Solving Rubik

I've never been able to solve a Rubik's Cube. The one I had growing up had a 3x3 grid, nine squares to a face. The only way I could get the colors back to right was to pry it apart with a butter knife and reassemble it solved.



So Em got a 4x4 Rubik's Cube for Christmas. They have them in a 5x5 now, too. I wondered how on earth they did that. I mean, I know how the original worked because reassembling it was my 'solution,' so how you add more rows was a great (or at least adequate) mystery.

Em dropped it and dislodged a corner piece and one adjacent to it. I couldn't figure which way the pieces should orient since the puzzle wasn't solved, so there was nothing to be done but tear the sucker apart and put it back together solved.



This turned out to be a puzzle worthy of the Rubik's Cube. The way it works, it's a sphere with tracks in it. The center four pieces of each face have a foot that fits into the tracks, and they form a track themselves to hold the corner and edge pieces.

And you end up trying to hold an impossible number of things together as you go. I had to use masking tape to hold sections together as I reassembled until I had four sides more or less done.



As much trouble as it is to solve it the stupid way, anyone who can solve it legitimately should be treated with suspicion. It's possible that aliens live and work in our midst, and an ability to solve this puppy would be a pretty obvious tell.