The Square Root of Rubiks Cube

Two-thirds of my life ago, halfway through high school, people started showing up with a cube, each side a nine-square array of a single color. Or at least, that's how it looked when you bought it. The sub-cubes moved, and the aim was to have it scrambled, then work your way back to one color per side. There are about 43.25 quintillion positions possible, so getting there by randumb luck could take a while, so the toy appealed mostly to puzzlers.

At least initially, but upon entering the American market, the company that licensed it of course wanted it to be the next Big Thing, the toy hit of the early '80s. And for that to happen, it should not test consumers' patience or make them feel like idiots. And so began the stupidification of the Rubik's Cube.

I had a friend who had the Cube. No rube was he, but also not a genius, or even especially dedicated. He was, however clever enough to want to look smart, aware enough to know that there was a book that explained how to solve the cube, and rich enough to buy said book. (I should explain to the kids that there was no internet in that benighted decade--books were how we learned back then.)

Scads of cads bought the book, then showed up and showed off how quickly they could "solve" the cube. Soon enough, even the half-bright denizens of the high school halls knew that these charlatans were just going buy the book, and were nothing special. But Americans with money will not be written off lightly, and when fake-solving the cube did not prove impressive, rubbed others' noses in their impecuniousness. Solving the cube through wits alone was a sign of poverty. I kid you not.

The Rubik's Cube became a tool for showing off on a grander scale as well. Tournaments were organized. The joy of solo solution gave way to speed. America's capitalists took pride in the fact that despite it's invention by a commie, it took the U S of A to turn it into a blockbuster. Erno Rubik was from Hungary, but the name sounded Russki to most Americans, and the few who knew better congratulated themselves that Hungarians worshiped blue-jeans and would have gladly thrown off the Soviet yoke given the chance (or, given the US military support that had been implied when they actually did attempt rebellion, but that's another story). By and large, though, it felt like an appropriation of Eastern science for Western profit, which during the Cold Ware conjured a victory on par with our scoring the Soviet-effacing humor of Jakov Smirnoff. Which again, is not a joke.

So the Rubik's Cube became the Big Thing, until it was supplanted by Cabbage Patch Dolls or something equally brilliant. Wikipedia claims it was advertized as having "billions of positions," which is both 10 orders of magnitude too small and completely reasonable, given the target audience's sub-Soviet numeracy and enthrallment with Carl Sagan. It didn't matter how many positions the damned thing could take, since people tended to go buy the book or toss it into the oblivion drawer.

Meanwhile, the un-square had moved on to something more interesting.