Problems only seem impossible

Patron saint of speedcubers who can decode the Rubik8217;s Cube in seconds, Jessica Fridrich loves a challenge

Patron saint of speedcubers who can decode the Rubik8217;s Cube in seconds, Jessica Fridrich loves a challenge
8220;It8217;s a little plastic toy,8221; said Jessica Fridrich, tossing a Rubik8217;s Cube between her long-fingered hands on a stormy afternoon in her office at Binghamton University, her fingernails painted with a pastel pink gloss. But the little toy has made a big comeback. For a thriving subculture of people who try to solve the cube as fast as possible, Fridrich is a pioneer and a patron saint. She forged what remains arguably the world8217;s most common strategy for speed-solving the puzzle, and appeared in a documentary about the Rubik8217;s Cube released this fall.

Fridrich first cracked the colourful walls of the Rubik8217;s Cube in 1981 as a teenager living in a Czech coal mining city. Few people will spend decades decoding a plastic block, no matter how mathematically intricate. But few people are as tenacious as the architect of

8220;The Fridrich Method8221;, a roadmap that requires a speedcuber to memorise and unleash at least 53 algorithms, each of which is a series of turns of the cube8217;s rows and columns in a given sequence.

For Fridrich, tackling an impossible puzzle is not a hobby, and the Rubik8217;s Cube is not simply a game. They are obsessions. Trapped in Czechoslovakia until the Velvet Revolution made possible her migration to the US for doctoral study, Fridrich, self-taught in differential and integral calculus, sketched out a solution to the Rubik8217;s Cube in a tattered notebook even before she owned one.

Fridrich, 44, an electrical engineering professor, is frequently confronted at academic conferences and asked to solve the cube on the spot. She fields e-mail messages from 13-year-olds in Japan and has inspired scores of YouTube videos from cube enthusiasts riffing on her method, which was propagated on the Internet in the late 1990s when the puzzle saw a resurgence.

8220;She chose the basic route, the direction we would take up the mountain,8221; said Dan Knights, winner of the 2003 World Rubik8217;s Cube Championship Fridrich placed second. 8220;And other people are finding different ways from one ledge to another.8221; Knights, 29, used the Fridrich Method to win the 2003 competition after seeking her out as a mentor four years earlier. He took a year off from college to learn her techniques.

The Fridrich Method requires first solving the top two layers of the three-tiered Rubik8217;s Cube, selecting the face with the central white square as the roof. Each face has a middle square of a distinct colour attached to the cube8217;s central joint that dictates the colour the face will be when solved. The crux of the Fridrich Method lies in solving the third and last layer of the cube without compromising the colour scheme put into place in the initial steps.

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To solve the third layer, the speedcuber must assemble all of the yellow squares on the bottom face by applying one of 40 algorithms in a phase called 8220;orientation8221;. The cuber must instantly recognise which algorithm to apply. In the final step, permutation, one of 13 algorithms restores the cube8217;s chromatic harmony, one colour per face.

The world8217;s fastest speedcubers, including Fridrich, know more than 100 algorithms to whisk the cube to its solution. When Fridrich got her first cube, left behind by family friends visiting from France, she began to improvise, cubing faster and faster to beat record times from Prague, Hungary and the US printed in newspapers. By the time the Czech national championship took place in 1982, Fridrich was one of the fastest speedcubers in the country. She won the championship, solving the cube in less than 23 and a half seconds8212;a time that would now be laughably long in international competition8212;going onto place 10th in the first world championship in Budapest.

After earning her master8217;s degree, she was building mathematical models of rock deformation at a mining institute when she was recruited by a professor from Binghamton who heard about her mastery of the cube and her grades at the Czech Technical University in Prague. After a brief meeting in which she described her cube algorithms, he asked her to apply for the doctoral programme in systems sciences. A year later, she arrived in Binghamton, where she has lived ever since.

In her research in digital forensics, Fridrich uses computers to tackle another seemingly intractable puzzle: matching a photograph with the individual camera that took it. Law enforcement agencies plan to use the techniques to track down child pornographers and movie pirates. 8220;She looks at a problem that seems insolvable,8221; said George J. Klir, the retired professor who recruited her 18 years ago. 8220;And she finds a way to solve it, again and again.8221;

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Fridrich was drawn to 8220;camera ballistics8221; because of its inscrutable mysteries, similar to those the Rubik8217;s Cube held in the early 8217;80s. 8220;It was very visual,8221; she said. 8220;Usually when you develop an algorithm or a formula you cannot really see it.8221;

Today, Fridrich said, the cube has been 8220;optimised to death,8221; and holds little allure8212;even though she still keeps nearly 20 of the plastic puzzles scattered around her office and home. Dexterity once defined Fridrich, who uses just six fingers to hunt and peck on her keyboard. She has been far surpassed by speedcubers with records of 14, 13 and 10 seconds, some of whom can solve the cube blindfolded after studying it for less than a minute. 8220;Today I would probably be in 20th or 30th place,8221; she said. 8220;I am letting it go because I think it8217;s time for others to succeed.8221;
_BINA VENKATARAMAN,NYT