Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Rubik's Cube Episode

Transcript

The Rubik's Cube Episode · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff. You should know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, You'm welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's
0:15
Speaker 1: over there, and we're cubing it up with Rubic the Cube.
0:20
Speaker 1: Did you see um that cartoon, Rubic the Amazing Cube?
0:24
Speaker 1: Did you come across that? Okay? I I feel like
0:28
Speaker 1: we are um well within our rights as far as
0:31
Speaker 1: fair use goes, since we are talking about this, to
0:34
Speaker 1: at least play the highly disturbing but also strangely cute
0:39
Speaker 1: voice of Rubic the Amazing Cube. Can I play this
0:42
Speaker 1: real quick? Sure? Okay? That is it. It is awfully unusual,
0:50
Speaker 1: especially when you see this cube. They just basically took it.
0:54
Speaker 1: Do you remember the Goblin face on Maximum Overdrive on
0:57
Speaker 1: that on the front of that semi sort of it's
1:01
Speaker 1: kind of like a cuter version of that that they
1:03
Speaker 1: put onto a Rubik's Cube, put some feed on it,
1:06
Speaker 1: and then gave it superpowers. That's Rubic the Amazing Cube.
1:11
Speaker 1: Before we go any further, Chuck, I just want to
1:13
Speaker 1: give a shout out for my Chicago show. May I. Yes,
1:17
Speaker 1: I'm doing a solo End of the World Live show
1:20
Speaker 1: in Chicago on September twelve at Lincoln Hall and if
1:24
Speaker 1: you want tickets, go to l h hyphen st dot com. Okay, okay,
1:30
Speaker 1: So back to rubic Chuck. Yeah, it was kind of
1:33
Speaker 1: hard to believe that it took until two thousand fourteen
1:35
Speaker 1: for this thing to be granted National Toy Hall of
1:39
Speaker 1: Fame inductee status. Uh. It seems like it would have
1:43
Speaker 1: been much sooner than that because they have sold hundreds
1:47
Speaker 1: and hundreds of millions of Rubik's Cube since I had one.
1:52
Speaker 1: I still have one. I could do it at one point.
1:57
Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, I could do it in a couple
1:59
Speaker 1: of minutes. Wow, Chuck, I'm impressed. I had no idea. Yeah,
2:02
Speaker 1: I can still do. I can still do one side
2:06
Speaker 1: and like the top row surrounding that side on all sides,
2:10
Speaker 1: And that's where I completely forget. Oh, I see, So
2:14
Speaker 1: you couldn't do it in a couple of minutes now
2:16
Speaker 1: you just have you could in the past. Yeah, when
2:19
Speaker 1: I was nine. Um, I'm impressed. I've never been able
2:24
Speaker 1: to solve a Rubik's Cube. I've never been sucked in
2:29
Speaker 1: enough to, um like really spend a significant amount of time.
2:34
Speaker 1: But um I was playing with my niece's Rubik's Cube
2:38
Speaker 1: the other day studying for this, and um I was like, yeah,
2:44
Speaker 1: I could see how somebody would become obsessed with this
2:46
Speaker 1: kind of thing for sure. Yeah, it was fun and
2:48
Speaker 1: it was you know, to call it all the rage
2:51
Speaker 1: is an understatement. It was one of the most popular
2:54
Speaker 1: toys of all time, invented in nine by a math
3:00
Speaker 1: enthusiast and Hungary and architect professor named er No Rubik.
3:06
Speaker 1: Appropriately enough, they named him after the cube. That's right.
3:10
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what we're talking about, it
3:13
Speaker 1: seems weird to describe a Rubik's Cube, but we'll probably
3:16
Speaker 1: be taking a task if we do not. I would say,
3:19
Speaker 1: just come out from under the rock that you've been
3:22
Speaker 1: living under. But we may have some young listeners who
3:24
Speaker 1: don't even know what this thing is, this piece of
3:27
Speaker 1: eighties ephemera, even though it's not ephemera because they're still
3:30
Speaker 1: pretty popular. But it is a cube made up of
3:33
Speaker 1: twenty six little mini cubes called cubs, which is kind
3:37
Speaker 1: of a cute little name. I think, so not as
3:39
Speaker 1: cute as Rubic the Amazing Cube, but yeah, little cubs
3:44
Speaker 1: and they're in a three inch by three inch by
3:46
Speaker 1: three inch. Well that's not quite true, a three by
3:49
Speaker 1: three by three grid eventually creating a cube that measures
3:54
Speaker 1: two point two five inches or five point seven centimeters
3:57
Speaker 1: per side. Right, And so what there's six six cube
4:01
Speaker 1: faces because it's a cube, and each face has a
4:04
Speaker 1: different color. There's orange, blue, green, yellow, white, and red
4:11
Speaker 1: and um. When you when you mix these things up,
4:15
Speaker 1: it's just a jumble, a riot of different colors like
4:18
Speaker 1: you've never seen your life. But the point is to
4:21
Speaker 1: move these cubes around through the eighteen different ways you
4:25
Speaker 1: can move any given cube, um, so that all of
4:29
Speaker 1: the colors are lined up, all the colored cubes are
4:33
Speaker 1: all the same on each face. And it sounds easy, friends,
4:37
Speaker 1: it is not easy, not at all. Like maybe for
4:40
Speaker 1: some people it's easy, but for the rest of us,
4:42
Speaker 1: normal focus normis, it is not easy in any way,
4:46
Speaker 1: shape or form. No, it is not. Uh And in fact,
4:50
Speaker 1: they even suggest that you read about how to solve
4:53
Speaker 1: the Rubik's cube. It is the very rare individual that
4:56
Speaker 1: can literally just figure it out without any help at all. Um,
5:01
Speaker 1: that's really tough to do. So it's not like you're
5:04
Speaker 1: not a cheat. If you look at like how to
5:06
Speaker 1: solve the Rubik's cube and then memorize these patterns and
5:09
Speaker 1: practice them. That's sort of the point, right, Yeah, like
5:12
Speaker 1: go look it up like it's fine. No one will
5:15
Speaker 1: will get mad at you for that, because it's no
5:16
Speaker 1: fun to never solve a puzzle. Well, that's why I
5:19
Speaker 1: think I've never gotten sucked in. I was like, I'm
5:21
Speaker 1: not even there's no way I'm gonna possibly stumble across this,
5:25
Speaker 1: and I just don't think like this. My spatial reasoning
5:28
Speaker 1: is terrible. I'm not great at math. I'm color blind.
5:32
Speaker 1: Everything just looks white. No, it's really not. I can't
5:37
Speaker 1: discern squares from from circles. It's just I'm off. So um. Originally,
5:45
Speaker 1: the Rubik's cube was called the magic cube, and it
5:48
Speaker 1: was invented, like you said, by Erno Rubik, who was Hungarian.
5:51
Speaker 1: So it was originally called the Beavish Kotzka, which is
5:55
Speaker 1: magic cubean the Hungarian means butt head. I believe it does.
6:00
Speaker 1: The magic butt head was Bevis and butt head a right,
6:05
Speaker 1: nice man. It's like, where's he going with this after
6:07
Speaker 1: all these years? It's no, I didn't, but I was like,
6:12
Speaker 1: I'm I'm going with this will Chuck. I trust him
6:16
Speaker 1: and I paid off to So Mr Rubik got his
6:20
Speaker 1: Hungarian patent on the mechanical design of this in and
6:26
Speaker 1: it was in Hungary only for a while. Uh, and
6:29
Speaker 1: it did pretty well and hungry. Um, but that's kind
6:32
Speaker 1: of where it stayed. It was. Uh. It was because
6:35
Speaker 1: of the politics of the time and the fact that
6:37
Speaker 1: it was hungry. It was not super easy to get
6:40
Speaker 1: a an American patent or to bring it over and
6:43
Speaker 1: market it here in the West, so it was pretty
6:45
Speaker 1: much a Hungarian local sensation for its early like probably
6:50
Speaker 1: first year. Yeah, he had like a Hungarian toy manufacturer
6:54
Speaker 1: make like ten thousand of them, but he wasn't happy
6:57
Speaker 1: with him, so we cut the run off at five thousand.
7:00
Speaker 1: So there were five thousands of these things floating around
7:02
Speaker 1: Budapest and and maybe Hungry in general. And it was
7:05
Speaker 1: just total serendipity that there was a guy named Tibor Laxi.
7:10
Speaker 1: And I'm quite sure that's not exactly how you say
7:12
Speaker 1: his last name, but that's how it's how it spelled.
7:14
Speaker 1: It's probably like Lucia or something like that. But um,
7:18
Speaker 1: t Bor, I'm I just love that name. It's a
7:20
Speaker 1: great name. Um. He was an entrepreneur who had left
7:24
Speaker 1: Hungry and moved to Austria, so he had really developed
7:27
Speaker 1: a taste for capitalism. While he happened to be visiting
7:30
Speaker 1: back home in Budapest when he was at a restaurant
7:33
Speaker 1: and he noticed a waiter playing with the Beavish kotska,
7:36
Speaker 1: the magic cube, and um, he said, you there, what
7:41
Speaker 1: is that? And uh, he said, well, it's the Beavish kotzka.
7:44
Speaker 1: How about I sell it to you for a dollar?
7:47
Speaker 1: And I believe he bought that for a dollar, played
7:49
Speaker 1: around with it for a minute. It was like this
7:51
Speaker 1: could be big. So he found out who invented it,
7:54
Speaker 1: and he scheduled a meeting with Erno Rubic. Yeah, and
7:57
Speaker 1: he would say later on that he that Erno Rubik
8:01
Speaker 1: had a lot to do with why he decided to
8:02
Speaker 1: get into business with him. And here's his quote. He said,
8:05
Speaker 1: when Rubik first walked into the room, I felt like
8:08
Speaker 1: giving him some money. He looked like a beggar. He
8:11
Speaker 1: was terribly dressed. You gotta remember this guy as a professor,
8:14
Speaker 1: so they're not known for their sharp attire. He was
8:17
Speaker 1: terribly dressed and he had a cheap Hungarian cigarette hanging
8:20
Speaker 1: out of his mouth. But I knew I had a
8:22
Speaker 1: genius on my hands, and I told him we could
8:26
Speaker 1: sell millions. Yeah he was right. Oh man, was he
8:30
Speaker 1: ever right? He understated it actually, um the t Boar,
8:36
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna call him t Boar. He took this
8:39
Speaker 1: magic cube and he started going to toy fairs, uh,
8:44
Speaker 1: and I think he struck out at a few of them.
8:46
Speaker 1: But he really hit it out of the park at
8:48
Speaker 1: the Nuremberg Toy Fair when he met a toy expert
8:52
Speaker 1: who had connections with Ideal Toy Company. Remember Ideal back
8:56
Speaker 1: in the day. I think I do for sure. I'm
9:00
Speaker 1: pretty sure they made that um the uh the uh
9:05
Speaker 1: what was the daredevil's name, Evil Kin? I think they
9:09
Speaker 1: made the Evil kinevil stunt bike. You know what's funny
9:12
Speaker 1: is um they make those now for other they have
9:16
Speaker 1: there's like an incredible stunt bike with plastic girl. It's
9:22
Speaker 1: the same exact function. We have one in our house
9:24
Speaker 1: and you load it up and crank it and there
9:26
Speaker 1: she goes. Is it the exact same mold? They just
9:29
Speaker 1: put like different pain on it or something like that.
9:32
Speaker 1: Knockoff toys. Man, it's slightly different, uh in its design,
9:35
Speaker 1: but it's clearly like the same exact toy. Do you
9:38
Speaker 1: remember that gallery of knockoff toys I made back when
9:41
Speaker 1: we used to blog those. I think it's still up
9:44
Speaker 1: somewhere on our stuff. You should remember how excited we
9:47
Speaker 1: would get about gallery page views. Yeah, oh, we'd be like,
9:50
Speaker 1: holy cow, we're up to seventy and it's only been
9:54
Speaker 1: up for a week and a half. So funny. So
9:57
Speaker 1: at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, uh t boor runs into
10:01
Speaker 1: the guy from Ideal and they end up purchasing it.
10:04
Speaker 1: They purchased the rights to this, the global rights, and
10:07
Speaker 1: they they they basically sign up to create a million
10:12
Speaker 1: Rubik's cubes. Yeah. Also we should say it this toy fair,
10:15
Speaker 1: he did a pretty smart thing. Instead of like buying
10:17
Speaker 1: a booth, he just came and worked the floor with
10:20
Speaker 1: Rubik's cubes and got this like ground buzz going by
10:24
Speaker 1: walking around and giving these things to people, and like
10:27
Speaker 1: that's genius. Like for something like this, that's the perfect
10:30
Speaker 1: way to pique someone's curiosity is not to have some
10:33
Speaker 1: flashy uh like spinning giant Rubik's cube, is to actually
10:38
Speaker 1: get in the hands of people walking around the floor,
10:41
Speaker 1: especially if you say, I'm Tibor Let's party. I bet
10:46
Speaker 1: you want to call it t boards Cube. It's pretty
10:47
Speaker 1: good name. He probably did, although he was smart because
10:50
Speaker 1: I remember originally it was called the Magic Cube. At
10:54
Speaker 1: some point. If it wasn't t Boor, it was Ideal
10:56
Speaker 1: who said we're gonna rename this the Rubik's Cube. And
10:59
Speaker 1: I'm sure Erno Rubik was like, oh, okay, I guess
11:03
Speaker 1: if you insist. I wonder if he was into it
11:04
Speaker 1: or not, or if he pushed forward, or if he
11:06
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not really into that, but if you
11:08
Speaker 1: think it'll sell cubes, that's what I'm guessing he probably did.
11:12
Speaker 1: I don't think he was going to stand in the
11:13
Speaker 1: way of it, but he was not like vying for
11:16
Speaker 1: it by any means. That's my impression. But I'm just
11:19
Speaker 1: totally making that up, but that I have the same impression,
11:21
Speaker 1: which means that if you put our two impressions together,
11:24
Speaker 1: it equals fact. So Ideal sells one hundred million Rubik's
11:31
Speaker 1: cubes in the first two years. They just signed up
11:35
Speaker 1: to sell one million. They sold a hundred million in
11:39
Speaker 1: two years. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they had problems
11:41
Speaker 1: keeping up with production. Uh, some of the accolades, and
11:44
Speaker 1: eight and eighty one at won the UK's Toy the
11:46
Speaker 1: Year Award two years running. Um In eighty two, there
11:50
Speaker 1: were five books about solving it on the New York
11:53
Speaker 1: Times bestseller list, one of which I owned. I owned
11:57
Speaker 1: the classic, The Simple Solution to the Rubics Cube by
12:00
Speaker 1: James G. Norris Q. He was a chemistry student at
12:03
Speaker 1: Stanford And get this, dude, this book was the number
12:08
Speaker 1: one best selling book of night period. He sold six
12:14
Speaker 1: point seven million books and it is still the fasting
12:18
Speaker 1: selling book in the history of Bantam Books. Is that right?
