There's Nothing More Perfectly Satisfying Than Solving A Rubik's Cube
Those of us who are both privileged and lucky enough to find ourselves with more time on our hands than usual during this pandemic are diving into all kinds of homebound hobbies, from baking, to DIY, to jigsaw puzzles. But we're months into this new world, which is enough time for me to realize that I'm never going to make it onto Holiday Baking Championship, and that I don't have the patience to solve a 3000-piecer singlehandedly. Instead, I've found a different hobby: Solving a Rubik's Cube.
It's not a particularly novel interest—the architect Erno Rubik patented his cube 45 years ago, and it has such a devoted following that more than 100,000 people have competed in official cubing contests. But a new documentary, Netflix's The Speed Cubers, inspired me to take a crack at it. Directed by Sue Kim, the film offers a look at the world of competitive cubers who solve puzzles in just a handful of seconds, and specifically the friendship between two of the the community's biggest stars, world record-holders Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs.
The perfectly gripping and tender film focuses on the interpersonal aspects of the competition—the 24-year-old Zemdegs, who's been called the best speed cuber of all time, is not quite as dominant as he used to be, while Park, the heir to many world records once set by his friend, has autism, which presents challenges of its own as he deals with the highs and lows of being a world-class competitor. After watching the movie, I bought a cube, and a few days later spoke to Zemdegs about my burgeoning obsession.
After the initial Rubik's cube fad faded, the toy made a resurgence in the 2000s thanks to the advent of the internet, which put solving the puzzle within easy reach of novices. That's how Zemdegs first caught the bug. "I came across videos of people and I was like, 'Oh, this looks interesting,'" he says. "I didn't know people could do it this quickly and there were competitions."
You don't have to be a future champion to learn how to solve a cube with the help of a video tutorial—one of the things that makes cubing a perfect hobby is that the initial learning curve is very, very low. Anyone who has $10 and an hour of free time can buy a cube and let a YouTuber hold their hand throughout their first solve.
I have no right explaining how it works, because I don't completely understand it yet. But here's an attempt. Experts like Zemdegs and Park memorize hundreds of algorithms in order to solve the puzzles, which can be as manageable-seeming as a two-by-two cube or as daunting as a seven-by-seven. Some aren't even cubes at all, but pyramids or dodecahedrons. These are deeply intimidating looking toys, and we can leave them to the pros.
To solve a standard three-by-three cube, you only need learn a handful of patterns and algorithms. And yes, the word "algorithm" intimidated me at first, too, conjuring hazy memories of middle school math's slow creep away from numbers, which I was cool with, and towards letters, which really felt like an unnecessary intrusion. But put these grim visions aside. The algorithms are just series of instructions, like "rotate the front face clockwise twice, then the upward face clockwise, then the left face counterclockwise," which would be abbreviated to F2, U, and L', respectively, with the letters each standing for a face of the cube, the numbers for the total required rotations, and the apostrophe indicating a counterclockwise rather than clockwise motion. (Seriously, watch a YouTube video, it makes way more sense visually.)
It still takes me about three minutes to solve a cube. Zemdegs can complete a puzzle in four seconds. But with each attempt, I can just grasp a few seconds of that fantastic feeling when skill, instinct, and muscle memory seem to combine for a dopamine-pumping flow state. It's begun reminding me of playing the piano, another hobby I do poorly but to great personal satisfaction. With time, your hands begin to know what to do without your brain telling them.
"When you start out learning an instrument or start out learning Rubik's Cube, it's very mechanical, formulaic," says Zemdegs. "But then, once you get down a lot of experience it's more of an art than just a formula."
Then the puzzle is solved, and you have a cube. It's a more visually organized object than the one you started out with, but it's still just a cube, with no higher calling than to serve as a paperweight on your desk. But there's profundity in its pointlessness. There are more than 43 quintillion possible configurations of a three-by-three cube. Only one is correct. To reach it, you've zoomed past a number that, for most of our human purposes, feels indistinguishable from infinity, and found perfect order. In such a thoroughly disorderly feeling world, what could be more satisfying?
If you're about to try cubing for the first time, Zemdegs recommends initially attempting to solve the puzzle without instructions before learning from a tutorial. "Just try and play around with it on your own," he says. "See if you can get one side by yourself." It's a step I skipped and now wish I hadn't. Solving the puzzle for the first time is probably even better after you've had a glimpse at the endless possibilities.
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