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Selects: The Rubik's Cube Episode · Stuff You Should Know

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