Rubiks cube Reloaded

Shick shick shick shick. After many hurried flicks of the wrist,Riley lifted his blindfold and smiled. He had solved the puzzle,in a total time of just over 2 minutes,34 seconds; not bad. Across the table,his father stopped filming and gave him a thumbs-up.

I just memorised each colour,and then you already know how to solve it,based on where each colour is, Riley said afterward.

A ton of algorithms,right? said his dad.

Yeah,not a lot of math, Riley agreed. Just algorithms.

In the 38 years since the Hungarian architecture professor Erno Rubik invented his cube,it has alternately been regarded as an object of fun,art,mathematics,nostalgia and frustration. It is an object that sets its own challenge,8221; Rubik said via email. Anybody blessed with the basic human senses can instantly get it.

As a primary-coloured offspring of the 1980s,the cube will forever be linked with fads like Pac-Man,neon leggings and Cyndi Lauper. Unlike those fascinations,the Rubiks Cube is enjoying a resurgence of popularity and,in a world increasingly run by engineers and algorithms,relevance.

Judging by the crowd at the 2012 World Cube Associations US National Championship over the weekend in Las Vegas,that excitement may be building. While a few older cubing icons,like Lars Petrus,the 1981 Swedish champion and creator of the Petrus Method,were on hand,nearly all the competitors were born decades after the cubes heyday.

And while most seemed to consider it a hobby rather than occupational training,the mental benefits did not escape them.

The maths of the cube,like group theory,dont really apply to many things, said Thom Barlow,24,a programmer from England,who develops systems for solving the cube as a hobby. But it teaches you how to practice something. Your brain starts to realise,Oh,I need to work on this, and thats how you get better.

There were speed solvers and blindfolded solvers and those who solve with their feet,though purists consider foot-solving an unbecoming gimmick tellingly,they were cordoned off in a far corner of the ballroom. Boys outnumbered girls by at least 4 to 1; the youngest competitor was 5.

More than a story of puzzle fanatics or math geeks,the cubes revival is a many-sided tale involving nostalgia,the internet and the actor Will Smith.

Fifteen years ago,the cube was in the closeout bin, said Joe Sequino,a spokesman for Winning Moves,the company that shares cube-manufacturing responsibilities in America,with Hasbro. Despite selling more than 350 million units in the early 1980s,the cube had long since passed into memory for all but a handful of hard-core puzzlers.

But with the advent of web video,fans got an opportunity to share their solving strategies. A new generation of puzzlers started catching on,and in 2004,a group calling itself the World Cube Association held the first speed-cubing tournament in more than 20 years,attended by 89 participants. It has since become an annual event,with about 300 competing in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile,children of the 1980s began seeking out cubes for their own offspringwho,unlike their parents,were more likely to enjoy a fruitful relationship with the puzzle thanks to the online resources. In some places,the cube is now a schoolyard fad.

In 2006,Hollywood delivered the final pop-culture push: Will Smiths brilliant but hard-luck character in The Pursuit of Happyness solves a Rubiks Cube in less than two minutes after seeing the toy for the first time.

That Rubiks scene was in the trailer,and it blew up from there, Sequino said. It was the perfect confluence of events,with the movie and with a new generation 27 years later getting turned on to the cube.

Sales of the cube,which were negligible in 2000,peaked in 2008 at 15 million globally,and have levelled off since then. Recent years have seen the arrival of more challenging cubes,with as many as six,seven or even 10 squares across,as well as odd shapes,like triangles or a dodecahedron.

In the past 14 months,Rubiks Cubes have been solved for the first time in space and atop Mount Everest. The American speed-cuber Anthony Michael Brooksknown for his one-handed solvingstars in a new Volkswagen commercial called You Cant Fake Fast.

And in a sign of how affectionately the cube is viewed in techie culture,Google in 2010 donated its computing resources to determine Gods number, the minimum number of moves required to solve the cube from any position. In 1980,it was thought to be 52; Googles computers place it

at 20.

At the end of the Vegas tournament,a few records had been set,including one by 16-year-old Deven Nadudvari of California. He solved each of five different 3-by-3 cubes with one hand in an average 14.86 seconds,setting a North American record.

I just practiced a lot for this competition, Deven said. Asked what about the cube appealed to him,he said,I just like it.