A World of Algorithms

I'm sure everyone's familiar with the tricky, complicated colorful three dimensional puzzle known as the Rubik's cube. As far as the media informs you, the average person cannot solve it, unless they're perceived as some sort of an intellectual.
This was very upsetting to me that you have to be a genius to figure this cube out. All you have to do is make all six sides one color for crying out loud! So I decided to dedicate myself to learning how to solve a Rubik's cube.

I first had a cube from a dollar store. Not the best of qualities, but it was sufficient for me to at least get the hang of it. I was at a bank with my grandmother, and a woman behind the counter said, "come back here when you solve it". I was under the impression that I would be rewarded with some $cash$ (can you blame me?). Unfortunately, I had misplaced the cube before I could even learn how to solve it.

During the summer of 2011, my mother game me money to buy some books at a Barnes and Noble, and took the liberty of buying myself a Rubik's cube with some of it. I tried to solve it on my own, but it was taking too long, and I was impatient. So I went to the most informative place on the internet: YouTube. I found this video:

I took notes, and after about a week, I was able to solve it without any assistance whatsoever!! :-)

I was ecstatic. I was so happy that I was able to solve it. Sure I didn't do it on my own, but that doesn't take the awesomeness out of it. It still requires a bit of memory to solve the cube. I even made some tweaks to my solving method to accelerate the process, so I rest my case. I don't have my first cube anymore. I gave it to my cousin, and his brothers "obliterated" it. For months, I was cube-less. Then my mother bought me a Rubik's Icon. It's like a regular 3x3, but the colors are black, white, silver, and 3 different shades of grey. Until this day, I still have my Icon.

I was using that for a while, but I wanted to improve my timing. I realized that my cube was not the proper cube for speed solving, so I had to get a speed cube. So my mother also bought me a Dayan Guhong v2 6-color sticker-less cube (the stickers were peeling off of my Icon, and I didn't want to run into the same problem again). It came in 17 days, and I was so excited that I recorded the moment I opened it.



My speed improved a great deal when I started using that.

I hope to get some Lubix silicone to help my speed upgrade to less than 40 minutes. I also know how to solve a 4x4, but I didn't record it, and it was also "obliterated". In the anonymous person's defense, it was an accident. I will leave it at that.

Well, I hope we can all learn something from this. I feel that anyone can solve a Rubik's cube. With a little bit of patience and perseverance, it is possible, along with anything else in life that you are attempting to do. Just remember not to forget what your goal is, and not to stay up until the crack of dawn trying to achieve it (I can't express that enough).