Saturday, March 16, 2013

Solving Rubik's Cube

Have you ever tried to solve Rubik's Cube?
Most of us at some point of the time has made an attempt to get that completely solved Cube. I was introduced to it long ago when I was a kid. I spent hours trying to solve it. One day, it was suddenly solved. I didn't know that how I reached there. It was a result of hours of patience. I was happy but I was also scared that if I disturb this cube now,  I might not be able to solve it again. Guess that was mistake. 
Anyway, years past and cube settled down some where in memory lane. Recently, my German friend found it at my home. Surprisingly he had never attempted to solve, so he was instantly glued to it. He wanted to solve it but didn't want to spend time on it. So, as obvious he went to Internet, found some sites showing how to solve the cube. Followed the steps and solved it with in an hour. 
That triggered the old memories and since then I wanted to solve it.  I remembered some of the initial steps so was able to successfully get through the first layer. Second layer is slightly tricky considering the fact you have to maintain one solved layer. It started taking my time. Now, there are things you require to be able to solve the Rubik's cube like intelligence, foresightedness, patience and time. I have some brain, but am not sure if I am intelligent. I have foresightedness to imagine up to 3-4 steps, but up to ten steps, no. I otherwise have good patience, but one thing I don't have much is undisturbed time.  
 That killed it. I wanted to solve it but was unable to give undivided attention and could not imagine a strategy  to solve second and third layer while keeping the solved part intact. My friend had shown me a gateway which I don't wanted to use. But ultimately I gave up. I had to get through this. I had to know the algorithm to solve the cube. I went some of the sites which my friend used. This is the site I initially followed:
It allowed me to get through the second layer. But as you reach the third layer, it becomes little difficult to follow the steps given. Towards the end of the cube, I found the steps given fail to give me a perfect cube. Call it my mistake or whatever, but this site isn't good enough to get you through.
So, I moved to another site:
Now this site is really good and simple. It actually show you how to make the moves and leaves nothing for imagination or wondering which is clockwise/anticlockwise etc. It makes solving cube much easy.
I was wondering if using internet was a good idea to solve the cubic. Frankly speaking, I would have loved to solve the cube on my own. But, lack of imagination up to say next 10 steps, lack of time to keep trying and making mistakes makes it too difficult. I am happy that a long awaited problem is finally solved for me. Now, I can take cube in my hand at any time and solve it. I have now learnt to imagine those steps in advance. Now I can move on to another problems. I was thinking to go for bigger cubes (4X4, 5X5). What do you say?

No comments: