There are three things which annoy people who like Rubik's Cubes.
First of all, non-cubers who just say "Oh, ha ha, I peel the stickers off and put them back on again."
Idiots.
Er, secondly, impossible Rubik's Cubes, which I'll get to in a second.
And thirdly, people find out you're into cubing and they buy you all sorts of cubing-related things,
other than actual Rubik's Cubes.
Although, if I'm being honest, I don't mind that last one so much. I think it's quite - it's quite nice.
So, my sister got me this a couple years ago. This is like a cover for tissues.
So, if you're trying to, you know, if you just can't get your Average Of 5 down,
you can console yourself while you're openly weeping.
I've also got some cufflinks here. These are from my in-laws; they got me those.
I think that's quite sweet.
I've got, actually, a belt buckle. I bought that for myself. I will tell you more about that in a moment.
And - oh - this T-shirt. A friend got me this T-shirt.
Now, I think it's very sweet when people buy me these things. I don't mind. That doesn't annoy me.
What annoys me are the people who made or designed these originally and didn't get them right.
This is not a real Rubik's Cube, and to show you why, we go back to problem number 1:
The people who talk about stickers.
And that really annoys people into cubing because if you were going to pull it apart,
to fix a Rubik's Cube, you wouldn't, you wouldn't just - AH - peel the stickers off.
You would actually disassemble it into its individual cubes, and so - whoops - okay, I've lost one.
Right, so, this should give me 26 - now it turns out 25 - individual cubes.
That is your centre of a Rubik's Cube - it's the axes - and these centre ones never go anywhere.
So, as you're moving the Rubik's Cube around, the middle ones never change position.
They fix what colour those faces have to be, so you get those, and then you get all the remaining bits.
There's all 8 corners of the cube, and there are all 12 edges - minus one - here.
Right? And they're all different. So, there's no two the same,
because they represent whatever different combinations of colours you'd have on those faces.
And so, when people say "I peel the stickers off", no! You should pull it apart into the bits, and then put the bits back together.
But that is where things like this start to go wrong.
So, just a very simple, naive view of the Rubik's Cube - I can, okay, I've fixed that - is
each of the faces has 9 squares of each colour, which we know is not, you know, really how it works.
It's the individual bits. But, if you just did think of it in terms of stickers, this isn't going to work,
because if you look at the orange ones, there's 1 orange one there, okay, so far so good.
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. There are 11 orange stickers on this Rubik's Cube.
Right? So that absolutely cannot work. There are simply too many oranges.
For other ones, it gets slightly more complicated.
So, the cufflinks, which are lovely, if you look closely at the cufflink, you can see there's a blue-orange edge here,
and there's a blue-orange edge over here.
This comes back to the individual bits. There's only one - there it is - blue-orange - no, that's a corner.
There's only one - there it is - blue-orange piece in an entire Rubik's Cube.
Because there are two on these cufflinks, we know they can't be solved.
The case for the T-shirt is slightly more complicated. If you have a close look - that's too close!
If you have a close look at the middle one, it goes orange-yellow-white clockwise,
And... (actually, can we...? okay, that's better)
Right, and that middle one, if it goes orange-yellow-white, now, oh, I can't find that piece,
because this is not a standard colouring, and people get very upset, sometimes, when you see non-standard colourings.
I'm okay with that. I'm prepared to allow it, because a normal Rubik's Cube, yellow is always opposite white, red opposite orange, blue opposite green.
Which means, because they are on opposite faces, from the white to the yellow, you will never have a piece with both colours.
Whereas in the middle here you can see we've got white and yellow, but there's no reason they have to be in this arrangement, right?
I'm happy with the non-standard ones. Some Rubik's Cubes in different countries do tend to have different colours.
It's fine. Right, so, we'll have blue for this example.
If this goes orange-yellow clockwise, and then some other colour, there are always two pieces,
Well, two corner pieces for any two colours which do meet at an edge.
If I find the other - here's the other orange-yellow.
This one - orange-yellow - is anticlockwise. It goes - well, "counter" clockwise. It goes the other way around.
And so, the fact that this one here, and this one over here on the side, the side one, right?
They both go orange-yellow clockwise, even though we can't see that third side round the back here,
we know it has to be the same as the other one. We know that's the same piece twice.
The T-shirt doesn't work. I mean, it works as a T-shirt. I'm wearing it. But, the Rubik's Cube, unsolvable!
Even if it wasn't melted... ah, you get the idea.
On to presents I've bought myself. I got myself the Atari 2600 Rubik's Cube game.
It's terrible, but I was like, "This. This is peak '80s. I'm owning this." Right? So, I got it.
And there's not enough on the picture on the actual cartridge to work out if it's possible or not,
but I realised it was on the cover of Atari Age when it came out.
So, I hunted down the May/June 1983 edition of Atari Age, and on the front cover,
They tried to cover it up with an exciting red star.
You can see there's an edge piece there which is green on green.
So, there you are. so that's not a solvable Rubik's Cube,
because you're never going to have the same colour twice on an edge.
Maybe that's the final boss? You've got to defeat a Rubik's Cube that can't be solved. But, I very much doubt it.
So, there you are. Peak '80s, not correct, over there.
So, the belt buckle is interesting. I came across one of these. I did a show with a guy called Dr. Karl.
Any Australians will know him and his science work. I grew up listening to him on "triple j",
and we did some shows together, and he was wearing a Rubik's Cube belt buckle,
and when I commented on it, he got very excited. He wanted to know if I could work out what was wrong with it,
And so, I mean he was wearing it at the time, this is the problem.
