adventures in cubing

So, I’ve been at this cubing thing for about a couple days now, having started Thanksgiving morning. What compelled me to give it a go is a bit of a mystery. But, if I had to, I suppose I’d blame the confluence of (1) the sudden surfacing of a cube from the back of a drawer, (2) an extra couple days off work, and (3) a fair bit of escapism (from the craziness that becomes Thanksgiving get-togethers). I’ve always enjoyed intellectual challenges, and this struck me as the challenge par excellence. No longer the owner of one of those spongy pre-adolescent brains that absorbs languages in the blink of an eye, I figured my hardened post-college, post-law school, post-kids brain could benefit from some unusual exercise.

I assumed there would be dozens of good tutorials on the internet. Dozens the net does indeed boast, but most aren’t that great. Frustrated, I finally stumbled onto a fantastic set of youtube videos by RobH0629. It took a couple hours of viewing and practicing to get down the basics and to scribble the algorithms into a cheat sheet that “made them my own.” Then, after a detour to help cook the bird, I managed this first on-camera solve — in a mere six-minutes! (Don’t worry: I sped up the video).

As I write this post a couple months later, I scoff at six minutes. But, gee, did I feel proud of myself that day!