{"id":1018,"date":"2009-08-15T14:19:38","date_gmt":"2009-08-15T14:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1018"},"modified":"2009-08-15T14:19:38","modified_gmt":"2009-08-15T14:19:38","slug":"cubers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1018","title":{"rendered":"Cubers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m watching Cubers<\/em> on the CBC, a documentary about the revival of interest in Rubik’s Cube, and a recent Rubik’s Cube solvers’ competition. What can I say… it takes me back.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t stand a chance competing in this crowd, but I did win<\/a> the world’s first (as far as I know) Rubik’s Cube competition, held in Budapest in 1980. I completed my cube in 55 seconds, which wasn’t a very good time by my standards then (I often managed to solve the cube in well under 30 seconds) but it was enough to win.<\/p>\n

These days, world class competitors solve the cube in 15 seconds or less. In addition to manual dexterity, such spectacular performances also require memorizing a large number of moves. And then I am not even going to mention the blindfold competitions, involving not just the “standard” 3\u00d73\u00d73 cube but the larger, 4\u00d74\u00d74 and 5\u00d75\u00d75 versions… such skills are hard to comprehend.<\/p>\n

I can still solve my (3\u00d73\u00d73) cube without trouble (so long as I am allowed to use my eyes), but I only remember a relatively modest number of moves, which means that my solution is far from efficient. In other words… I am rusty. And my cube is sticky. Literally, it feels sticky on the outside (is the plastic decomposing?) and it’s a bit hard to turn. Still, on the third try, I managed to solve it in a minute an 45 seconds. Not bad, considering that I haven’t touched the thing in years.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m watching Cubers on the CBC, a documentary about the revival of interest in Rubik’s Cube, and a recent Rubik’s Cube solvers’ competition. What can I say… it takes me back. I wouldn’t stand a chance competing in this crowd, but I did win the world’s first (as far as I know) Rubik’s Cube competition, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-30-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}