So, he started thrusting his belt buckle at me while shouting "What's wrong with this?"
and I'm like, "Several things, it turns out!"
But - lovely guy, by the way, absolutely adorable.
Anyway, so afterwards I went and bought one, and I don't know if it's the same as Karl's. I'll compare next time I see him.
But, the one I got is solvable, and initially, I wasn't sure, because I looked at it and went:
"Well, there's no more than nine of any colour, there's no pieces twice, and all the - everything worked."
And so, to absolutely confirm, I got another Rubik's Cube, like a normal Rubik's Cube,
and I rearranged it - is that it? right, okay - to match. Exactly. There it is.
So, there's no red; they got pink instead of red, so I had to use red pieces on this one, but there it is!
And, because I could take a solved Rubik's Cube, and turn it into this, that's reversible.
So, this is a solvable Rubik's Cube. There you go!
I almost enjoy trying to crack if a Rubik's Cube works or not
more than I enjoy any single one solve on a Rubik's Cube, right?
It's a great puzzle to try and reverse engineer these things.
Erm.
Which brings me to my very last example.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is an original Rubik's Cube still in its packet.
So, this is from Hungary. It has never been opened, and it is still sealed up with the original gold tape, which is very exciting.
And, let me, maybe, you might be curious what the original Rubik's Cube was like compared to these modern ones.
And so, you know what, we'll just get right in there and we'll have a look. I reckon if... no way!
There is no way I am opening up my original, still sealed Rubik's Cube. Honestly!
I got another one that was already opened! Right, so, actually I haven't - I ordered this online - I got...
Oh, it's not solved! I got sent it, I haven't seen it before, and if I ruin the packaging...
If I - look at that!
So, this is an original Magic Cube, right, from Hungary.
And that is, oh my goodness, that is a terrible action.
That's... that's incredible!
Right, so, like, the modern, like, the - the Valk3 - you don't get better than this, right? You get some speedy moves on that.
Right? Whereas this, that's, this is possibly - oh, it does say Rubik's. It has got Rubik's on it.
Okay, so this is not a proper original pre-Rubik's one, but it's still super super old, and that is the original box that it came in.
And, erm, this may have never been solved!
Right? This could have gone decades, like, because someone could have bought this,
mixed it up, and unless you spend a long time working it out, or you look it up online,
which they couldn't do at the time, right?
So, this, this, this is possibly... wow. That would take a while to solve. You know what? Er...
Because this will bug some of you, my Patreon bonus video this time, for everyone who supports me on Patreon, very much appreciate it.
I spent my own money on these; this wasn't your funding.
I will solve this. I'll have a video that you can watch me fix the original Rubik's Cube so we can have some closure on that one.
But the reason I want to bring up the original Rubik's Cube, right? So, here it is. The original packaging.
If you have a look at the picture on the original Rubik's Cube, there are two blue and yellow edges.
The original - the actual first-ever Rubik's Cube - packaging got it wrong.
Right? So, we complain about every, all the modern ridiculous ones, but the... you know.
Rubik's Cubes, and incorrect representations of Rubik's Cubes, have been around as long.
Right? They were born together. For as long as you've been able to buy a Rubik's Cube, there have been products with incorrect pictures of Rubiks' Cubes.
So, obviously, solving a Rubik's Cube is a great fun puzzle - probably not that one, but you get the idea.
And, if you don't know how to solve a Rubik's Cube, I highly recommend learning.
I'll put some links to beginner guides in the description if you want to get involved. It's good fun.
But once you've mastered it, I mean, after that, it's learning new algorithms, it's honing your skills, and all that, which is good.
But, that's why I enjoy spotting incorrect ones possibly more than solving normal ones.
Like, this. Working out this T-shirt. Initially, I didn't spot those two were the same, and I was working out the rest of it,
and trying to work out how to map this unusual colouring to the real colouring,
and when I finally did crack it, I mean, I genuinely jumped up and ran around the room.
I was so pleased with solving that, and, you know, it's the puzzle solving that I love,
and that's why I thought this would be a good video to be sponsored by my friends at Brilliant.
Right? So, Brilliant is a puzzle website where you've got loads of great puzzles you can go on and do.
So, that's to mean, I've been using it for ages. You've probably seen it on other YouTube videos.
But, you know, they e-mail you a puzzle every week, right?
So, I mean, and I love scratching that itch in my brain to try and solve this kind of stuff,
and they just serve up those opportunities.
And so, I mean, I say it's a puzzle website. They've also got loads of great courses, I mean, everything from, you know, algebra to logic to geometry.
And if you go to brillant.org/standupmaths they will know that you came from this video, which helps support the video, which is great.
So, go sign up, right, you can do the puzzles, they're brilliant.
You, I mean, if you know a young person who you think should be doing more puzzles, then,
er, oh, and you've already got them a Rubik's Cube. I mean, okay.
Step 0: Get them a Rubik's Cube. Obviously. I mean, this is, the video's not sponsored by Valk, or Rubik's, or any of these things.
In fact, this is a terrible sponsor message if I'm mentioning other products.
Forget the Rubik's Cube! Go to brilliant.org/standupmaths
Right. Sign yourself up - you can sign up for free, although if you do go via /standupmaths
the first 200 people will get a 20% discount on the paid premium version.
But there is a free version! Right, so don't feel obliged to go and exchange money.
But if you are going to exchange money, use the URL, exchange slightly less.
That's a very easy puzzle to solve.
Right, and so you can do it, gift it to someone else, whatever you want to do.
All right, the important thing is you can go out there, right, and you can solve puzzles, and you can hone that part of your brain.
So yeah, solve some Rubik's Cubes, and check out brilliant.org