As the Rubik’s Cube turns 50, a revolution looms
NEW YORK—For die-hard fans of the Rubik’s Cube, it isn’t about whether you can crack the iconic puzzle. It’s about how fast. In a bustling hotel ballroom in Queens, some 90 competitors are practicing or locked in a speed-cubing showdown, racing to match all sides of the three-dimensional puzzle.
Over a loudspeaker, event organizers summon participants to join one of six tables for a round. When the scrambled cube appears, players have 15 seconds to scrutinize it, turning it this way and that to plot out a flurry of rotations. The fastest solve took teen whiz Jerry Yao just 5.5 seconds.
After a ceremony honoring the winners, Yao playfully boasted in response to questions from a reporter. “If my friends are listening, I’m like, I’m a lot better than all of them," he said. “And I want to like, keep it that way." Speed-cubing culture often fosters self-improvement and friendships.
But as Yao’s intensity suggests, a shift rumbles through this world. Cubers keep shaving milliseconds off records, and some insiders dream of bright lights and roaring spectators. There is talk about “how cubing and speed cubing can evolve…and make it more of a spectacle, more entertaining," says Sam Susz, a brand marketing executive at Spin Master, the Canadian toy company that acquired Rubik’s Cube in 2020 for $50 million.
He mentions the potential for a World Cup, or an Olympics exhibition. Speed cubing’s origins didn’t lack showmanship. In 1982, at the first official Rubik’s Cube World Championship in Budapest, the winner’s check “was physically big to show to the cameras," the puzzle’s Hungarian inventor Ernő Rubik later wrote.
He created his cube in 1974. Despite millions of cubes being sold worldwide in the early ‘80s, interest fizzled. But
. Read more on livemint.com
