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It may look like a painting from a distance, but Pete Fecteau’s mosaic is actually more than four thousand carefully arranged Rubik’s Cubes. His appropriately named “Dream Big” project took a year to complete, but it looks like that was time well-spent.
Link -via DVICE | Photo: Paul L. Newby II
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Sure, David Calvo can solve a Rubik’s Cube under these somewhat challenging conditions. But can he do it when, say, the three cubes are on fire? That I would like to see.
-via Geekosystem | Calvo’s Website
Instructables user makendo built this magnificent Rubik’s Cube for his kids. The three horizontal layers rotate on a vertical axis. If you can figure out where the hidden locks are, you can open the drawers. So this is definitely not the place to store the fire extinguisher.
Watch a video of the cube at the link.
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Prop maker Chris Myles, the man behind those marvelous lemon grenades, devised several functional Rubik’s Cubes that look like Weighted Companion Cubes. Lambert Varias of Technabob asks “What’s next Chris? A GLaDOS Speak & Spell?” Yes, please!
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Sure, you could decorate the exterior of a cubical cake so that it looks like a Rubik’s Cube from the outside, but Vicky McDonald went beyond that goal for her cake in honor of Erno Rubik’s birthday. As you slice her cake, it continues to look like a Rubik’s Cube, with varying interior colors. She provides instructions on how to make one at the link.
After posting this marvelous creation, she received an email from Rubik himself:
Thanks for the nice birthday surprise which sweetens the bitterness of passing time.
Link -via The Mary Sue
Previously: Rubik’s Cube Cake
Mr Whaite made this animated image of Stanley Kubrick and his films patterned after a Rubik’s cube.
Kubrick’s films are meticulously pieced together like intricate puzzles, so this seems like an appropriate way to portray the great director – hidden within his own work. Also, Kubrick rhymes with Rubik and I’m a sucker for wordplay.
Also available as a print for film lovers. Link -via Buzzfeed
If you were around in the 80′s, you had a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. I hated those things and always resorted to pulling the stickers off to win in frustration. Some students from Swinburne University of Technology created a robot that can solve the puzzle in 10.69 seconds. That under 11-second time includes time for scanning the faces of the cube and having the algorithm process the scans to solve the cube. link
What do you get when you combine Tetris with Rubik’s Cube? I can only imagine how long this clever YouTube clip by BananaNeil must’ve taken him to make!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Have You Seen This?
How do you multiply the frustration of Sudoku? Just add a little bit of Rubik’s Cube and voilà! Welcome double frustration with this: Sudoku Rubik’s Cube.
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Artist Jason Freeny made this fully functional Rubik’s Cube puzzle shaped like a brain. Presumably some knowledge of anatomy is essential to solving it.
Link via Super Punch
Previously by Jason Freeny:
The Anatomy of Nemo
Gingerbread Man Dissection
Dutch puzzle maker Oskar van Deventer designed this mindblender. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube, but has 17 cubes on an edge instead of 3:
When Oskar heard of the world records being set for twisty puzzles, like the 7x7x7, 9x9x9 and 11x11x11 by Panagiotis Verdes from Greece, he wanted to try his hand at setting a new record himself. With sponsorship from his close friend Claus Wenicker, Oskar set about designing and testing a number of prototypes, and his third attempt was printed successfully with Shapeways. Sorting and dyeing all 1539 pieces took Oskar 10 hours of work, followed by 5 hours of assembling. The result is an oversized (140 millimeter, 5.5 inches) and fully functioning “Over The Top” 17x17x17 puzzle.
It currently sells for just over $2,000.
Link via Technabob | Photos: Shapeways
Yu-Hsiang “Shaun” Chung is an artist specializing in typography. He made a movable wooden Rubik’s Cube that can be used as a stamp:
Chinese has a long history with the printing. In 105 AD, Cai Lun invented the paper. In 200 AD, the Chinese invention of Woodblock printing produced the world’s first print culture. In 1040, Bi Sheng invented the first known movable type technology. Therefore, I want to use a Chinese text for my cube. The text I used for my cube is called “Three Character Classic.” It is a traditional Chinese text that teaches young children to be a good person in the society. The text is written in triplets of characters for easy memorization, which is perfect for the cube since the cube is 3 by 3 on every side. The text is written by Wang Yinglin during the Song Dynasty, so I used a font called “Song,” which is correspond to the Song Dynasty when a distinctive printed style of regular script was developed.
How many different ways can you have your Rubik’s cube? How about gigantic, minuscule, tasty, expensive, monochrome, round, electronic… and many more variations on the ’80s puzzle. See them at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
Evgeniy Grigoriev created a record-breaking 10 mm Rubik’s Cube. The previous record was a cube measuring 12 mm across. It’s fully functional, and you can watch a video of it being solved.
Link and Video via Gizmodo | Photo: Twisty Puzzles
YouTube user KleinerLudewig jumped out of an airplane at 4,300 meters while sitting in a small rubber boat and solved a Rubik’s Cube in 31.5 seconds. He finished at 2,500 meters and then deployed his parachute.
via Nerdcore | Previously: Man Solves Rubik’s Cube Puzzle in 11.1 Seconds
Hollywood
loves adaptations - indeed, sometimes adapting books, plays, and musicals
work extremely well (like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter
and countless others). Sometimes they fail (I'm looking at you, The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).
Sometimes, these adaptations are very, very strange. Here's a compilation of 10 of the strangest film and TV adaptations to ever happen by Geekscape. For example, take "Rubik, The Amazing Cube" (1983):
You remember the toy. It's still in wide use today. A cubic puzzle with six sides, nine square facets on each side, was to be twisted an manipulated until all the colored sides matched. It is notoriously difficult, and remains a top-seller in toyshops nationwide. How can we base a TV show on this puzzle? Hm...
