45 Comments
founding
Sep 7Liked by Brad Kyle

What a fun article! Thanks for including my comments. I love how you intertwined the different comments and stories within the narrative... one of your many talents!

I can totally imagine an infant Kevin getting completely obsessed with the cube 🀣 Crazy what this magician friend of MK can do! I think, like Steve, I'm also spatially dyslexic, and it's my husband who does all the furniture assembling and related activities πŸ˜… I feel for Dan's cube, shattered by his professor... all the stories are brilliant!

Interesting what Nic said about this random guy showing him the 4 or 5 consecutive patterns. This makes a lot of sense based on other things I've heard... now, if only I had the skills to go through the motions!

Happy weekend!

Expand full comment
author

Thanks so much, Andy....for your comment, as well as for your cute cube story! I enjoy "directing" some of my articles as if a sitcom or short movie! Gotta keep things moving! The patterns make sense to me, too, but I'm still flummoxed by how someone can go through the patterns behind their back, without the visual color cues!

Oh, well....you and me, bro....we all about da ears!!πŸŽ΅πŸ‘‚πŸ‘‚πŸŽΆ πŸ₯‚Ears to you, too, for a fab weekend!

Expand full comment
founding
Sep 7Liked by Brad Kyle

Thank you, Brad! YES, and I looooved your comments in [ ]! It's great how you can keep that connection with your reader, especially when quoting so many different people... when I say you're the master, I mean it!

Yes, absolutely: give me any song and I'm pretty sure I can learn the melody in no time. Cubes, though? To quote Elton/Bernie, but obviously in the voice of Ms Franklin, "won't you please excuse my frankness, but it's not my cup of tea"! 😁🎀🎹

Expand full comment
author

Ha! Great! Yeah, my bracketed comments were a fun touch, and gave the piece a certain tone I was kinda shooting for, and as luck and fortuity (and commerce) would have it, most of the respondents (not that you or they knew my "ploy"), managed to (quite behind their backs!!) match the tongue-in-cheek snark-tone and tenor pretty spot-on!

I'm kinda left, now, Andy, with an almost wistful appreciation of that gol-danged infernal cube!πŸ˜₯ Good thing it's too pointed to hug!πŸ˜‚

Expand full comment
founding
Sep 7Liked by Brad Kyle

β€œToo pointed to hug” 🀣🀣🀣 I’m screaming. You’re one of a kind, you truly are!!!!

Expand full comment

Ha - I knew we had even more in common, Andres! Regarding my incompetence at the Rubiks Cube, I probably said something like, if I solve it, then the magic is gone.

Expand full comment
founding
Sep 8Liked by Brad Kyle

Right?! Sometimes you say things about yourself that make me wonder whether we are, in fact, the same person. Sure, we’re different enough, but when it comes to certain traits, the resemblance is uncanny. Particularly the complexity of our character.

Expand full comment

This is great fun to read! Thanks for including my story!

Expand full comment
author
Sep 6Β·edited Sep 6Author

Thanks, Dan! Your story is certainly an entertaining highlight!

Expand full comment
Sep 7Β·edited Sep 7Liked by Brad Kyle

It definitely was a highlight! I would have bought a new one and then thrown it at him during the final and then say, "I thought that's what we were supposed to do when you threw mine at me." And then I would have been expelled, started taking (more) drugs, then end up on the street after losing my house and my job, then ten years later, strike it rich when a billionaire sees me playing bagpipe covers of Nirvana songs on the street corner and funds my #1 album, "Smells Like Scottish Bagpipes."

Expand full comment
author

Mercy! OK, Steve, I'll pick up my cue, and write myself into your Horatio Algae story: I'm doing A&R at Polymer Records, the tape of your album lands on my desk, and I'm afraid I'm left to do nothing but utter meekly, "I don't hear a single."

Expand full comment

I guess my response would be, "Do me a favor. Kick my ass. Kick this ass. Enjoy, come on!"

https://youtu.be/T4Nh7E9BMdM?si=k9W6EA6yoaI-Pts3

Expand full comment
author

Good ole Artie Fufkin! Polymer's never been the same since he left!

Expand full comment

This was a lot of fun Brad! I could never solve the damn thing so would resort to breaking it apart and putting it back together. In my bedroom. By myself. Ashamed that I was one of the few in my friend group that could never figure it out.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks, Mark! As I was 19 when it reared its ugly cuboid head, I was only too aware of its evil intentions: "Oh, no you don't, little plastic box! I see you and your beguiling ways wooing kiddoes into your clutches, posing as a....a.....TOY!"