12:22
Speaker 1: Can you believe that out of all the books that year,
12:24
Speaker 1: that was the number one? I can, because that really
12:27
Speaker 1: kind of underscores just how nuts the not just America,
12:32
Speaker 1: the world went for Rubicks cube. That the number one
12:35
Speaker 1: selling book was a book about solving the toy. That
12:39
Speaker 1: that that was it. Yeah, they had sold five hundred
12:42
Speaker 1: million of them by the time rolled around. So so
12:45
Speaker 1: talking about the books though for another second. At one
12:47
Speaker 1: point the number one, two, and four positions on the
12:50
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller list where all Rubik's Cube Solution books.
12:54
Speaker 1: Three he was probably Stephen King or something, probably and
12:57
Speaker 1: one of those books was written by a twelve of
13:00
Speaker 1: year old named Patrick Bossert called You Can Do the Cube,
13:04
Speaker 1: which is pretty adorable if you think about it, and
13:06
Speaker 1: Christians later made a movie called Gleaming the Cube, one
13:09
Speaker 1: of my all time favorites, which had nothing to do
13:11
Speaker 1: with Rubik's cubes. As it turns out, it was about skateboarding. Um,
13:16
Speaker 1: so there's a just a craze going on around the world,
13:21
Speaker 1: like everyone is into the Ruby's Cube. Everyone's buying one.
13:25
Speaker 1: They sold, like I've seen anywhere from three hundred and
13:29
Speaker 1: fifty million. The highest I've seen is six hundred million.
13:33
Speaker 1: They sold a ton of these things, hundreds and hundreds
13:35
Speaker 1: of millions of them. Are those are the official ones too?
13:38
Speaker 1: There were plenty of knockoffs. Sure, there was books on
13:41
Speaker 1: the New York Times bestseller list about this. It was
13:43
Speaker 1: featured in Times Scientific, American News Scientists. Um. There was
13:49
Speaker 1: a paper that was printed in the New England Journal
13:52
Speaker 1: of Medicine that talked about cubists thumb, which is a
13:55
Speaker 1: real thing. It's a type of tendonitis in your thumb
13:58
Speaker 1: that you get in your non dominant hand because that's
14:03
Speaker 1: the hand that you used to stabilize the Rubik's cube,
14:07
Speaker 1: and so the edge of the cube pressing into the
14:10
Speaker 1: heel of your thumb where it meets the rest of
14:12
Speaker 1: your thumb um, that could create tendonitis for people who
14:16
Speaker 1: were staying up for days on end just playing with
14:20
Speaker 1: this thing, trying to to beat this puzzle. There was
14:23
Speaker 1: a craze like like no other. I say, we take
14:27
Speaker 1: a break, okay, uh, and we come back and we
14:29
Speaker 1: talk about uh, Mr Rubic or maybe he's a doctor.
14:33
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call him Dr Rubic, and how he created
14:36
Speaker 1: the mechanics of this puzzle. Alright, so supposedly Dr Rubik,
15:06
Speaker 1: surely he's a doctor. I would let's call him Professor
15:10
Speaker 1: Ruby because he was definitely an architecture professor in a
15:12
Speaker 1: math genius. Though I'm I'm with he's got to be
15:15
Speaker 1: a doctor, all right, Professor Dr Rubik, uh supposedly was
15:19
Speaker 1: not even trying to create this puzzle in n I'm
15:22
Speaker 1: sorry seventy four when he first started out um, as
15:25
Speaker 1: legend has it, he was trying to create a mathematical
15:27
Speaker 1: model for three D design class, which makes sense considering
15:31
Speaker 1: his job. Other people say, no, he was just really
15:34
Speaker 1: kind of guy that like to tinker. He was fascinated
15:37
Speaker 1: by geometry and shapes, and he was trying to just
15:40
Speaker 1: solve a problem of mechanics in three dimensions. But according
15:45
Speaker 1: to the Toy Hall of Fame, he was very much
15:47
Speaker 1: trying to invent a puzzle. Uh, and that may just
15:50
Speaker 1: be folklore. Yeah, he he knew what he wanted. He
15:53
Speaker 1: wanted to make this three by three cube that was
15:56
Speaker 1: made up of smaller cubes that could all like interact
15:59
Speaker 1: in twist store around like. He had the idea for
16:01
Speaker 1: the Rubik's cube, which was step one, but step two
16:05
Speaker 1: was a doozy, and that was figuring out how to
16:08
Speaker 1: invent a mechanical solution to make this thing work the
16:13
Speaker 1: way he wanted it to. And apparently he was. Um.
16:17
Speaker 1: There was a pretty good article Mental Floss by a
16:19
Speaker 1: guy named Noah Davis who recounted that um one day
16:23
Speaker 1: Rubic was walking down the Danube alongside the Danube in
16:27
Speaker 1: Budapest and looked down and noticed that there was just
16:31
Speaker 1: a pile of nice, polished rounded river rocks and thought,
16:35
Speaker 1: I've got it. I've been thinking about a cube. Everything's
16:39
Speaker 1: got to be a cube. But what if I added
16:41
Speaker 1: a sphere to the mix? Two? And that these things
16:44
Speaker 1: rotated around us. Fear that would give the freedom of
16:46
Speaker 1: motion that I need to make this thing work. And
16:50
Speaker 1: that was that that that that was the solution to
16:53
Speaker 1: the puzzle, as it were. Yeah, I mean, if you're
16:55
Speaker 1: like me and probably lots of other kids in the
16:57
Speaker 1: early eighties, you took your rubiscube apart at some point,
17:01
Speaker 1: did you? I never, I never saw one. Lots of
17:04
Speaker 1: video on this. Yeah. Oh yeah, I've got a screw
17:06
Speaker 1: driver out in pretty short order and pomp those things apart. Uh.
17:10
Speaker 1: And it's kind of cool when you look at the
17:12
Speaker 1: you know, when you take all those cubs out, you
17:14
Speaker 1: get down to the center and those three x s
17:17
Speaker 1: um and they have each one is tipped with two
17:20
Speaker 1: opposing center cubis. It's kind of cool looking. And then
17:23
Speaker 1: it makes sense how all these things fit together and
17:25
Speaker 1: how it works. Yeah, another way to think about it
17:28
Speaker 1: is just think about like a sphere a ball, and
17:30
Speaker 1: then you've got six arms sticking out in in um
17:34
Speaker 1: at right angles from it, so that it forms a
17:37
Speaker 1: three dimensional plus side plus signed and at the end
17:40
Speaker 1: of each one of these arms is a cube, a
17:42
Speaker 1: colored cube. And though that's the skeleton of the thing,
17:47
Speaker 1: and then what what erno Rubik figured out was that
17:51
Speaker 1: that's all that needed to be attached to the center.
17:53
Speaker 1: You could make the other cubes attached to those those
17:57
Speaker 1: face cubes, those center cubes qubis. Um. You could make
18:02
Speaker 1: some cubes qubis attached to those cubis, and then other
18:05
Speaker 1: cubs attached to the other cubs, and then they will
18:08
Speaker 1: all kind of rotate around each other. But they're all
18:10
Speaker 1: really rotating on three different axis coming out of that sphere.