So, get this: A magician loses his enchanted Rubik's Cube. A quartet of children finds the cube, solve it, and, voila!, a small elf-like blue face appears on the cube, and squat blue feet grow out of its base! Holy shit! That thing is flipping terrifying! But no! It's your friend! It will cast spells and aid you in your adventures! But when it's dropped, it gets all mixed up again, and you have to solve it to get your monstrous little imp back!
I'm going to pass on my complaints about adapting an effing toy into a TV show for the time being, just so I can rant about how scary the cube monster is, and how unsettling the premise. Rubik looks like a mutated dwarf cemented into a box, and his little kid voice only adds to the fright. Watching the show only made me glad that I wasn't very good at solving Rubik's Cubes. I wouldn't want that thing to aid me on my adventures.
Link - Thanks Marcus!
There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible varying positions for the Rubik’s Cube. A team of mathematicians and programmers determined that all of them can be solved within 20 moves:
With about 35 CPU-years of idle computer time donated by Google, a team of researchers has essentially solved every position of the Rubik’s Cube™, and shown that no position requires more than twenty moves.
Every solver of the Cube uses an algorithm, which is a sequence of steps for solving the Cube. One algorithm might use a sequence of moves to solve the top face, then another sequence of moves to position the middle edges, and so on. There are many different algorithms, varying in complexity and number of moves required, but those that can be memorized by a mortal typically require more than forty moves.
Link via Popular Science | Photo by Flickr user huangjiahui used under Creative Commons license
This commercial for a British fruit juice brand shows a man rearranging the pieces of his head like they’re parts of a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. It was made by the ad agency CHI & Partners and directed by Ulf Johansson.
A newly-design Rubik’s cube seems to have one purpose: increase the number of people frustrated by the ever-popular Rubik’s cube.
Instead of colors, every square is covered with Braille, allowing the blind to endlessly turn cubes until eventually they throw their hands up in frustration.
This gives new meaning to putting a "stumbling block before the blind."
One of the more sensible concepts in a long time that hopefully will delight the sighted folks too! Maybe we’ll learn Braille in this process!
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by nmiller.
Artist Marshall Astor made a functional Rubik’s Cube out of bronze. He describes how the Cube is designed and how this complicated a project that would use plastic parts to move metal pieces. Astor also mused philosophical on the project:
In making a Rubik’s Cube with undifferentiated sides, I was attempting to remove the concept of solving or of having a purpose or goal from the Cube. I wanted to create an object that better reflected my own feelings about the Rubik’s Cube, and in a broader sense, about the fundamental nature of the Universe. I view the Universe – or all observable phenomena – to be a purely subjective concept, best defined as the intersecting agreement between all potential subjectivities. The Cube functions as a receiving object, by denuding it of it’s role as a puzzle, it becomes a more intellectually malleable object, and the physical action of operating the Cube has a more personal meaning.
Well, aside from that, what I found most interesting about the article was how the seemingly simple Rubik’s Cube is actually a very complex machine that is not easily duplicated in a medium other than plastic. You’ll find more pictures and a comprehensive guide to how he made it (including patination with his own urine) at the link.
Five artists from the art collective Cube Works in Toronto recreated Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper out of 4,050 cubes, in all measuring 8.5 by 17 feet. The work was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records and sold to a collector in Florida.
Link via Popped Culture | Artists’ Website (Warning: self-starting audio)
From the food blog Insanewiches:
The Rubix Cube has confounded us for years. Maybe the sandwich version of this puzzling brain teaser will do the same. The Rubix Cubewich contains cubes of pastrami, kielbasa, pork fat, salami, and two types of cheddar.
Link via Geekologie
If the Rubik’s cube is too easy for you, check out this puzzle created by Jason Smith of PuzzleForge, based on Andrew Cormier’s design. Behold, the Petaminx, a dodecahedral puzzle with 4 slices per face:
It is entirely custom built and contains almost 1000 moving parts.
This project took place over two months, including:
20 hours on masters and molds.
12 hours casting parts.
30 hours cleaning up parts and sanding (!!)
7 hours assembling all 1000 parts
6 hours stickering.
Also checkout the video clip of Andrew Cormier’s Teraminx – via Unique Daily
You’ve got to admire Graham Parker’s persistence: after 26 year’s worth of attempts, he has finally solved his Rubik’s cube:
Delighted Graham, 45, from Portchester, Hants, has been tirelessly trying to solve the riddle of the Cube since he bought the toy in 1983.
Married dad-of-one Graham has endured endless sleepless nights and after more than 27,400 hours he finally managed to conquer his personal Everest.
Builder Graham said: "I cannot tell you what a relief it was to finally solve it. It has driven me mad over the years – it felt like it had taken over my life. I have missed important events to stay in and solve it and I would lay awake at night thinking about it. Friends have offered to solve it for me and I know that you can find solutions on the web but I just had to do it myself. I have had wrist and back problems from spending hours on it but it was all worth it. When I clicked that last bit into place and each face was a solid colour I wept."
Hans Andersson bought a LEGO Mindstorms kit for his daughters, but got caught up in making this spectacular robot himself. Meet Tilted Twister, a LEGO robot that does what most of us can’t do: solve a Rubik’s cube all by itself!
Just place the scrambled cube on Tilted Twister’s turntable. An ultrasonic sensor detects its presence and starts to read the colors of the cube faces using a light sensor. The robot turns and tilts the cube in order to read all the faces. It then calculates a solution and executes the moves by turning, tilting and twisting the cube.
Link – Thanks Zecc!