Plus, as I told a friend today, it was all too easy to see that it was nothing but a plaything poseur, lurking in the corner promising nothing more or other than......................MATH! El yukko!

Expand full comment

Such a fun piece, Brad! I finally found time to play/watch/listen to all the clips. It's too bad the Rubik's Cube song is so shitty! No offense to the artist. Were there any other songs you found? Or was this the best one?

Like Ellen, I too loved the Credibility Gap skit. He was so spot on in his Tom Snyder impression. I have a 2 DVD set of all the punk and new wave guests on the Tomorrow show. It's amazing. I haven't watched it in years. Of course, your buddies, The Ramones are on it!

Loved seeing Lenny and Squiggy doing their thing! Was this clip from before L&S? The show was 1976 and I think you said the clip was '75 so I guess it was prior, no?

Expand full comment
author

Thanks, Steve! It was fun to do, especially on a subject so far out of my wheelhouse! As for RC-related songs, there just aren't that many. Once I found the one featured, I stopped looking. They were proficient enough players, and the others I was seeing were just way too amateurish and gimmicky. If I had kept looking for the "Stairway to Heaven" or something, of Cube songs, I have a feeling I'd end up with a whole lot of nothin'.

Yeah, that Tomorrow skit was just before L&S began shooting. Be sure to check out that '74 Credibility Gap album!

Expand full comment

I remember that book about how to solve it. That's how I figured out 2 rows. Never did help me solve the damn thing.

I have discovered that the solving behind the back trick has now become popular among magicians. They get an audience member to mix it, then there's some sequence they learn that always makes it solve. Those brats.

Great article though!

Expand full comment
author

Thanks, MK! This one was fun, going kind of far afield from my normal post. We talked about that this morning at the Meet....just keeping an eye open for new topics/new ways to do something new and different once in a while! As for behind-the-back, sans color cues, you'd have to have a strong analytical mind to decipher and remember the sequence, as you're taking away one of the senses that, otherwise, would help you solve (sight).

Expand full comment

Forgot about the meet! I slept in. I have been thinking about this - the long talked-about John Oates post being an example. Just a challenge to do when my regular posts keep turning into monsters. (Hence a repost tomorrow.)

Expand full comment

I have one on my desk in my classroom, and last year I had a student who was so fast at it we would time her. I'd mix it up, give it to other students who would mix it up more, and then it would come back, and I would do a few final twists and turns and then give it to her. Remarkably, she would solve it in no more than 90 seconds, often in 60 seconds or less! We were in awe of her. One day a kid came in with a 4x4x4 cube, and she still solved it in about 5 minutes.Β 

Me? I lose patience. I never liked math, and my brain struggles to remember the algorithms needed to solve it quickly...

Expand full comment
author

That's exactly where I'm at, Michael....your last sentence. I was 19 when it dropped, so I was more than old enough to see behind its tempting, colorful little squares....but, it didn't fool me: "You're all about maff, Mr. Cube! Go on! Get on outta here with your hidden geometric balderdash!" That girl sounds like she should be entered into some speed contests or something!

As for memorizing algos, I was amazed at that New York Jet in the video who could do it behind his back. Without the visuals, how on earth could someone solve it with no visual color cues?

You'll enjoy this, Michael.....I don't think I've told this before: In 2008, when I finished an alternative teacher certification class to become a full-time teacher, guess what my first job offer was? "So, Brad, would you like to teach 5th grade math?" I was A) happy to have a job offer, and B) was eager to have my first full-time gig be just one subject (we departmentalized).

After two years, it went well, but I got "demoted" to 4th grade, and they had the gall to add science to my docket! As they say in Brooklyn....."da noive! Da very noive!" I was like, "How am I going to plan TWO subjects, now?!?" Anyway, that lasted two years, and I retired before they could give me my own self-contained classroom!😁

Expand full comment
Sep 6Liked by Brad Kyle

I thoroughly enjoyed your witty and informative take on the Rubik’s Cube’s 50th anniversary. Still use one in my classroom today.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks so much, Jon! Glad you enjoyed! Happy to hear, too, that you still use one in your classroom.....just don't let the teacher catch you!πŸ˜πŸ‘

Expand full comment

Good one! Enjoyed the anecdotes. I agree about Reader's Digest now being pamphlet sized.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks, Mark! Folks had some good stories, all right! RD…..any smaller, they’ll be able to fold it into an airplane and fly it to homes!

