Word: cubes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...measure, Büvös Kocka is the hottest number to come out of Budapest since the Gabor girls went West. Büvös Kocka means Magic Cube, but out side Hungary it is better known as Rubik's Cube, after its inventor, Ernö Rubik...
Thanks to modern mass marketing, the lunacy quotient may be far higher with the cube. Ideal Toy Corp., which makes the cube under an agreement with a Hungarian state manufacturing company, produced 4.5 million last year (retail price: $6 to $10) and expects to sell far more in 1981. Other companies are manufacturing and distributing versions of the cube, while pirated editions are being turned out in Taiwan and Hong Kong...
...designed by Mondrian. It was developed in 1974 by Rubik, then 37, an architecture professor, to give his students greater experience in dealing with three-dimensional objects. It has six sides, each with a different bright color. Each side is divided into three rows, each row into three smaller cubes ("cubies"). Each row can be made to rotate 360° so that one can twiddle the cube from top to bottom or from side to side...
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...