If you were not living under a rock this whole time, you must have once played with or seen one of "The Magic Cube" commonly known as "The Rubik's Cube". The World changing toy or tool created by Hungarian sculptor and architect, Ernő Rubik in 1974.
But this is not about its origin or Rubik's, this is the story about me, my learning to solve the cube, eventually my obsession to it and then just forgetting it.
This is... A Cube Exploration.
All my life whenever I have seen a Rubik's cube(from now on only cube), I have tried to solve it but couldn't, until May 2020 when I found an old scrambled cube in my cabinet and I started solving it and solved the bottom two layers in 20-25 minutes, solving the last layer without knowing any algorithms is pretty difficult, so I watched some Youtube videos and found the steps that I needed and finally after all these years I had solved the cube without tearing it apart and reassembling it correctly and this really felt good.
After that point I was obsessed with cubes and started learning to solve it fast, partly to show-off but I enjoyed it too. Whenever I solved it, I had an adrenaline rush to solve it faster. Considering at the time of lockdown, I had all the time in the world, so I focused more and more on it. Whenever I sat quietly, I had a cube in my hand and I would blindly scramble it and solve always.
I started with 10 minutes to solve after I had learnt different algorithms for different positions on the cube.
Fun Fact: there are 43 quintillion or 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different position combinations in a 3x3
Eventually I got faster to 5 minutes. After I got to 5 minutes, I told my parents to gift me a better cube on my birthday which was in June. The cube I found in the cabinet was a very cheap Rs.60(~$1) cube which fell apart at faster speeds and just not turn sometimes. I got a new one called the QiYi warrior W 3x3, which was a world apart difference from the cheap one.
Fun Fact: Rubik's cube is the 3rd most sold product of human history, after iphones and harry potter books
With the new cube I got down to 2 min to 1 min to around 30s-40s, which felt amazing. I showed my friends and they were impressed that I can do it that fast, they would have disregarded me if would have told them that the current official world record is 3.47 sec to solve the cube. It really brought me joy and excitement to solve the cube.
I kept practicing rest of the year and in December 2020, participated in an online cubing competition and won the 2nd prize with an average of 29 sec of 5 solve, and won a coupon of a Rs.1000 to a cube store. I was thrilled to know this and convinced my mom to get me a better 3x3 and some more cubes. So I got the Moyu rs3m 2020,one of the best cube in the market and a 4x4 cube and some accessories with that coupon.
Over the course of the last year I got faster at around sub 20(solving under 20 sec). In 2021, I was in 12th grade and I got a lot of assignments, projects, and exams I started doing less and less practice which led to decline in my speed which was becoming a burden and cubing started feeling like a chore. So I got away from cubing and in the last 8 months I haven't practiced once.
Today I am writing this to remind myself what cubing meant to me and the good things it led me to.
So from today, I am going to start practicing again and try to get sub 10(solving under 10 sec) before the end of the year and will post a follow up post to prove it.
If by any chance any of you after reading this got excited to try cubing, here are some useful links for you:
Best cheap cube to start : QiYi warrior W 3x3
Best 3x3 solving tutorial : Learn How to Solve a Rubik's Cube in 10 Minutes (Beginner Tutorial
Best cubing related Youtube channel to learn anything about cubing : J Perm
Stay amazing.