18:14
Speaker 1: It's a gene like this guy has gotten, like if
18:18
Speaker 1: he started a craze and as you know, kind of
18:20
Speaker 1: viewed as this great inventor for the toy like math, physics, architecture,
18:27
Speaker 1: um in the in a number of different fields. He's
18:30
Speaker 1: botanical engineering for sure. Yeah, he's viewed as just a
18:34
Speaker 1: god in some senses for for cracking this this problem
18:38
Speaker 1: and creating this three dimensional structure that actually works in
18:42
Speaker 1: in reality that people can learn and study from. That's right.
18:46
Speaker 1: So he's figured out this the mechanics of it all,
18:49
Speaker 1: but it's still not a puzzle yet until he applies
18:52
Speaker 1: these colors. That's what makes it a puzzle, because like
18:55
Speaker 1: we said that at the beginning, the idea is that
18:57
Speaker 1: you have all the colors on each side matching one,
18:59
Speaker 1: and there he applies these colored stickers all over mixes
19:03
Speaker 1: and twisted up a little bit, and he's like, I've
19:06
Speaker 1: invented the cube. And then he's like, wait a minute,
19:10
Speaker 1: I don't know how to solve the puzzle. So he
19:13
Speaker 1: actually had built this thing, stickered it up, and looked
19:17
Speaker 1: at it, I imagine with some level of accomplishment, and
19:20
Speaker 1: then realized that the biggest, probably uh, the hardest thing
19:24
Speaker 1: to do in this whole process, still lay in front
19:27
Speaker 1: of him, which was because there were no books out
19:30
Speaker 1: at this point. Right. He invented it, so he had
19:33
Speaker 1: to figure out how to solve his own puzzle, and
19:36
Speaker 1: it took him a while. It took him a month
19:39
Speaker 1: from what I saw, Yeah, and I imagine he worked
19:42
Speaker 1: on this pretty much NonStop to figure this thing out.
19:46
Speaker 1: He he did, and he would like write down like
19:48
Speaker 1: the different different moves, combination of moves which now they're
19:52
Speaker 1: called algorithms. Um, it's just types of moves that if
19:55
Speaker 1: you do them in a specific sequence, will solve a
19:58
Speaker 1: specific jumbled Rubik's cube. Right, Um, So he wrote them down.
20:03
Speaker 1: He kind of kept track of it, and that was
20:05
Speaker 1: like the first the first um, first time anyone had
20:09
Speaker 1: kind of applied analysis to this, but it would not
20:12
Speaker 1: be the last, obviously, is the New York Times bestseller shows.
20:15
Speaker 1: But the reason why it's so difficult to solve a
20:20
Speaker 1: Rubik's cube just by happenstance is that just the sheer
20:25
Speaker 1: number of possible configurations of the cube. Right, each face
20:30
Speaker 1: has nine cubs, and there's six um faces, so there's
20:35
Speaker 1: fifty four cubs, but they all relate to one another,
20:39
Speaker 1: and so if you move one, that's one configuration, If
20:41
Speaker 1: you move it another direction, that's another configuration, and so
20:44
Speaker 1: on and so on, and so with these fifty four cubs, Chuck,
20:48
Speaker 1: are you ready for this? Yes? The possible number of
20:52
Speaker 1: configurations is forty three quintillion, two hundred and fifty two quadrillion,
20:58
Speaker 1: three trillion, two hundred and seventy four billion, four hundred
21:01
Speaker 1: and eighty nine million, eight hundred and fifty six thousand
21:05
Speaker 1: possible configurations of a Rubri's cube. Amazing, and one of
21:09
Speaker 1: them one is the right one where all six faces
21:14
Speaker 1: are all the same color. Qubi's just one. So just
21:17
Speaker 1: doing it accidentally, your chances are one in about forty
21:21
Speaker 1: three trillion that you're going to stumble upon that right combination,
21:26
Speaker 1: which is pretty amazing, don't you think. And by the way,
21:29
Speaker 1: I think I said in their fifty four there's twenty cubes.
21:35
Speaker 1: I believe there's fifty four faces. Yeah, I mean that's
21:38
Speaker 1: a deal. Each qub has three sides or two sides,
21:42
Speaker 1: depending on if it's a corner or an edge, or
21:45
Speaker 1: one if it's in the center. Right, So it's kind
21:47
Speaker 1: of confusing. But but nine times six, so nine nine
21:52
Speaker 1: squares or nine different colors squares times six faces is
21:57
Speaker 1: fifty four I think fifty four faces twenty something cubies.
22:03
Speaker 1: This is how good at Matthew Man, It's it's really
22:06
Speaker 1: because it's so funny because it's such a simple little thing.
22:09
Speaker 1: But once you start really breaking it down, you're like,
22:11
Speaker 1: we could make this super confusing if we dried hard,
22:13
Speaker 1: for sure. But what people have figured out is that
22:17
Speaker 1: they're they're like, you may have like a one and
22:19
Speaker 1: forty three quintillion chance of stumbling across the right configuration
22:23
Speaker 1: by accident, but what people have figured out is that
22:25
Speaker 1: there are combination of moves like you know, um uh
22:30
Speaker 1: front right up, up twice and then down. That's that's
22:34
Speaker 1: an algorithm, and if you apply that to a certain
22:37
Speaker 1: kind of scrambled a certain configuration of a scrambled Rubik's cube,
22:41
Speaker 1: it will bring it back to solved. And so people
22:44
Speaker 1: have spent a lot of time developing algorithms, and that's
22:46
Speaker 1: why Erno Rubik was originally doing when he was like, oh,
22:49
Speaker 1: if I do this, this and this, it will make
22:50
Speaker 1: it solved. And he wrote that down. That's what's called
22:53
Speaker 1: an algorithm. Yeah, And I remember in the book, like
22:55
Speaker 1: each book had their own little shorthand, I guess, but
22:59
Speaker 1: I remember the one that I had. It definitely had
23:02
Speaker 1: the algorithms all spelled out with like shorthand for what
23:06
Speaker 1: each move was called. So it would sort of look
23:09
Speaker 1: like a math problem made out of letters, right, Like
23:13
Speaker 1: I saw you for up and dfer down, which makes
23:16
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. But then also, um, you can
23:19
Speaker 1: you know there you can move something to the right.
23:22
Speaker 1: You can twist one of the rows of cubes to
23:24
Speaker 1: the right, but you can also twist it to the
23:26
Speaker 1: left too. So I saw an apostrophe after like l
23:30
Speaker 1: apostrophe would be counterclockwise left, and then you can add
23:34
Speaker 1: a number two, so you do that twice, which is
23:36
Speaker 1: really a d eighty degree counterclockwise turn. So interesting. It
23:40
Speaker 1: really is kind of interesting. It like at first, you know,
23:43
Speaker 1: when I first, um went over this article the first time,
23:46
Speaker 1: just taking it in, like how this is pretty neat.
23:49
Speaker 1: But the Rubik's cube I found has many many layers
23:52
Speaker 1: to it, and you can really keep going deeply into it,
23:56
Speaker 1: well beyond just playing with the cube and try to
24:00
Speaker 1: solve it. Like there's a lot of math involved. There's
24:03
Speaker 1: a lot of physics and mechanics involved. You. I mean,
24:07
Speaker 1: you can get us sucked into it as you like, Buddy,
24:09
Speaker 1: just try not to go insane like erno Rubik did.
24:12
Speaker 1: He did not when he set that that building on fire.
