Review on The Cube game by Benaiah A. Akinlade

About the Magic Cube

The Rubik's Cube is a sequential move puzzle game that has a set of pieces that can be manipulated into different combinations by certain specific techniques. It was invented in 1974 an Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik who initially called it the Magic Cube before he acquired the license to name it after himself.

I have always been fascinated by mentally challenging activities most especially mathematics, but it was a field I often struggle at in school. On the other hand, I have somehow excelled in logical thinking which was how I found myself studying computers.

I have had numerous toys as a kid such as legos for building, but the one that fascinated me the most was the cube game. I see those solving the cube as people of high intelligence which was something I didn’t see myself as. I just didn’t want to embarrass myself by trying to solve something so complex, so I opted for less challenging toys like the picture puzzles.

Many years after avoiding embarrassment of needing to solve the cube, one of my students brought the cube to school and was actually able to solve it. This aroused my interest that if he could, then I can, so I reached out to him to teach me how to solve the cube. When he started explaining the techniques and steps, I immediately lost interest because my worst fear was realized, the cube game wasn’t for me.

After 9 months, I found myself thinking about the cube game again and challenging myself and my intelligence. I took the first bold step of buying the game, then went online to see videos on how to solve it.

I met the same complications but this time I looked beyond and started practicing. It took me 3 days to make my first solve by following the video. I practiced every day till I’m no longer dependent on the video. I made a jotting of the steps and techniques required to solve the cube

1. Form white tiles surrounding a yellow tile in the center

2. Form a white cross

3. Solve the whole white tiles

4. Turn the solved white time upside down

5. Look for tiles at the middle top without a yellow sticker and perform a trigger sequence

6. Form a yellow cross at the top with this formula: F U R U’ R’ F’ (F- front face, U- upper face, R- Right face all clockwise. Any letter with ‘ means the anti clockwise of the face. So F is clockwise while F’ is F anti clockwise)

7. Solve yellow tiles at the upper face with R U R’ U R U2 R’

8. Position the corners of the top layer with L’ U R U’ L U R’ R U R’ U R U2 R’

9. Finally, solve the whole cube with F2 U R’ L F2 L’ R U F2 for clockwise solve and F2 U’ R’ L F2 L’ R U’ F2 for anti clockwise solve. You can choose to use any method for the final solve

These are the steps I followed to solve my cube. If I can do it, you can do it too. You can make your researches on the internet.