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Blockheads square off in Rubik's Cube competition

By Greg Fogg

May 22, 2006

San Diego--On May 27, the Ruben H. Fleet Science Center will hold an event that if you ARE there, you will be square – or at least cubed.

That’s when they’ll hold the Rubik’s Cube Competition and in case you thought that the multi-colored puzzle block invented in 1974 and made popular in the early ‘80s was all but forgotten, you’d be wrong.

Although Rubik’s Cubes have been mostly relegated to boxes in dusty attics for the better part of two decades, there’s currently a resurgence of people who partake in what is known as “speed cubing,” and many of the people doing it weren’t even alive to witness the fad the first time. But a lot has changed since the ‘80s. The puzzle that used to take some people weeks or months to solve, or in most cases never, is now solved in a matter of seconds.

Back in the day, frustrated cubers used to resort to pulling the pieces of the cube apart and realigning them or even go so far as peel off the colored stickers and assemble them again to make it look as if they were masters of the cube.

“It turns out it takes longer to do that than to solve it,” says Adam Zamora, a “speed cuber” and organizer of the San Diego competition.

As the 26-year-old Zamora explains, after the Rubik’s Cube’s heyday, step-by-step solutions were written and published in books, and now the Internet, that teach how to solve the puzzle in a matter of seconds. Two of the most popular are the Fridrich method and the Petrus method, named for the two squares who invented the algorithms.

Zamora first picked up the puzzle a few years ago when he saw it on a co-worker’s desk. He says he solved it the old-fashioned way through trial and error in about a day. That’s pretty fast for a beginner, but he admits he was always into math. Then he learned of the algorithms to solve it quickly, and what took him a day now takes him about 16 seconds. His personal best is just about a second shy of the 15-second world’s record.

Those who know the algorithms can even solve the cube behind their back or while blindfolded, which will come in handy, as one of the events at Saturday’s competition will be a blindfolded event.

Now that the Rubik’s Cube has gone from a mind-boggling brainteaser to one of speed, cubers are always looking to improve their speed by a tenth of a second. When tournaments come around, Zamora says he practices to increase his speed. He says, “It doesn’t take a lot of time to practice.” As he explains, a five minute practice session can yield more than dozen solutions.

Cubers do have to watch out for cubing injuries. Zamora says the repetitive motion can take a toll on hands and fingers. That’s why many will avoid using a new cube because it has too much tension. Others will go so far as to spray silicone lubricants on their Rubik’s Cubes for more fluid motion.

Zamora estimates about 60 cubers will be lubed and limbered up for Saturday’s events, with one of the youngest set to be an 11-year-old.

Zamora says he can’t put his finger on what’s causing the resurgence in Rubik’s Cubes, especially with youngsters who have an arsenal of Sony PlayStation Portable games at their disposable. But he guesses it that the cubes “look interesting… and you never know what sparks an 11-year-old’s mind.”

He admits a good portion of the cube’s popularity may be due to Tyson Mao, competitor on the reality series Beauty and the Geek who was rarely seen on the TV show without his Rubik’s Cube. In fact, Zamora says Mao will be at the event on Saturday.

The winners won’t receive any prizes, per say, except for having the honor of being the fastest cuber – a pretty square sounding title.

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