Why I Started Cubing
Dominic (10, Philippines)
During the late months of 2016, cubing became popular in our school. Colby, my classmate became the first cuber in our class. He amazed my classmates and I by solving the cube in less than a minute. Some of our classmates such as Kyle, Marty and I were inspired by him and wanted to solve the cube that fast too. Colby, being Marty’s good friend, taught him to solve the 3×3 cube. Kyle learned fast and he soon knew how to fix the puzzle. I somehow could not do it. I often complained about how the instructions didn’t make sense to me.
During the Christmas party, our school gave each of us a cube and some other goodies. My first cube wasn’t of the Rubik’s brand and that was the first cube that I started to fidget with. I scrambled it, and tried to solve it, but I couldn’t even solve one side. Around two to three weeks later, I got another cube as a Christmas present from my classmate. So I decided to give away my first cube to my 6 year old younger brother. As I was playing with my new cube, I accidentally scrambled it again. Because of this, my eagerness in learning to solve this became greater.
So I came to see my father for help. He agreed and apparently was also interested in playing with the cube. After a week, he learned to solve it through the help of instructional videos from YouTube. In his learning process, he listed down the algorithms in a step by step manner into a notebook I gave him. Night after night, we would work on each step. I tried not only to memorize the algorithms but also understand how the logic works. After a few nights, it finally happened – I solved the first step! And so I continued to work on the second step, and then to the third. But still, I couldn’t completely solve the entire cube. On occasions when the written instructions were not helpful, I tried to look into YouTube videos to see for myself how there could be other solutions.
The breakthrough happened when I got sick and needed to skip school for about 2 days. I had nothing to do at home, and all I can think of is solving the cube! And so I worked on solving the cube for almost the entire day! And that time when I should be a resting, I finally figured out how to solve the cube! From that day on, my hands were almost always with the cube. I have always tried to look for better and shorter ways of solving it. By far, my fastest time to solve a randomly scrambled cube is 27 sec. I have already started working on a 4×4, and was able to learn how to completely solve one in about a few hours time. Solving the cube will always be a fascinating and relaxing activity that I will always enjoy and cherish.