding the Coromandel, a family friend returning from the US gifted me a Rubik’s Cube, the classic 3×3 version. The Cube was not yet commonly available in India and I had never seen one before. I later found out that it had already existed for six years. The inventor, Erno Rubik, an architecture professor from Hungary (then a communist country of the Soviet bloc), was already world famous.
I spent that entire trip playing with it without sleeping. Slowly, I figured out a solution: first solve one layer, then solve the corner cubes opposite that layer, then solve the edge cubes. I could easily reduce the number to only two edge cubes out of place. But getting that last pair right was very, very hard. It took over 45 hours to solve and my solution was far from optimal.
Within a few months the cube became commonplace. Local imitators were being sold for 10-20 rupees. Many had figured it out or memorized it from a “cheat-sheet”. Chess players were using chess clocks to participate in speed cubing competitions. “Speedcubers” were taking them apart and greasing the mechanism with Vaseline to make them spin faster.
Today, 50 years after Rubik invented this puzzle, which was so interesting that it took him a month to solve it, it is still popular. It is popular despite being a mechanical creation in the digital age. Officially, more than 500 million Rubik branded cubes have been sold, and Spin Master Corp. of Canada, which owns the brand, claims it earned about $75 million in revenue from it in 2023. Unofficially, several billion imitations have been sold.
“I think maybe the Cube reminds us that we have hands… you’re not just thinking, you’re doing something. It’s a piece of art that you’re emotionally attached to… new generations have developed that same strong bond with the Cube”Erno Rubikinventor of the rubik’s cube
The journey of development
Ambar Chatterjee, who retired as the head of the nuclear physics division at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, is another person with experience of cubing since 1980. He bought a cube from a Mumbai sidewalk and quickly realised that he would have to write down his moves to form a systematic solution.
Chatterjee (who is also an ace chess player and is the president of the All India Web Chess Federation) borrowed an idea from chess and came up with a notation that was similar to today’s standard cube notation. He disassembled the cube to understand its mechanics and recorded all the changes for about a month.
But when he showed the solutions to his BARC colleagues, they were not impressed. “I had to refer to my change sheet and my notes again and again, even though the newspapers were already full of stories of youngsters who could solve it in a matter of minutes,” recalls Chatterjee. He improved his methods and practised solving without his notes. “I found an article by mathematicians from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Science todayOne of them solved the cube using group theory. The sequences given were much shorter than the ones I had worked out,” he recalls.
Milestones
After its invention in 1974, the puzzle was called the Magic Cube and was renamed ‘Rubik’s Cube’ in 1980
The first Rubik’s Cube World Championships were held in Budapest in 1982. The winner’s time that year was 22.95 seconds
In 1987, when it was launched internationally, the Rubik’s Cube sold over 14 million units worldwide
The cube made its debut in pop culture with its appearance on ‘The Simpsons’ In 1991
As part of this year’s 50th anniversary celebrations, Batman, Black Panther, Wednesday Addams, Barbie and Hello Kitty themed limited edition cubes have been announced
Now, at 71, Chatterjee says, “I want to try it again with a fresh approach! This time, I am going to replace the stickers with chess figurines. The six faces will be king, queen, rook, bishop, knight and pawn. This will introduce another symmetry constraint as the pieces have to be placed with the same side facing up.”
Cubing remains a global obsession, with old-timers like Chatterjee trying something new while many youngsters are taking up the mantle of quick-solving. India has amateur cubers and many local speed-cubing competitions, though it hasn’t yet made a big splash at the world speed-cubing level. However, there are cubers here who have done unusual things like solving with their feet. Speed cubes are no longer lubricated with Vaseline – they come with internal magnets and better materials to make them easier to spin.
There are many variations of the basic cube as well. The World Cube Association (WCA) holds 17 kinds of “twist” World Championships every two years, including cubes with different numbers of pieces on each side (2×2, 3×3, up to 7×7) as well as modified shapes like pyramids and megaminxes (dodecahedrons), blindfold events, etc. The WCA also helps enthusiasts organize cubing competitions everywhere.
the fastest fingers
Speedcubing champions Max Park (left) and Felix Zemdegs.
