In March 2016, I was able to solve the 3/3 Rubik’s cube.
It was always fascinating to see someone moving fingers on a jumbled up Rubik’s cube and within seconds it was all done. Six colors and twenty six pieces; all placed perfectly where they belong. Wow! The world record stands at less than 5 seconds today. That’s pretty fast. Isn’t it?
I could do only one color at a time and had no clue how to solve the rest. Since my childhood I wanted to solve the whole of it. I decided to learn it.
I started with watching several you tube videos and found there are six stages of solving a Rubik’s Cube. Each stage has a fixed algorithm and you just have to memorize it. That’s it. Champions and those who practice regularly could do it in four stages and lower number of moves, the most famous being the Fridrich method (though there are other ways too).
Six Stages for beginners
(Don’t worry about the language of the last 3 stage. It’s the terminology expert’s use). Each of the above stages has a fixed set of moves. Out of several videos I watched, I quite liked this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvhKNXHQqyM (you can google other ones too).
The key is to understand the concept of a Rubik’s Cube. For eg. centre pieces never move; edges have two sides, corners have three sides, etc. It will need practice to do it. Once you do it several times, your fingers will move freely. After a few days, I could memorize the moves and within a week I was able to solve it in less than 3 minutes. Of course, the harder you practice the faster you could do it. My daughter was fascinated by it and learned it faster than me. She could now solve a jumbled Rubik’s Cube in less than 45 seconds. My best time was 02:32 minutes (nothing to boast about though). It’s fun to run my fingers on it once in a while.
What looked difficult for decades took just a few days to solve. That is true for most of the things in life too. So, when are you going to get your hands on a Rubik’s Cube?
