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There's a guy in our office who can solve the Rubik's Cube really quickly. Not under-ten-seconds quickly like the very best Speedcubers, but he can still scowl his way through the process in less time than it takes a kettle to boil. If you work in an office, there may well be someone there who can solve the Cube, too. You'll probably know, because they'll probably have a Rubik's Cube visible on their desk. That's the problem with having a skill as fiercely specialised as this - it doesn't really come up much unless you force it.It may come up a little more at the moment because the Rubik's Cube just turned 40. The twisty-turny puzzle is the work of the Hungarian architect Erno Rubik, and he developed it when he was 30 years old. It made perfect sense to me when I learned that Dr Rubik's a professor of architecture and that he was a teacher as well as a practitioner at the time. The Rubik's cube is a little piece of corporate sculpture, really. It hides its mechanical complexities from sight while constantly hinting at them the way a lot of great buildings do, as well. Despite the fact it wasn't designed for his students (it wasn't even designed as a puzzle) it's also got the unmistakable whiff of an educational enterprise to it - although it would be hard for most people to pinpoint exactly what it is you're meant to be learning.
What you're learning, of course, is how to solve the Rubik's Cube, and, judged purely as a puzzle game it's fascinating that so many people find such a seemingly austere gadget entertaining. Most of the champions of the Rubik's world seem more like musicians than players - to watch a master at work is like seeing an instrument being bustled into complex life rather than a puzzle being solved. And the process of solving is often so austere, too, with those "algorithms", or standard sequences, that have to be internalised if you want to get the moves down to a manageable level.
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