20 Facts About Rubik's Cube

Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle originally invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik.

Since 2003, the World Cube Association, the international governing body of the Rubik's Cube, has organised competitions worldwide and recognises world records.

Rubik's Cube did not realise that he had created a puzzle until the first time he scrambled his new Cube and then tried to restore it.

Magic Rubik's Cube was held together with interlocking plastic pieces that prevented the puzzle being easily pulled apart, unlike the magnets in Nichols's design.

In March 1981, a speedcubing championship organised by the Guinness Book of World Records was held in Munich, and a Rubik's Cube was depicted on the front cover of Scientific American that same month.

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Rubik's Cube can be taken apart without much difficulty, typically by rotating the top layer by 45° and then prying one of its edge cubes away from the other two layers.

Consequently, it is a simple process to "solve" a Rubik's Cube by taking it apart and reassembling it in a solved state.

Original Rubik's Cube had no orientation markings on the centre faces, and therefore solving it does not require any attention to orienting those faces correctly.

In particular, when the Rubik's Cube is unscrambled apart from the orientations of the central squares, there will always be an even number of centre squares requiring a quarter turn.

Each method of solving the Rubik's Cube employs its own set of algorithms, together with descriptions of what effect the algorithm has, and when it can be used to bring the cube closer to being solved.

Rubik's Cube lends itself to the application of mathematical group theory, which has been helpful for deducing certain algorithms – in particular, those which have a commutator structure, namely XYXY, or a conjugate structure, namely XYX, often referred to by speedcubers colloquially as a "setup move".

The letters x, y, and z are used to indicate that the entire Rubik's Cube should be turned about one of its axes, corresponding to R, U, and F turns respectively.

In 1982, David Singmaster and Alexander Frey hypothesised that the number of moves needed to solve the Rubik's Cube, given an ideal algorithm, might be in "the low twenties".

Philip Marshall's The Ultimate Solution to Rubik's Cube takes a different approach, averaging only 65 twists yet requiring the memorisation of only two algorithms.

The first world championship was the 1982 World Rubik's Cube Championship held in Budapest on 5 June 1982, which was won by Minh Thai, a Vietnamese student from Los Angeles, with a time of 22.

Non-licensed physical cubes as large as 17×17×17 based on the V-Rubik's Cube patents are commercially available to the mass-market; these represent about the limit of practicality for the purpose of "speed-solving" competitively .

The TouchRubik's Cube has buttons for hints and self-solving, and it includes a charging stand.

The TouchRubik's Cube was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in New York on 15 February 2009.

Rubik's Cube has inspired an entire category of similar puzzles, commonly referred to as twisty puzzles, which includes the cubes of different sizes mentioned above, as well as various other geometric shapes.

Puzzles, like Rubik's Cube, can be simulated by computer software to provide very large puzzles that are impractical to build, as well as virtual puzzles that cannot be physically built, such as many higher dimensional analogues of the Rubik's Cube.