Expand full comment

This was one of my favorite toys for such a long time. I think I got two sides once πŸ˜«πŸ˜†

Expand full comment
author

That's pretty impressive, Adam.....especially from someone who considered it a victory to somehow bring two colors together!

Expand full comment

πŸ˜‚ I most likely would have sold my soul to complete it.

Expand full comment

Thanks for asking me Brad!

Expand full comment
author

You betcha, Keith! Yours is precisely the story I was searching for when I sent up the smoke signal!

I appreciate everyone’s entry, but most had a story like mine….just kinda ho-hum from a reaction and involvement POV. But, yours was so well told, and human-interestingly funny!

Did you dig the cube gif I managed to find to accompany?!?🀣

Expand full comment

That's incredible. Just looking at it makes my brain hurt. lol. It looks like a piece of modern art... arguably, I suppose it is.

Expand full comment
author

I was stunned when I found that gif! Part of the fun of composing this was finding the "right" gifs that might accompany (or, at least be "housed" somewhat nearby) a fitting story. After more seconds staring at that "cube" than I should disclose, even I realized that that was an impossible monstrosity that had no chance of being "solved"!! Somehow it ended up near your story!πŸ˜‰πŸ‘

Expand full comment

I never got super into them, but of course as an 80s kid these things were everywhere.

I've recently been learning about game theory and Jon von Neumann's ideas... Rubik's cube and the idea of a minimum number of moves to solve any puzzle like this triggered that thought immediately. It's really cool that we somehow tricked kids into doing math/geometry puzzles and convinced them that this was a toy, really!

Expand full comment
author

Certainly a great point, your last sentence! And, as it was devised by a teacher-type, understandable! Which is precisely what motivated my reaction, on the complete opposite end of the kid spectrum, and my experience: When math-leaning kids were naturally drawn to it....to "play" it, to work to beat times, compete with friends, etc....those were exactly all the traits that so completely repelled me, with my more artistic-leaning (left brain?) not-at-all-math-friendly mind! Add to that, I wasn't the least bit interested in anything resembling competition!

But, as a math-oriented creation, it is one of the few I can think of that had a decidedly non-numeric, pro-shape/geo lean!

Expand full comment

I think it works well for about half of the kids, at least to get them fiddling and curious. As a teacher myself, I love thinking of ways to articulate ideas so that they're easily digestible. I guess that's kind of what I try to do every day when I write, for what it's worth! :)

Expand full comment
author
Sep 6Β·edited Sep 6Author

True dat, bruh! Same page! I just snapped, though....I was 19 when the Cube debuted, and was already well aware of my strengths and limitations, regarding all things academic! When the Cube emerged, I can see myself reaching for a can of Raid, as if trying to fend off some new kind of hideous bug! Much like a tutu or a jackhammer.....I knew I never did, and would never have, any earthly use for it!

Expand full comment

19 is such a fun age. I think I was pretty sure I knew everything important by then.

Expand full comment

My brother-in-law collects them, but they were never really my thing.

Expand full comment
author

Wow, there are enough variations for a "collection"? Mercy.

Expand full comment

Oh yeah. It's crazy.

Expand full comment

Really fun article, Brad. The Tom Snyder video is absolutely hilarious. Harry Shearer and Michael McKean are comedy geniuses. Great way to start the day watching that.

Like you I never had patience with the R Cube. Never understood the payoff. Maybe if a treat or reward had been involved...

Expand full comment
author
Sep 6Β·edited Sep 6Author

Thanks, Ellen! That Credibility Gap album, "A Great Gift Idea" is worth checking out! I think YT has the complete album somewhere! Maybe, after a successful solve, the dang cube could've popped open to reveal a chocolate chip cookie, I might've been a little more motivated to endure its otherwise torturous wiles........a little more!

Expand full comment

I think there'd have to be a $100 bill for me!

It was seeing Harry Shearer brilliantly playing Tom Snyder -- he nailed him. Comedy gold. But I'll check out the album too. Thanks for the tip.

Expand full comment
author

Actually, the Credibility Gap album is called "A Great Gift Idea," released in 1974, the same year as The Rubik's Cube! Harry Shearer actually was considered for the role of Eddie Haskell (or a bully/pest like him) on "Leave It to Beaver," having done an audition at 10! Here he is telling the story to Howard Stern 14 years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy1K3JYYu2o

Here's the "Beaver" clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJe1e_T_FIs

Expand full comment