Club has grip on the square

Visitors to the Orange County Fair may not have had a math lesson in

mind when they bought their tickets Saturday. However, algorithms

with a colorful twist were waiting for anyone who wanted them.

Members and friends of the Caltech Rubik’s Cube Club were waiting

for fairgoers just inside the fair’s main entrance. The cube fans

said they hoped to find new devotees to the colorful cube that years

ago earned its place as a part of 1980s nostalgia.

“We’re trying to get people interested in Rubik’s Cube and teach

people how to solve Rubik’s Cube,” club member and physics student

Leyan Lo said.

The puzzle was invented in 1974 by Hungarian designer Erno Rubik.

In the original design, the cube has 27 movable blocks marked with

colored stickers. When the blocks are properly aligned, the stickers

on each face of the cube are the same color. Players challenge the

puzzle by taking a cube with jumbled colors and twisting rows and

columns of blocks to line up the colors.

Lo’s cube clicked as he demonstrated what he called a

“layer-by-layer” solution to solving the puzzle. The first part, he

said, is to line up the colors on one face of the cube in a cross

pattern. After that, it gets a bit complicated.

“There’s an algorithm you can learn that gets it in the right

place,” Lo said.

Not everyone is as familiar with algorithms as these Caltech

students. But the club offered a six-page leaflet that explains the

solution.

The cube enthusiasts around the club’s table showed that some

people take the puzzle pretty seriously. Silicone spray was on hand

to keep the cubes lubricated and tablemats with digital clocks let

competitors keep time.

For experts, it’s possible to line up a Rubik’s Cube in seconds.

Beginners take longer. After about 40 minutes, Khuyen Dang had lined

up one face of her cube, but was still puzzling over the rest.

“If you just do it a couple of times, you just start memorizing it

and it’s easier after that,” she said.

Lo took a few minutes to show fairgoer Kevin Erdkamp how to solve

the puzzle. Erdkamp was drawn to the booth, which reminded him of

times when he came close to solving the puzzle.

“It just brought back memories from 25 years ago when I was a

kid,” Erdkamp said.

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers business and the environment. He can be

reached at (714) 966-4624 or by e-mail at [email protected].