Word: cubed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dust cloud so dense that it blocked off the sunlight, ruined the planet's food chain, and thereby brought on the extinction of the dinosaurs-an event that profoundly redirected evolution. It is arguable (at least agnostically for a moment) that life itself-the lightning in the sugar cube, the huge fortuities of weather and climate and chemistry, of amino acids and proteins and oxygen-emanates from sheer cosmic luck...
When the three-by-three-by-three cube comes out of the box, all nine squares on each face are aligned to make a solid color-one face red, one yellow, and so on. The aim of the game is to scramble the colors (simple) and then to manipulate them back the way they were (not simple). The number of potential color patterns is 43,252,003,274,489,856,000, and it would take the most advanced computer 1.4 million years to figure out all the possible combinations...
...destined to solve the unscrambling problem at all, it will take you somewhere between five hours and a year." Among other hazards, Hofstadter lists Cubitis magikia, "a severe mental disorder accompanied by itching of the fingertips that can be relieved only by prolonged contact" with the cube. Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, a former mayor of Manchester, England, had to be operated on for tendinitis of the thumb after a protracted cube-twisting session. A woman in West Germany who gave her husband the cube for Christmas is seeking a divorce because of it. Her complaint: "My husband hardly speaks...
David Singmaster, 42, an American who lectures on mathematics and computing at London's Polytechnic of the South Bank, is believed to know more about Rubik's Cube than even Ernö Rubik. Singmaster, whose 60-page Notes on Rubik's "Magic Cube" has gone into five editions, has become an unofficial repository of the puzzle's lore. An English postal engineer wrote him to report that cube playing had reduced his office's efficiency to zero, but that "being a government department, no one noticed." A Whitehall bureaucrat pleaded with him to supply...
...found a method." Unlike scientists, who concentrate on plotting specific procedures called algorithms that will reduce the number of necessary moves, brainy young cubers seem more interested in setting speed records. One English high school student, Nicolas Hammond, 16, has managed to unscramble a cube in 28 seconds. Some whiz kids "tune" their cubes, as their less intellectual peers might tune a hotrod; the technique consists mostly of taking the puzzle apart (no easy matter) and lubricating its moving parts...