24:18
Speaker 1: He Uh. It's interesting though, how big of a hit
24:20
Speaker 1: this became sort of it flew in the face of
24:22
Speaker 1: a lot of um like sort of rules of the
24:26
Speaker 1: toy industry and that uh it didn't make sounds, um,
24:30
Speaker 1: it didn't have interchangeable parts. It didn't have things that
24:33
Speaker 1: you could sell along with it, like you know, clothing,
24:36
Speaker 1: You couldn't. I guess you could dress your little Rubik's cube,
24:38
Speaker 1: but then you have a special relationship with it, I guess,
24:41
Speaker 1: so you could dress it up and be like him Ruby.
24:45
Speaker 1: It didn't have batteries. It was never like, well, I
24:48
Speaker 1: guess it appeared on a TV show. Was that a
24:50
Speaker 1: TV show? Yeah, it was. It was a Saturday morning
24:53
Speaker 1: cartoon that came on right before pac Man, which was
24:56
Speaker 1: honestly one of the all time great cartoons ever. Yeah,
24:58
Speaker 1: it just it wasn't Mark Codable though, like you would
25:01
Speaker 1: think it's toy would be. The reason that it appealed
25:03
Speaker 1: and endured is because it is a real challenge and
25:08
Speaker 1: you get a real sense of reward once you've done
25:11
Speaker 1: it right, and that really hooks people. It really does
25:15
Speaker 1: hook people. And again there's like not there's no shame
25:18
Speaker 1: in going and looking up algorithms to solve UM Rubik's cubes,
25:23
Speaker 1: like just processes. And in fact, if you start doing
25:26
Speaker 1: any kind of research on rubicscues, you'll find like there's
25:29
Speaker 1: actually specific UM methods of attack that people suggest for
25:34
Speaker 1: for beginners to start with. There's one called the white
25:37
Speaker 1: Cross method class which is um entails eating a handful
25:41
Speaker 1: of white Cross gas station speed up for four days
25:45
Speaker 1: until you until you get done. It's actually you start
25:49
Speaker 1: with the edge pieces and then you move to the
25:51
Speaker 1: corner pieces, putting them all in place and then you
25:54
Speaker 1: um go on from there, starting with the white face
25:58
Speaker 1: of the cube. That's right. And uh, this toy was
26:01
Speaker 1: a big hit anyway, but it it is endured, Uh
26:05
Speaker 1: not because of stocking stuffers or nostalgia, but it is
26:10
Speaker 1: endured all these years later because of competition. Yeah. So
26:14
Speaker 1: let's take a break now and we'll talk about speed
26:17
Speaker 1: cubing right after this. Well, now we're on the road
26:21
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
26:24
Speaker 1: two from Josh Man Chuck. It's stuff you should know,
26:30
Speaker 1: all right, Okay, So the Rubik's Cube comes out in
26:52
Speaker 1: the world basically in ninety and the next year, the
26:56
Speaker 1: very next year, countries around the world were whole holding
27:00
Speaker 1: national championships for um solving Rubik's cubes as fast as
27:05
Speaker 1: you possibly could. It's called speed cubing. Yes. And then
27:08
Speaker 1: a year after that they all got together, all the
27:11
Speaker 1: champions of the countries for the very first Rubik's Cube
27:14
Speaker 1: World Championship in Budapest, which is kind of cool. Um,
27:18
Speaker 1: And that's what has kept people going for so long,
27:20
Speaker 1: because there there's people are still trying to beat these records.
27:26
Speaker 1: I saw a kid and it's kind of hard to
27:28
Speaker 1: tell what the top times because they list the top
27:31
Speaker 1: times in these competitions. But I saw a kid on
27:34
Speaker 1: YouTube do it in like six seconds or four or
27:36
Speaker 1: five seconds. I saw one do it in three point
27:40
Speaker 1: four seven. Yeah, I don't know how, like how it's
27:44
Speaker 1: officially judged though there's a timer, um and one of
27:49
Speaker 1: those there's one of those mats that you keep your
27:51
Speaker 1: hands on, But like, why does it say that that
27:55
Speaker 1: those aren't world records? Then? I don't know. That's what
27:59
Speaker 1: I saw was the world record was in two thousand eighteen.
28:02
Speaker 1: It was three point four seven seconds by Yu Shang
28:05
Speaker 1: Yu Shang do sorry of China. So you've seen other
28:07
Speaker 1: things listed. I just don't know if there's like the
28:11
Speaker 1: bodies aren't speaking to one another or what. Maybe it's
28:14
Speaker 1: that was a a non championship uh time sanctioned event
28:23
Speaker 1: or even even maybe it was a qualifier or something
28:25
Speaker 1: like that. So it doesn't count as the world record
28:28
Speaker 1: unless you get whatever time is done at the World
28:31
Speaker 1: championship that's considered the world record. Who knows. It's crazy
28:35
Speaker 1: to see how fast these kids and it's usually kids
28:37
Speaker 1: that win, um, I guess with their little nimble fingers
28:42
Speaker 1: and brain sponges. Uh it's crazy how fast they're doing.
28:46
Speaker 1: It doesn't look real. It looks like some sort of
28:48
Speaker 1: weird faked video. Yeah. And here's the other thing too.
28:50
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned brain sponges because it is like
28:53
Speaker 1: a um, an intellectual pursuit. Like from the beginning of this,
28:58
Speaker 1: this toy's release in nine teen eighty, like they win
29:01
Speaker 1: a different route, like you're saying it doesn't require batteries.
29:04
Speaker 1: It was you know, um, it doesn't make a noise
29:07
Speaker 1: or anything like that, so they went a different route
29:09
Speaker 1: in advertising it. And so this is an intelligent game,
29:12
Speaker 1: like I'm sure Isaac Newton discovered gravity, but could he
29:15
Speaker 1: solve a Rubik's cube? You know, So they really kind
29:18
Speaker 1: of play that up. And it's true because these kids
29:20
Speaker 1: who are solving or people who are solving Rubik's cubes
29:24
Speaker 1: super fast. It's not just like look or their fingers
29:27
Speaker 1: are just moving forward them. They have memorized hundreds, if
29:30
Speaker 1: not thousands, of these algorithms and have gotten to the
29:34
Speaker 1: point where they can look at a cube and figure
29:37
Speaker 1: out which algorithm is going to solve it the fastest,
29:40
Speaker 1: and then when the time starts, they can also move
29:42
Speaker 1: their fingers really really quick and that's how they're getting
29:45
Speaker 1: these amazing times. It's not just speed and dexterity, it's
29:49
Speaker 1: also knowing what algorithm is going to work best. Yeah,
29:53
Speaker 1: for sure, you know, it died out pretty quickly, like
29:57
Speaker 1: most fad toys. Um, once you sell a lot of these,
30:01
Speaker 1: you don't need another one unless you break yours or something.
30:04
Speaker 1: So it's kind of one of those things where and
30:06
Speaker 1: which is again why it flew in the face of
30:08
Speaker 1: the toy industry because they couldn't sell ancillary products alongside it.
30:12
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, it died out pretty quickly in
30:15
Speaker 1: the championship. Uh two was the last one for about
30:19
Speaker 1: twenty years until the Internet comes along and all of
30:23
Speaker 1: a sudden there are people posting faster times than ever
30:26
Speaker 1: before than twenty years earlier. And in two thousand three,
30:30
Speaker 1: UM in Canada, there was a speed cuber named Dan
30:34
Speaker 1: Gosby who organized a competition in Toronto. And this is
30:39
Speaker 1: where they're getting it down to, like twenty seconds, and
30:42
Speaker 1: they have different categories like blindfolded, fewest moves, one handed,
30:46
Speaker 1: feet feet feet dude. Last year someone did it in
30:50
Speaker 1: twenty three seconds by foot, which was about the quickest
30:54
Speaker 1: time by hand at the first competition, Yes, and it
30:57
Speaker 1: took them longer to figure out that they had solved
31:00
Speaker 1: it then it did to actually solve it because they
31:02
Speaker 1: had to use a stick to turn the Rubik's cube
31:04
Speaker 1: over because they had used their feet to solve it.
