Rubik’s cube
The Rubik's Cube is a 3D combination puzzle originally invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer. The cube was released internationally in 1980 and became one of the most recognized icons in popular culture. It won the 1980 German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes had been sold worldwide, making it the world's bestselling puzzle game and bestselling toy.
On the original classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces was covered by nine stickers, each of one of six solid colours: white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. Some later versions of the cube have been updated to use coloured plastic panels instead, which prevents peeling and fading. In models as of 1988, white is opposite yellow, blue is opposite green, and orange is opposite red, and the red, white, and blue are arranged in that order in a clockwise arrangement. On early cubes, the position of the colours varied from cube to cube. An internal pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be returned to have only one colour. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of sides, dimensions, and stickers, not all of them by Rubik.
Although the Rubik's Cube reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1980s, it is still widely known and used. Many speedcubers continue to practice it and similar puzzles; they also compete for the fastest times in various categories. Since 2003, the World Cube Association, the international governing body of the Rubik's Cube, has organised competitions worldwide and recognises world records.
In the mid-1970s, Ernő Rubik worked at the Department of Interior Design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest. Although it is widely reported that the Cube was built as a teaching tool to help his students understand 3D objects, his actual purpose was solving the structural problem of moving the parts independently without the entire mechanism falling apart. He did not realise that he had created a puzzle until the first time he scrambled his new Cube and then tried to restore it. Rubik applied for a patent in Hungary for his "Magic Cube" (Hungarian: Bűvös kocka) on 30 January 1975, and HU170062 was granted later that year.
1980s Cube craze
The 'world's largest' Rubik's Cube was constructed for the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee
After the first batches of Rubik's Cubes were released in May 1980, initial sales were modest, but Ideal began a television advertising campaign in the middle of the year which it supplemented with newspaper advertisements. At the end of 1980, Rubik's Cube won a German Game of the Year special award and won similar awards for best toy in the UK, France, and the US.[By 1981, Rubik's Cube had become a craze, and it is estimated that in the period from 1980 to 1983 around 200 million Rubik's Cubes were sold worldwide. In March 1981, a speedcubing championship organised by the Guinness Book of World Records was held in Munich, and a Rubik's Cube was depicted on the front cover of Scientific American that same month. In June 1981, The Washington Post reported that Rubik's Cube is "a puzzle that's moving like fast food right now ... this year's Hoola Hoop or Bongo Board", and by September 1981, New Scientist noted that the cube had "captivated the attention of children of ages
In October 1982, The New York Times reported that sales had fallen and that "the craze has died", and by 1983 it was clear that sales had plummeted. However, in some countries such as China and the USSR, the craze had started later and demand was still high because of a shortage of Cubes.
21st-century revival
Rubik's Cubes continued to be marketed and sold throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but it was not until the early 2000s that interest in the Cube began increasing again. In the US, sales doubled between 2001 and 2003, and The Boston Globe remarked that it was "becoming cool to own a Cube again". The 2003 World Rubik's Games Championship was the first speedcubing tournament since 1982. It was held in Toronto and was attended by 83 participants. The tournament led to the formation of the World Cube Association in 2004. Annual sales of Rubik branded cubes were said to have reached 15 million worldwide in 2008. Part of the new appeal was ascribed to the advent of Internet video sites, such as YouTube, which allowed fans to share their solving strategies. Following the expiration of Rubik's patent in 2000, other brands of cubes appeared, especially from Chinese companies. Many of these Chinese branded cubes have been engineered for speed and are favoured by speedcubers. On 27 October 2020, Spin Master said it will pay $50 million to buy the Rubik's Cube brand.
Trademarks
On 10 November 2016, Rubik's Cube lost a ten-year battle over a key trademark issue. The European Union's highest court, the Court of Justice, ruled that the puzzle's shape was not sufficient to grant it trademark protection.
Mathematics
The puzzle was originally advertised as having "over 3,000,000,000 (three billion) combinations but only one solution". Depending on how combinations are counted, the actual number is significantly higher.
