CUBISM:

Squaring Off (DAVID HAYES, 11/16/03, NY Times Magazine)

Two years ago, [Andy Camann, a tall, gangly 14-year-old], who lives with his parents and his older brother, Zac, in Newton, Mass., found an old Rubik's Cube that belonged to his mother in the basement. After a few failed attempts, he managed to solve it in four and a half minutes. Curious, he discovered hundreds of sites on the Internet, some offering sophisticated algorithms to solve the cube, and gradually his time dropped below 60 seconds. He also discovered a global community of cubists and found out about the puzzle's origins.

In 1974, a Hungarian designer named Erno Rubik created a multicolored, six-sided cube as a three-dimensional model to demonstrate geometric principles. Despite its complexity -- there is one correct alignment and 43 quintillion potential wrong ones -- by 1980, Rubik's Cube had developed a cult following. An estimated quarter of a billion cubes were sold between 1980 and 1985. It spawned key chains, songs, ''Saturday Night Live'' skits, an animated TV program and more than a hundred books. But demand exceeded supply, and neither Rubik nor the Hungarian manufacturer had patented the cube in foreign countries. By 1986, with the market flooded with pirated versions that were difficult to turn or quick to break, the toy dropped off the radar.

Even group theory can't explain how, about half a dozen years ago, a new generation of young people, like Camann, decided that playing with the low-tech plastic cube was cool. But the Internet made it possible for these new fans and cubists rediscovering their passion to connect.

Yeah, but how is he at Paper, Rock, Scissors?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 16, 2003 10:48 AM