31:08
Speaker 1: And I think, uh, when you participate, it didn't pay
31:11
Speaker 1: off as well as I thought it would. Sight. Uh,
31:14
Speaker 1: you get fifteen seconds to look at the cube over.
31:18
Speaker 1: Um they are all started. Uh, like the cubes are
31:21
Speaker 1: all started the same with like a computer generated random scramble.
31:26
Speaker 1: It's just fair. You get that fifteen seconds, you check
31:28
Speaker 1: it out, you set it on your mat, and then
31:31
Speaker 1: you go and it's just like I said, it's amazing
31:35
Speaker 1: to see these things done in like sub four seconds. Yeah,
31:37
Speaker 1: because they're there. I mean their hands actually do kind
31:40
Speaker 1: of blur, like you can't really follow where their hands
31:42
Speaker 1: are at any given time. They barely touch the rubrics cube.
31:45
Speaker 1: And they're using To be fair, they're using specialized speed cubes.
31:49
Speaker 1: They're not just using like off the shelf rubrics cubes.
31:52
Speaker 1: We'll talk about those, go ahead, talk about them. Sure. Yeah.
31:56
Speaker 1: So so people go to the trouble of getting a
31:58
Speaker 1: speed cube. It's like, you know, you can get one
32:01
Speaker 1: for you can get a good one from what I understand,
32:03
Speaker 1: for about seventies seventy five bucks. And these things are
32:06
Speaker 1: literally well oiled machines that are just super fast. Some
32:11
Speaker 1: of them use magnets so that you can tell when
32:14
Speaker 1: they're snapped into place, and um, they move a lot
32:17
Speaker 1: more easily and quickly. Um. There you can just look
32:20
Speaker 1: at and be like, that's a high end Rubik's cube
32:22
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah. Like you can pay to get your
32:25
Speaker 1: cube serviced, uh and checked out at speed cube shop.
32:30
Speaker 1: So someone will take it apart, a technician and they
32:33
Speaker 1: will look at each of those little cubs for defects
32:36
Speaker 1: and like, has it got a little bump here that
32:38
Speaker 1: will slow it down? They'll smooth that out, like you said,
32:41
Speaker 1: Sometimes they use magnets, um. And one of the reasons
32:45
Speaker 1: for the magnets is it creates that snap when a
32:48
Speaker 1: turn is completed. Because if you want to move these
32:50
Speaker 1: things really fast, you don't want it to be you know,
32:54
Speaker 1: even if it's an eighth of an inch out of whack,
32:56
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to turn it the other way.
32:59
Speaker 1: So you want it to snap up and lock into place. Uh,
33:03
Speaker 1: you know, you want it's just amazing, how how engineered
33:08
Speaker 1: these things have become. What in these speed cubing competitions, right, well,
33:11
Speaker 1: I mean just to keep up, you've gotta you've gotta
33:14
Speaker 1: get yourself a speed cube. If you showed up, like
33:16
Speaker 1: to an actual competition with just a regular Rubik's cube,
33:20
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'd be laughed out of place,
33:22
Speaker 1: but they would. They would certainly feel bad for you.
33:26
Speaker 1: You know. What they should do is like because you know,
33:29
Speaker 1: I remember them loosening up really well and getting faster
33:32
Speaker 1: just because you played with it more. Instead of giving
33:35
Speaker 1: everyone speed cubes and trying to get this ultra red
33:38
Speaker 1: Bull record, which they sponsor the events now by the way, Uh,
33:43
Speaker 1: they should give everyone like out of the package. Make
33:46
Speaker 1: it as hard as possible. I agree. I think that
33:48
Speaker 1: there would be some um, you know, preteens who are
33:52
Speaker 1: really high strung that would cry if they were confronted
33:55
Speaker 1: with that challenge, if they had to put their speed
33:57
Speaker 1: cube down. Yeah, they'd be like, this is not fair.
33:59
Speaker 1: No one prepared me in my life for this. I
34:02
Speaker 1: did mention Red Bull because it was kind of controversial
34:05
Speaker 1: for many years. Uh, the Rubics World Championships, Uh, we're
34:11
Speaker 1: co hosted by the World Cube Association with the support
34:15
Speaker 1: of the brand. But then clearly some money changed hands
34:19
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. That was the Red Bull
34:21
Speaker 1: Rubik's Cube World Championship. Uh you know, red Bull got involved,
34:25
Speaker 1: the brand, Rubik got involved, which means there was money
34:28
Speaker 1: changing hands. You're really fascinated with that money changing hands,
34:32
Speaker 1: aren't too? Well? I mean sure, because it was I
34:34
Speaker 1: think everyone saw it as for what it was, which was,
34:36
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's a corporate sponsor attached to it. Yeah,
34:39
Speaker 1: and that that is like a pretty important point because
34:42
Speaker 1: like this was there was already a World Championship and
34:44
Speaker 1: it was like a grassroots organization that had grown up
34:47
Speaker 1: since two thousand and three and they were doing really well,
34:50
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, fifteen years later, red
34:52
Speaker 1: Bull comes along attached to the Rubik's Brain is like,
34:55
Speaker 1: out of the way, nerds, this is the real one.
34:58
Speaker 1: And so apparently, um, it was a there was a
35:00
Speaker 1: lot of controversy, like you were saying, but um, now
35:03
Speaker 1: they kind of coexist and the Red Bull Rubics sponsored
35:06
Speaker 1: one changed their name from World Championship to World Cup
35:11
Speaker 1: so that they don't step on each other's feet. At all.
35:12
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, that's a pretty big
35:14
Speaker 1: win for this grassroots world cubing association to to be
35:19
Speaker 1: able to keep their original name and not have to
35:21
Speaker 1: change their name. You know, Hats off to them. Hats
35:25
Speaker 1: off indeed. So um one of the uh the the
35:30
Speaker 1: things that I said about the Rubik's cube, Chuck is
35:34
Speaker 1: that it's got a lot of layers too, and there's
35:36
Speaker 1: a lot of surprising math involved. Specifically, there is a
35:39
Speaker 1: kind of algebra called UM group theory, and um one
35:45
Speaker 1: of the one of the things that has long kind
35:47
Speaker 1: of fascinated mathematicians is that there is somewhere in there
35:52
Speaker 1: a a number of moves, there's an algorithm that has
35:57
Speaker 1: or there's a number of moves associated with any number
35:59
Speaker 1: of algorithms. Man, I'm making this way harder than it
36:02
Speaker 1: actually is. Where it represents the maximum number of moves
36:07
Speaker 1: you would need to use to solve any configuration, any
36:11
Speaker 1: of the forty three quintillion configurations of a Rubik's cube.