There are speedcubing legends such as Korean-American world champion Max Park. Certified WCA world records are measured to the hundredth of a second. Park’s speed record for 3×3, which he set in 2023, is 3.13 seconds. Autistic Park has a legendary rivalry with Australian champion Felix Zemdegs, although they are also close friends. There is a moving Netflix documentary, Speed CubersThat reflects these two champions and their relationship. The 100 fastest single-solve WCA times are all under 5 seconds and there is no Indian on that list. Although there is a record for finishing the race in under 5 seconds at the national championships, no Indian has yet done so at a WCA event.
As the world has gone digital, the learning process for solvers has also changed. Hundreds of solving algorithms have been developed over the last few decades and there are numerous videos available on YouTube. As mentioned earlier, solutions usually come from mathematicians who understand group theory (the relevant branch of mathematics) and from young people who have a talent for pattern recognition.
Special Edition Rubik’s Cubes
There have been concerted efforts to find the ‘God’s number’. It is the minimum number needed to solve any of the 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (43 quintillion) configurations of the 3×3 cube. In 2010, the God’s number was proven to never exceed 20 turns of 90 degrees or more, by a group using computer time donated by Google.
There are many Indian coaches who teach algorithm solving. Vani Muthukrishnan, 45, who lives in Negercoil, is one of them. The former school teacher started cubing 13 years ago and eventually became a full-time cube tutor as well as an organiser of cubing competitions on behalf of the WCA. She is herself an avid competitive solver and has participated in 13 official WCA competitions. “I downloaded written notes from the internet and it took me a week to solve my first one,” says Muthukrishnan, adding, “It was amazing and gave me a sense of achievement and satisfaction. Then a friend asked me to teach her daughter.”
Post pandemic, all her classes are online and while she deals with small batches of two-five students and charges between ₹200 and ₹500 per hour, she has enough students to pursue it as a profession. Her students come from across the world and there is a huge age gap too. “My earliest student was a doctor and her daughter. Now that girl has become a doctor too. Some of my students joined because they were impressed to see their children or grandchildren solving the cube.” Muthukrishnan also conducts free workshops, including free training for orphanages.
School kids take part in the Rubik’s Cube challenge in Mangaluru. | Photo courtesy: Manjunath HS
a therapeutic device
Research about the cube shows that software developers are interested in cubing and the hobby has been passed down through generations. Sirish Somanchi, who is now in his mid-40s, started playing with the cube 30 years ago. His children also love solving it.
Somanchi explains how the Cube appears in pop culture. “For example, Will Smith gets a role in the 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness Because he can solve the cube.” There are also anecdotes about the cube being used in Google and Microsoft interviews. However, Somanchi laughs and says he has never been asked to solve the cube in any professional interview. The Hyderabad-based engineer also said his kids learned it by watching YouTube videos while he learned it by searching algorithms online.
In the case of S. Ashwin, another software developer, this interest was inherited. The 24-year-old Chennai resident was lucky that his father, who was also an architect like Rubik, was fascinated by the Cube. So he grew up with it and variants like Snake and Megaminx at home. Ashwin loves creating interesting patterns and playing with variants and solving them ingeniously.
Shaun Pinto from Bengaluru is a classic representative of the younger generation of cubers. 15-year-old Shaun has just passed Class 10 and takes less than 15 seconds on average to solve a 3×3. “I first solved it at the age of seven and then I could solve it in about five minutes, and then gradually started reducing my times. I used to compete quite a few years ago,” says Pinto. “The cubing fraternity is one of the healthiest and welcoming communities, one can easily feel welcome here, irrespective of their speed, age, disability, etc. Kids who get involved in speedcubing have a great social circle, a healthy sense of community and belonging, and in the end they learn valuable life lessons. Trying to improve is also very beautiful.”
His words are reminiscent of Park’s experience. Park’s mother Mickey taught him the Cube to help him develop motor coordination skills. She found he was starting to connect with other Cubers and becoming more comfortable socially, too. Using the Cube as a therapeutic tool, or a way to enter an accepting community, could be a possibility.
Professor Rubik conceptualized the Cube as an interesting learning tool that would help students develop an understanding of 3D shapes and patterns. It also helps develop visual memory and hand-eye coordination as solvers learn more algorithms and instantly recognize what works. Fifty years later, this little multicolored toy has become a cross-cultural icon that helps connect people across continents.
The author is a journalist and has a keen interest in mathematical puzzles.
