Thursday, April 23, 2009

Puzzle Boxes

Riddles and puzzles always amaze me. Sometimes simple ideas can turn into the most complex objects.



The object above is a Rubik's Cube. You may or may not be familiar with these toys, but they've got quite a bit of notoriety about them. They're a standard for "brain-teasers" and can be found in a variety of shops these days. I recently read that there are billions of possible positions for the cubes faces to be in, yet they can all be solved in less than 40 moves! That's pretty incredible. I wonder if its original designer, Erno Rubik, would ever have imagined the popularity of this simple, yet confounding toy.

So how many people in our office do you think know how to solve it?

-Novel (unsolved)-

10 comments:

NDfan17 said...

Well we know Mari has to know how to solve it! :)

hillary said...

I'm guessing 5 people :)

Natalie said...

Omg... i am terrible at those. But one of my friends can solve one in about under 2 min!
Its awesome!

KingsRider said...

With all those brilliant brains, I bet most of the them could! My sister loves these, but I can only get one side at a time. :-)

Alleyn said...

Dang! I can never solve more than one side. Someone once gave my brother twenty dollars for solving it in less then 2 days, though.

I have no idea....7?8?

DixieGirl said...

Haha, I gave my brother one of those for his birthday. It's so messed up he hasn't touched it in months. I wonder if he'll try again if I tell him it can be solved in 40 moves?

Anonymous said...

My brother learned to solve it. He can do the 3X3 which is above, all the way up to 5X5. I timed him and it takes him around 2 min to do the 3X3!

Tyz said...

I'll guesssss.... 5 or less?
Swyl!
~Tyz

Anonymous said...

my friend's lowest score of solving one is 1.24 minutes. =D

Anonymous said...

I guess 4