36:16
Speaker 1: And some people figured out that this number must exist,
36:19
Speaker 1: and brother they got obsessed with it. From to two
36:23
Speaker 1: thousand ten, some people almost set a building full of
36:27
Speaker 1: Rubik's cubes on fire yeah. I mean they've really researched
36:31
Speaker 1: this stuff to the point where, uh, like computer scientists
36:35
Speaker 1: are looking into this. There was a guy, uh named
36:38
Speaker 1: Thomas rakiki Um who got that the upper limit down
36:42
Speaker 1: to twenty two moves and this is like Google is
36:45
Speaker 1: helping him out with the processing power. So they call
36:49
Speaker 1: it God's algorithm. I mean, in the case of Rubik's cube,
36:53
Speaker 1: um they got down to twenty is where they landed, right, Yeah,
36:58
Speaker 1: But God's algorithm can be used for any uzzle really,
37:01
Speaker 1: uh you know, and that is and why do they
37:04
Speaker 1: call it God's algorithm? It's what how God would solve
37:07
Speaker 1: the puzzle. So from what I saw is God's God's
37:10
Speaker 1: number is that the maximum number of moves that God
37:13
Speaker 1: would require to solve any configuration of the puzzle. Got
37:20
Speaker 1: a little confusing in this article because it's a bit
37:24
Speaker 1: of a brain trick. It's like the fewest moves, but
37:28
Speaker 1: it's a maximum number of moves right right exactly. It's
37:31
Speaker 1: it's hard to wrap your mind around. And then there's
37:34
Speaker 1: actually fewer moves for other algorithms. So I saw God's
37:39
Speaker 1: number is actually probably more like somewhere between nineteen and twenty.
37:43
Speaker 1: But because there are algorithms out there that have to
37:47
Speaker 1: be done in no less than twenty moves. That's still
37:51
Speaker 1: God's number. And there's also the Devil's number. I saw
37:54
Speaker 1: it too, which is the number of moves in an
37:56
Speaker 1: algorithm that it would take to go through all forty
38:01
Speaker 1: three plus quintillion um configurations before you solve it. Which
38:07
Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty good name for that one. Yeah,
38:10
Speaker 1: now that's the one that they're on the trail of now.
38:13
Speaker 1: But they're they're done at twenty, right, they are. But
38:15
Speaker 1: I think I think it's interesting that that we're not
38:18
Speaker 1: entirely certain. It's not like, okay, this has been proven,
38:22
Speaker 1: it's done. What the reason why they arrived at twenties
38:25
Speaker 1: because they actually built an algorithm to try to solve
38:28
Speaker 1: these algorithms. They taught an AI basically how to play
38:32
Speaker 1: Rubik's Cuba. They said, here's a Rubik's Cuba teacherself, and
38:36
Speaker 1: then they had it play just just some mind numbing
38:40
Speaker 1: number of different Rubik's cubes hands trying to solve it,
38:45
Speaker 1: and it kept coming up with twenty and so it
38:47
Speaker 1: came up with twenty enough times that they're like, well,
38:49
Speaker 1: our computer God has told us that twenty is the
38:52
Speaker 1: is God's number. So there you have it. But we
38:55
Speaker 1: no one, It wasn't proven, it wasn't solved. It was
38:58
Speaker 1: just like, this thing is so so smart that we're
39:00
Speaker 1: just gonna go with twenty. So someone still working on
39:03
Speaker 1: it then, probably, I guess, but I think I get
39:05
Speaker 1: the impression that they have moved on to the devil's number. So,
39:10
Speaker 1: as you would imagine, with the toy of this caliber,
39:12
Speaker 1: they were bound to be other people saying they invented it,
39:15
Speaker 1: and patent battles would ensue, and of course this was
39:18
Speaker 1: the case with the Rubik's Cube. Uh in ninety seven,
39:22
Speaker 1: when Rubict got his Hungarian patent for the magic Cube,
39:26
Speaker 1: there was another inventor named Larry Nichols who had already
39:29
Speaker 1: patented something very similar in the US. Isn't that amazing? Yeah,
39:34
Speaker 1: this was in nineteen seventy two, but his was for
39:36
Speaker 1: a two by two by two cube, a three by
39:39
Speaker 1: three by three, still same concept, And at first he
39:43
Speaker 1: was like, this is this is hilarious. You know, I
39:46
Speaker 1: had the same idea, and now it's become a national craze.
39:48
Speaker 1: It's kind of satisfying. And somebody said, do you have
39:50
Speaker 1: any idea. How much money you are losing out on
39:53
Speaker 1: right now? You should sue? He said, Oh my gosh,
39:55
Speaker 1: you're right, I should sue. And I get the impression
39:58
Speaker 1: that either the company he worked for or the company
40:00
Speaker 1: he sold the patent to really lead the charge in
40:03
Speaker 1: suing for this patent infringement. Um. But he had a
40:07
Speaker 1: pretty good case. I mean, he had invented it and
40:09
Speaker 1: patented it years before. It was just the number of
40:13
Speaker 1: cubes involved was smaller. Yeah, I mean there was another
40:16
Speaker 1: guy too, a guy named Frank Frank Fox, I thinking
40:18
Speaker 1: seventy four. He actually did the three by three by three,
40:22
Speaker 1: but he let his patent laps, whereas Nichols did not.
40:26
Speaker 1: And those people like you were talking about that he
40:29
Speaker 1: that actually owned nichols patent were called uh Molecular Research Corporation.
40:34
Speaker 1: That sounds scary yeah and ligitious. Yeah, yeah they do.
40:38
Speaker 1: So I want to point out, though, it's definitely worth
40:41
Speaker 1: saying out right, there is no evidence, and I don't
40:44
Speaker 1: think anyone's ever leveled in accusation that Erno Rubic stole
40:48
Speaker 1: this idea. It was just arrived at independently, and he
40:53
Speaker 1: was working behind the iron curtain at the time too,
40:56
Speaker 1: So the chances of any exposure are pretty low. It
40:59
Speaker 1: was just some people kind of came up with the
41:01
Speaker 1: same idea at the same time. And erno Rubik's is
41:04
Speaker 1: the one that hit trite. A federal district court ruled
41:08
Speaker 1: in favor of Moleculon, but then in eighty six and
41:12
Speaker 1: appeals court overturned that, saying only that two by two
41:15
Speaker 1: by two uh Rubik's cube because they started making different variations. Um,
41:20
Speaker 1: they made a smaller one that they said in French.
41:22
Speaker 1: In fact, I remember now I had a little guy
41:25
Speaker 1: on a car key for a short time. Oh yeah,
41:27
Speaker 1: I remember that. I'm not mistaken. But then in nineteen
41:30
Speaker 1: eighty nine, another appeals court upheld the previous appeals court decision.
41:35
Speaker 1: I should I should say. I read an article by
41:37
Speaker 1: that guy uh Nichols who had the original patent, and
41:41
Speaker 1: they were like, you know you, I think they were
41:43
Speaker 1: suing for like fifty million or something, and there were
41:45
Speaker 1: you satisfied with the outcome? He said, yeah, I was satisfied.
41:48
Speaker 1: He's like, I got enough to put both of my
41:50
Speaker 1: kids through Harvard, so I'm pretty happy with that. And um,
41:54
Speaker 1: you know, like he invented this thing that he was
41:56
Speaker 1: able to send his kid through Harvard with you know, yeah,
42:00
Speaker 1: that's always interesting when someone wins something like that. But
42:05
Speaker 1: it wasn't like stolen from him, right, It was just
42:09
Speaker 1: he had the patent first and they agreed. You know
42:12
Speaker 1: What's what's even crazier that makes that story just absolutely insane.