Permutations
The current colour scheme of a Rubik's Cube
The original (3×3×3) Rubik's Cube has eight corners and twelve edges. There are 8! (40,320) ways to arrange the corner cubes. Each corner has three possible orientations, although only seven (of eight) can be oriented independently; the orientation of the eighth (final) corner depends on the preceding seven, giving 37 (2,187) possibilities. There are 12!/2 (239,500,800) ways to arrange the edges, restricted from 12! because edges must be in an even permutation exactly when the corners are. (When arrangements of centres are also permitted, as described below, the rule is that the combined arrangement of corners, edges, and centres must be an even permutation.) Eleven edges can be flipped independently, with the flip of the twelfth depending on the preceding ones, giving 211 (2,048) possibilities which is approximately 43 quintillion. To put this into perspective, if one had one standard-sized Rubik's Cube for each permutation, one could cover the Earth's surface 275 times, or stack them in a tower 261 light-years high.
The preceding figure is limited to permutations that can be reached solely by turning the sides of the cube. If one considers permutations reached through disassembly of the cube, the number becomes twelve times larger: which is approximately 519 quintillion possible arrangements of the pieces that make up the cube, but only one in twelve of these are actually solvable. This is because there is no sequence of moves that will swap a single pair of pieces or rotate a single corner or edge cube. Thus, there are 12 possible sets of reachable configurations, sometimes called "universes" or "orbits", into which the cube can be placed by dismantling and reassembling it.
The preceding numbers assume the centre faces are in a fixed position. If one considers turning the whole cube to be a different permutation, then each of the preceding numbers should be multiplied by 24. A chosen colour can be on one of six sides, and then one of the adjacent colours can be in one of four positions; this determines the positions of all remaining colours.
Records
Single time: The world record time for solving a 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube is 3.47 seconds, held by Du Yusheng (杜宇生) of China, on 24 November 2018 at Wuhu Open 2018.
Average time: The world record average of the middle three of five solve times (which excludes the fastest and slowest) is 4.86 seconds, set by Tymon Kolasiński of Poland on 30 July 2022 at Cube4Fun In Warsaw 2022
One-handed solving: The world record fastest one-handed solve is 6.82 seconds, set by Max Park of the United States on 12 October 2019 at Bay Area Speedcubin' 20 2019. The world record fastest average of five one-handed solves is 8.65 seconds, set by Patrick Ponce of the United States on 1 May 2022 at Stevenage Spring 2022.
Feet solving: The world record fastest Rubik's Cube solve with one's feet is 15.56 seconds, set by Mohammed Aiman Koli of India on 27 December 2019 at VJTI Mumbai Cube Open 2019. The world record average of five feet solves is 19.90 seconds, set by Lim Hung (林弘) of Malaysia on 21 December 2019 at Medan 10th Anniversary 2019.[88] Since 1 January 2020, 3x3x3 With Feet is no longer an event recognized by the WCA, and no results are being accepted.[
Blindfold solving: The world record fastest Rubik's Cube solve blindfolded is 14.61 seconds (including memorization), set by Tommy Cherry of the United States on 13 March 2022 at Florida Big & Blind & Time 2022
The cache
The waters of Tolo are clear enough to hold a underwater cache. Underwater caches are amongst my favorites. The coordinates are the coordinates of the rock close to the cache. Basically a couple of meters from GZ. From here you can follow the pictures to locate the cache.
The Rock at the landside
This is the rock at the shore, from which you can start your search. But you can also start at one of the beaches nearby.
The rock above the cache in the sea.
This is the rock right above the cache. The cache is located at the bottom of the rock, in water about 2 meters deep.
Reference stone and top cover stone.
With the reference stone you can orientate yourself under water. The cache is close to the reference stone (see cross).
Top cover stone number 1.
This is the stone that blocks the stone that blocks the hole in which the cache lies.
The second cover stone.
This is the stone that blocks the hole in which the cache lies.
A glimpse of the black cloth.
Here you can see a glimpse of the cloth in which the cache is wrapped. Put your hand in the hole an grab the cache (and hopefully nothing else)
Please put all the stones back as shown in the pictures. You are looking for an “other” (size small) The cache is wrapped in a black cloth. You can see this cloth one of the pictures. Please put the cache back in the black cloth, the way you found it (with knots) or better if the nots were gone. You will have to bring a pencil NOT a pen.The log sheet is permanently in the water and therefor made of plastic. Please do not log with a pen. Please write small, because there is not much room.
There are waves, rocks and searches around. And underwater activities can be dangerous. Please take care. It’s better to log a DNF than a DNS (did not survive).
Happy caching!