Rubik’s Cube

My daughter got a tactile Rubik's Cube for Christmas from Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian.  There aren't stickers on the sides, each face has formed plastic in a raised pattern such as a circle, X, square, dots or a square.   It's very easy to tell one shape from the other, even for me and my fingertips don't have full feeling in them due to the damage in my spinal cord.

My daughter wanted to work on her Rubik's Cube, my son wanted to play with it and I took a turn at it as well.   We had several Rubik's Cubes in the house from different points over the years.  We'd didn't have one that was tactile though. I thought I might know where they were but I knew for sure they were scrambled.  Now that my daughter's new cube was mixed up though, would it ever be put back in order again?

When the Rubik's Cube first came out I got one after knockoffs came out and the price dropped to much less than the original price.  I remember trying to figure it out and making decent progress.  I could put all the same color on a single face of the cube.   Then I figured out how to put those face pieces so that they matched the adjacent sides, effectively completing one level or row of the cube.   The middle row held the center pieces, which are fixed in place, leaving only four edge pieces to put in place to complete the second row, which would have two-thirds of the cube back in place.

Those four pieces were confoundingly hard to do though.  I could get them in, but in so doing I'd mess up some of the top layer I'd already completed.   I remember eventually figuring out, through trial and error, how to get those four pieces placed.   I felt a good bit of pride at this as most of my friends (we all had a cube) hadn't figured out that much.

What we all did figure out how to do was to take the cube apart and put the pieces back in place that way.   That was so common among my friends that when I saw a completed cube, I didn't even bother asking if they'd figured out how to solve it.

There was no Internet and no easy way to find out how to solve it back then.   This year I decided to give in, after all these years, and learn how to solve the Rubik's Cube once and for all.  I felt a bit better after reading on one site that 99.9% of people didn't figure out how to solve it without some help.  That night my daughter wanted to know where her cube was, so she could take it to bed with her.   I said it was on my nightstand and I was working on it and could I keep it until the morning?   My daughter said that would be okay and I told her I would leave it on my nightstand and she could come and see if I had been successful the next morning.

And then I got to learning algorithms.  It's not simple.  In order to get those pesky second layer edge pieces in place you need to do eight rotations to get the upper layer out of the way, move the edge piece in place and then move the top level back.   And there is more than one algorithm because the edge piece might be in one of two orientations.   There are five more algorithms for the final layer to position and rotate various pieces while not disrupting what's already in place, some of which require more than eight rotations and may need to be repeated multiple times in several orientations.

To understand the rotation motions you need to first learn a notation scheme for the faces and directions of rotation as well as how to orientate the cube at different times.   That was the most confusing.  I knew what I was supposed to do only I would rotate one of the faces clockwise when it should have been anticlockwise and wouldn't know which step.  I didn't figure this out until completing the sequence so I didn't know how to backtrack to fix it.  So I had to reposition what had gotten out of place, which backed me up in the solving by sometimes a good bit.

I went and found, strangely all in the same place and the first place I looked, three additional Rubik's Cubes.  But all three were bad.   Bad in that they were hard to rotate.   I ended up solving all three of them (which are now scrambled again, thanks to my son).   By the time I was done with all three, my hands hurt from fighting against catching, sticking and unwilling to rotate cubes.

Back to my daughter's cube though.  It's a joy to work with, movement-wise.  I've solved it upwards of twenty times now.   It's taken most of that time for me to memorize the algorithms and remember which series of steps goes with each situation.  I've solved it only a few of those times without having to refer to my notes and have nearly solved the cube close to forty times because I've made a mistake many times and had to start back with only the first layer complete.

It's been fun though.   I'm no speed solver on account of the steps I'm using aren't the same as the ones used competitively.   There are faster ways, but it involves knowing how the pieces move around the cube and planning out more than one move ahead and multiple things at the same time.  For now, just solving it without messing up is my current goal.   Fortunately, I have two children eager to give me, "a good scramble" so I can keep practicing.

The Tiny Stocking Swap:  Last night at our Hanukkah/Christmas dinner with our neighbors my children had a prank that was going to be played on them by my neighbor's children.   They had gone to the Dollar store and other locations to fill stockings for our children.   They had found HUGE stockings for them and packed them full of all kinds of things.  But they also had a tiny stocking for each of them with only one ring pop in them.   They were going to give that to them first and see what they said.   When they handed them to my children they each pulled out their ring pop and didn't say anything.   They didn't complain at all.   I think my children were excited to see what Shane and Blake would be getting in their stockings.   We all waited for my children to say something and aside from my son casually saying, without any disappointment in his voice, "this is a really small stocking", they were the picture of graciousness.   Blake couldn't take possibly disappointing them so he brought out their stockings.   Even my children couldn't believe how much was in them.   Shane and Blake liked their stocking contents too.   And we all loved the Matzo Ball Soup and Potato Latkes.  My children asked when they were going to light the Menorah and when they started to sing, I swear, my daughter sounded like she knew the tune and tried to sing along with them.   Everyone had a delightful night.  We love our annual gathering with our neighbors.