42:16
Speaker 1: He had approached Ideal toys with and they had not
42:19
Speaker 1: bought it, And then they went on years later to
42:22
Speaker 1: buy um the the Erno Rubic version. Yeah, they put
42:27
Speaker 1: out a bunch of difference. They made big ones, like
42:30
Speaker 1: the tiny ones I just talked about. I remember I
42:32
Speaker 1: had a snake. I did too, and I had no
42:35
Speaker 1: idea what to do with that. I just played with
42:36
Speaker 1: it like it was a snake. I did the same thing. Yeah,
42:39
Speaker 1: I just twisted around stuff. I still don't know what
42:41
Speaker 1: you were supposed to do with that thing. I think
42:43
Speaker 1: eventually the snake would be put together in some sort
42:46
Speaker 1: of a three dimensional octagon or something, if I remember
42:49
Speaker 1: for hexagon. Yeah, I was way off, but yeah, I
42:52
Speaker 1: didn't know how to I didn't even try to learn.
42:54
Speaker 1: I just kind of played with it. I taught mine
42:55
Speaker 1: did drink water. Mine drinks from a ups right, that's
43:02
Speaker 1: very rough. Wickham Uh, Erno Rubik is still alive and well.
43:06
Speaker 1: He lives in Hungary, still teaches architecture. Uh I imagine,
43:10
Speaker 1: has a boatload of money, so he's founded some multiple
43:13
Speaker 1: foundations with the conventers. It's very cool. Yeah, he has
43:18
Speaker 1: a boatload of money, so much so that his success
43:20
Speaker 1: story is considered by some to have been the thing
43:24
Speaker 1: that opened the gates to capitalism in Hungary. Amazing um.
43:29
Speaker 1: They also made him the president of the Hungarian Engineering
43:34
Speaker 1: Academy and he's still I think shows up once in
43:37
Speaker 1: a while to the World Championships and maybe the World Cup.
43:40
Speaker 1: I don't know. He didn't seem like a very controversial type.
43:43
Speaker 1: It seems like a good guy. And if you really
43:45
Speaker 1: want to go crazy, if you've solved a ton of
43:47
Speaker 1: Rubik's cubes, but this has kind of made your nostalgic
43:49
Speaker 1: to try something harder. They make a thirteen by thirteen
43:52
Speaker 1: by thirteen Rubik's Cube, and there's something else called the
43:56
Speaker 1: S Cube as K E W B and it is
44:00
Speaker 1: I don't even know what you're supposed to do with it.
44:03
Speaker 1: It's like the Snake times a trillion to me. And
44:06
Speaker 1: there's also a movie called Cube which is like Saw
44:10
Speaker 1: with math. Oh I saw that? Yeah, yeah, it has
44:13
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Rubik's cubes. And there's uh, The
44:17
Speaker 1: Pursuit of Happiness where Will Smith gets a job as
44:21
Speaker 1: a stockbroker because somebody sees him solve a Rubik's cuban
44:24
Speaker 1: something like two minutes or less. And apparently while he
44:27
Speaker 1: was promoting that movie he solved one in less than
44:31
Speaker 1: a minute himself in real life. You mean the movie
44:35
Speaker 1: The Pursuit of Halpwayness. Did they explain that in the movie.
44:40
Speaker 1: I'm sure I never saw it. I just always called
44:42
Speaker 1: it Hapwayness. Did you ever see that one where he
44:44
Speaker 1: was like super depressed in his his colleagues at work,
44:47
Speaker 1: like just gaslight him into thinking he's being visited by angels? No?
44:53
Speaker 1: I didn't. Did you see the one where he went
44:57
Speaker 1: he was from West Philadelphia and he went to live
44:59
Speaker 1: with his rich relative. Yeah, I did, as he dressed
45:04
Speaker 1: very colorfully. He was I think in bel Air. Uh
45:08
Speaker 1: what was it kill there? I think I was Santa Barbara.
45:11
Speaker 1: You're right, okay? Uh, Well, if you want to know
45:13
Speaker 1: more about Will Smith, you can type his name into
45:16
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And
45:18
Speaker 1: since I said Will Smith it's time for listener mail.
45:25
Speaker 1: I've got a coconut tree correction. Hey, guys, correction on
45:30
Speaker 1: something said during the episode The Cult of the Coconut
45:34
Speaker 1: when you guys talked about the culpa rishka. First of all,
45:40
Speaker 1: it's not pronounced that way. Uh, it is pronounced culpa rushka.
45:45
Speaker 1: But we were way off, all right, She says, Uh,
45:50
Speaker 1: rushka or rushka depending on transliteration, simply means tree in Sanskrit. Okay.
45:56
Speaker 1: Also always mispronounced by people in the West. By the way,
45:59
Speaker 1: Oh well, I don't feel that bad. Yeah, exactly correct
46:01
Speaker 1: pronunciation is uh sounds screwed. Now she's saying sanscrit as
46:07
Speaker 1: always mispronounced. Oh oh, I see, so it's sand screwed.
46:11
Speaker 1: Sounds cruteus like as best I can convey. That's what
46:17
Speaker 1: she says. Wow, okay, yeah, I've always said sanscrit. This
46:20
Speaker 1: person is a real really into words though, and very smart. Second,
46:25
Speaker 1: the coconut tree is just one of the trees considered
46:28
Speaker 1: a how do you pronounce it again, college called cold
46:33
Speaker 1: cold cook screw cock. Uh huh. There you getting you
46:35
Speaker 1: nailed it. Not because it is all you need to survive, though,
46:40
Speaker 1: but because every single part of the coconut tree is
46:42
Speaker 1: useful to humans, the bark that leaves, the fibers, and
46:45
Speaker 1: of course the coconuts and their entirety. This concept is
46:48
Speaker 1: tied closely with why Indians culturally revere certain animals e g.
46:54
Speaker 1: Cow and plants and trees e g. Banyan and coconut. Okay,
47:01
Speaker 1: I've noticed on the podcast how you too often go
47:02
Speaker 1: out of your way to correctly pronounce words or names
47:05
Speaker 1: in foreign languages like we were, which is something I
47:09
Speaker 1: appreciate as a bicultural uh penta lingual individual. Perhaps you
47:14
Speaker 1: could explain your efforts to include not just Western languages,
47:17
Speaker 1: but Eastern languages too. After all, sal Screwed belongs to
47:22
Speaker 1: the same language group as German. If you think about it,
47:24
Speaker 1: I think it would be true to the spirit of
47:26
Speaker 1: your show. Guys, keep up the good work. And that
47:29
Speaker 1: is from Ruta our duty A Did Ruta say, did
47:33
Speaker 1: she sign off with later lamos? No, thanks a lot, Ruta. Yeah.
47:38
Speaker 1: It's not like we're like, oh, we'll only go to
47:40
Speaker 1: the trouble of pronouncing something in German or French, which
47:43
Speaker 1: by the way, we don't very often, and we thought
47:46
Speaker 1: we were pronouncing it correctly in the Eastern languages. So sorry, Ruda,
47:50
Speaker 1: I didn't know what sand screwed. I had no idea,
47:53
Speaker 1: not just us chuck. Like a million people just learned that. Yeah,
47:59
Speaker 1: close to a mill. I agree. Uh well, thanks a
48:02
Speaker 1: lot again, Bruta. And if you want to get in
48:04
Speaker 1: touch with us, like Ruda did, you can go to
48:06
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know dot com and check out our
48:08
Speaker 1: social links, or you can send us a good old
48:10
Speaker 1: fashioned email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
48:18
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios
48:20
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
48:23
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
48:25
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows