Unseen Passage for Class 4 - Passage 04

The Rubik's Cube was invented by a Hungarian university professor, Erno Rubik. Professor Rubik only wanted to create a working model to explain a Mathematical problem but ended up creating the world's best-selling toy. Besides teaching at the university, he was also an architect and a designer. Rubik called his invention the 'Magic Cube' but it was later renamed Rubik's Cube by Ideal Toy Corporation, which manufactured the cubes, in 1980.

In a classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by nine stickers of six solid colours, traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow. There has been a variation made to the Rubik's Cube. Instead of solid colours, pictures are featured on the stickers. Some cubes have four, sixteen, or even more stickers on each face instead of the standard nine. Plastic pieces joint together enables each face to turn independently, thus making up the colours.

For the puzzles to be solved, each face must have the same colours. While a novice might take hours to solve the puzzle, experts can solve it in under a minute. In May 2007, Thibaut Jacquinot of France became the first person to solve the puzzle in under 10 seconds in an open competition, setting a world record time of 9.86 seconds. The current world record is held by Yu Nakajima of Japan with a time of 8.72 seconds.

Many websites dedicated to helping people solve Rubik's Cube puzzle have sprung up recently. These websites often include videos which are easier to follow than step-by-step written instructions found in books.

National and International 'Speedcubing' Championships have been held regularly since 2003 to determine the fastest fingers. Speedcubing uses the player's average time out of five attempts to determine the winner. The World Cube Association now runs competitions where players have to solve the puzzles one-handed, as well as having to solve the puzzles using only the feet.

There is even a competition where players have to solve the puzzles as quickly as possible blindfolded! This makes Rubik's Cube competition even more challenging.