The Rubik’s Cube Turned 40 – Here Are Some Cool Facts

This article was supposed to be about the Google Doodle (icon) yesterday which happened to be a click-able and solvable virtual Rubik's Cube in honor of it's 40th birthday but alas, our internet went down and stayed down all day. So, this shall be a belated post instead with some facts about the Cube and it's inventor that you may not've known.

• It was invented in 1974 by an architect who wanted to teach his students about 3D geometry.
• It took Erno Rubik a month to solve his own cube at first
• It was originally called the 'Magic Cube' (likely before people realized that it wasn't magic at all)
• More than 350 million cubes have been sold since it hit shelves in 1980
• It is the best-selling toy AND puzzle game of all time
• There are over 43 quintillion possible combinations that the cube can be shuffled into yet it can be solved in 20 moves or less
• The current world record for solving the cube in under 6 seconds (see below) while one-handed it's only 3 seconds more, blindfolded the record is 23 seconds

It just so happens that we are running a series right now about how to solve the cube in under 2 minutes (I know, slow, but STILL!) Get started on how to do it below: