Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select I've chosen our August two thousand nineteen episode I'm one of the best selling toys of all time, the Rubik's Cube. It's an engaging episode on an unlikely global trend sprung from a Hungarian architects beautiful mind. So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there, and we're cubing it up with Rubic the Cube. Did you see um that cartoon, Rubic the Amazing Cube? Did you come across that? And? Okay, I I feel like we are um well within our rights as far as fair use goes, since we are talking about this, to at least play the highly disturbing but also st hugely cute voice of Rubic the Amazing Cube. Can I play this real quick? Sure? Okay? That is it? It is awfully unusual, especially when you see this cube they just basically took do you remember the goblin face on maximum overdrive on that on the front of that semi sort of it's kind of like a cuter version of that that they put onto a Rubik's Cube, put some feet on it, and then gave it superpowers. That's Rubic the Amazing Cube. So back to Rubic, Chuck. Yeah, it was kind of hard to believe that it took until two thousand fourteen for this thing to be granted National Toy Hall of Fame inductee status. Uh. It seems like it would have been much sooner than that because they have sold hundreds and hundreds of millions of Rubik's Cube since I had one. I still have one. I could do it at one point. Oh really, Yeah, I could do it in a couple of minutes. Wow, Chuck, I'm impressed. I had no idea. Yeah, I can still do. I can still do one side and like the top row surrounding that side on all sides, and that's where I completely forget. Oh, I see, So you couldn't do it in a couple of minutes now you just have you could in the past. Yeah when I was nine. Okay, Um, I'm impressed. I've never been able to solve a Rubik's Cube. I've never been sucked in enough to um like, really spend a significant amount of time. But um I was playing with my niece's Rubik's Cube the other day studying for this, and um I was like, yeah, I could see how somebody would become obsessed with this kind of thing for sure. Yeah, it was fun and it was you know, to call it all the rage as an understatement. It was one of the most popular toys of all time, and then in by a math enthusiast in Hungary, an architect professor named er No Rubik. Appropriately enough, they named him after the cube. That's right. And if you don't know what we're talking about, it seems weird to describe a Rubik's Cube, but we'll probably be taking a task if we do not. I would say, just come out from under the rock that you've been living under. But we may have some young listeners who don't even know what this thing is, this piece of eighties ephemera, even though it's not ephemera because they're still pretty popular. But it is a cube made up of twenty six little mini cubes called cubs, which is kind of a cute little name. I think. So you're not as cute as Rubic the Amazing Cube, but yeah, little cubs and they're in a three inch by three inch by three inch well that's not quite true, a three by three by three grid, eventually creating a cube that measures two point two five inches or five point seven centimeters per side. Right, And so what there's six six cube faces because it's a cube, and each face has a different color. There's orange, blue, green, yellow, white, and red and um. When you when you mix these things up, it's just a jumble, a riot of different colors like you've never seen your life. But the point is to move these cubes around through the eighteen different ways you can move any given cube, um, so that all of the colors are lined up, all the colored cubes are all the same on each face. And it sounds easy, friends, it is not easy, not at all. Like maybe for some people it's easy, but for the rest of us, normal focus normis, it is not easy in any way, shape or form. No, it is not. Uh And in fact, they even suggest that you read about how to solve the Rubik's cube. It is the very rare individual that can literally just figure here it out without any help at all. Um, that's really tough to do. So it's not like you're not a cheat. If you look at like how to solve the Rubik's cube and then memorize these patterns and practice them. That's sort of the point, right, Yeah, like go look it up like it's fine. No one will will get mad at you for that, because it's no fun to never solve a puzzle. Well, that's why I think I've never gotten sucked in. I was like, I'm not even there's no way I'm gonna possibly stumble across this, and I just don't think like this. My spatial reasoning is terrible. I'm not great at math. I'm color blind. Everything just looks white. You. No, it's really not. I can't discern squares from from circles. It's just I'm off. So um. Originally, the Rubik's cube was called the magic cube, and it was invented, like you said, by Erno Rubik, who was Hungarian. So it was originally called the Beavish Kotzka, which is magic cube, and the Hungarian means butt head. I believe it does. The magic butt head was Bevish and butt head. All right, nice man, It's like, where's he going with this after all these years? It's good. No, I didn't, but I was like, I'm I'm going with this, Chuck. I trust him and I paid off. So Mr Rubik got his Hungarian patent on the mechanical design of this in nine and it was in Hungary only for a while. Uh, and it did pretty well and hungry. Um, but that's kind of where it stayed. It was. Uh. It was because of the politics of the time and the fact that it was hungry. It was not super easy to get a an American patent or to bring it over and market it here in the West, so it was pretty much a Hungarian local sensation for it's early like probably first year. Yeah, he had like a Hungarian toy manufacturer make like ten thousand of them, but he wasn't happy with him, so he cut the runoff at five thousand. So there were five thousands of these things floating around Budapest and and maybe Hungry in general. And it was just total serendipity that there was a guy named Tibor Laxi. And I'm quite sure that's not exactly how you say his last name, but that's how it's how it spelled. It's probably like Lucia or something like that. But um, t Bor, I'm I just love that name. It's a great name. Um. He was an entrepreneur who had left Hungry and moved to Austria, so he had really developed a taste for capitalism. While he happened to be visiting back home in Budapest when he was at a restaurant and he noticed a waiter playing with the Beavish kotska, the magic cube, and um, he said, you there, what is that? And uh, he said, well, it's the Beavish kotzka. How about I sell it to you for a dollar? And I believe he bought that for a dollar, played around with it for a minute. It was like this could be big. So he found out who invented it, and he scheduled a meeting with Erno Rubic. Yeah, and he would later on that he that Erno Rubik had a lot to do with why he decided to get into business with him. Here's his quote. He said, when Rubik first walked into the room, I felt like giving him some money. He looked like a beggar. He was terribly dressed. You gotta remember this guy's a professor, so they're not known for their sharp attire. He was terribly dressed and he had a cheap Hungarian cigarette hanging out of his mouth. But I knew I had a genius on my hands, and I told him we could sell millions. Yeah he was right. Oh man, was he ever right? He understated it? Actually, um the t Boar, I'm just gonna call him t Boar. He took this magic cube and he started going to toy fairs. Uh, And I think he struck out at a few of them. But he really hit it out of the park at the Nuremberg Toy Fair when he met a toy expert who had connections with Ideal Toy company. Remember Ideal back in the day. I think I do for sure. I'm pretty sure they made that um the the uh what was the daredevil's name, Evil kin? I think they made the Evil kinevil stunt bike. You know what's funny is um they make those now for other they have there's like an incredible stunt bike with plastic girl. It's the same exact function. We have one in our house and you load it up and crank it and there she goes. Is it the exact same mold? They just put like different pain on it or something like that knockoff toys? Man, it's slightly different. Uh, in its design, but it's clearly like the same exact toy. So at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, Uh, Tibor runs into the guy from Ideal and they end up purchasing it. They purchased the rights to this, the global rights, and they they they basically sign up to create a million Rubik's cubes. Yeah, also we should say it this toy fair. He did a pretty smart thing. Instead of like buying a booth, he just came and worked the floor with Rubik's cubes and got this like ground buzz going by walking around and giving these things to people, and like that's genius. Like for something like this, that's the perfect way to pique someone's curiosity is not to have some flashy uh like spinning giant Rubik's cube, is to actually get in the hands of people walking around the floor. Especially if you say, I'm Tibor, let's party. Should I bet you want to call it t boards Cube? It's pretty good name. He probably did, although he was smart because I remember originally it was called the Magic Cube. At some point. If it wasn't t Boor, it was Ideal who said we're gonna rename this the Rubik's Cube. And I'm sure erno Rubik was like, oh, okay, I guess if you insist. I wonder if he was into it or not, or if he pushed forward, or if he was like, I'm not really into that, but if you think it'll sell cubes, That's what I'm guessing he probably did. I don't think he was going to stand in the way of it, but he was not like vying for or by any means. That's my impression. But I'm just totally making that up, but that I have the same impression, which means that if you put our two in persons together, it equals fact. So Ideal sells one hundred million Rubik's cubes in the first two years. They just signed up to sell one million. They sold a hundred million in two years. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they had problems keeping up with production. Uh. Some of the accolades and eight and eighty one at won the UK's Toy the Year Award two years running. Um In eighty two, there were five books about solving it on the New York Times bestseller list, one of which I owned. I owned the classic The Simple Solution to the Rubik's Cube by James G. Norris. He was a chemistry student at Stanford And get this, dude, this book was the number one best selling book of nine one period. He sold six point seven million books and it is still the fasting selling book in the history of Bantam Books. Is that right? Can you believe that out of all the books that year, that was the number one? I can, because that really kind of underscores just how nuts the not just America, the world went for Rubik's Cube, that the number one selling book was a book about solving the toy. That that that was it. Yeah, they had sold five hundred million of them by the time rolled around. So so talking about the books though for another second. At one point the number one, two, and four positions on the New York Times bestseller list where all Rubik's Cube Solution books. Three he was probably Stephen King or something probably, and one of those books was written by a twelve year old named Patrick Bossart called You Can Do the Cube, which is pretty adorable if you think about it, and Christians later made a movie called Gleaming the Cube, one of my all time favorites, which had nothing to do with Rubik's Cubes. As it turns out, it was about skateboarding. That's right. Um, So there's a just a craze going on around the world, like everyone is into the Rubik's cube. Everyone's buying one. They sold like I've seen anywhere from three hundred and fifty million. The highest I've seen is six hundred million. They sold a ton of these things, hundreds and hundreds of millions of them. Are those are the official too? There were plenty of knockoffs. Sure, there was books on the New York Times bestseller list about this. It was featured in Times, Scientific, American News, Scientists. Um. There was a paper that was printed in the New England Journal of Medicine that talked about cubists thumb, which is a real thing. It's a type of tendonitis in your thumb that you get in your non dominant hand because that's the hand that you used to stabilize the Rubik's cube. And so the edge of the cube pressing into the heel of your thumb where it meets the rest of your thumb um, that could create tendonitis. For people who were staying up for days on end just playing with this thing, trying to beat this puzzle. There was a craze like like no other. I say, we take a break, okay, uh, and we come back and we talk about uh Mr Rubick, or maybe he's a doctor. I'm gonna call him Dr Rubik, and how he created the mechanics of this puzzle. Alright, So supposedly Dr Rubik, surely he's a doctor. I would let's call him Professor Ruby because he was definitely an architecture professor in a math genius. Actually though, I'm I'm with you, he's got to be doctor, all right, Professor Dr Rubik. Uh supposedly was not even trying to create this puzzle in I'm sorry seventy four when he first started out um, as legend has it, he was trying to create a mathematical model for three D design class, which makes sense considering his job. Other people say, no, he was just really kind of guy to like to tinker. He was fascinated by geometry and shapes, and he was trying to just solve a problem of mechanics in three dimensions. But according to the Toy Hall of Fame, he was very much trying to invent a puzzle. Uh. And that may just be folklore. Yeah, he he knew what he wanted. He wanted to make this three by three cube that was made up of smaller cubes that could all like interact and twister around like he had the idea for the Rubik's cube, which was step one, but step two was a doozy, and that was figuring out how to invent a mechanical solution to make this thing work the way he wanted it to, and apparently was um. There was a pretty good article on mental floss by a guy named Noah Davis who recounted that um. One day, Rubic was walking down the Danube alongside the Danube in Budapest and looked down and noticed that there was just a pile of nice, polished rounded river rocks and thought, I've got it. I've been thinking about a cube. Everything's got to be a cube. But what if I added a sphere to the mix two and that these things rotated around usphere. That would give the freedom of motion that I need to make this thing work. And that was that That that that was the solution to the puzzle, as it were. Yeah, I mean, if you're like me and probably lots of other kids in the early eighties, you took your Rubik's cube apart at some point, did you. I never I never saw one, and lots of video on this. Yeah, oh yeah, I've got a screw driver out in pretty short order and put those things apart. Uh. And it's kind of cool when you look at the you know, when you take all those cubs out, you get down to the center and the three x s um and they have each one is tipped with two opposing center cubis. It's kind of cool looking. And then it makes sense how all these things fit together and how it works. Yeah, another way to think about it is just think about like a sphere a ball, and then you've got six arms sticking out in in um at right angles from it, so that it forms a three dimensional plus side plus signed and at the end of each one of these arms is a cube, a colored cube. And though that's the skeleton of the thing. And then what what Erno Rubik figured out was that that's all that needed to be attached to the center. You could make the other cubes attached to those those face cubes a center cubes qubis um. You could make some cubes qubs attached to those cubs, and then other cubs attached to the other cubs, and then they will all kind of rotate around each other, but they're all really rotating on three different axis coming out of that sphere. It's a gene like this guy has gotten like if he started a craze and is you know, kind of viewed as this great inventor for the toy like math, physics, architecture, um like in the in a number of different fields. He's ugansical engineering for sure. Yeah, he's viewed as just a god in some senses for for cracking this this problem and creating this three dimensional structure that actually works in in reality that people can learn and study from. That's right. So he's figured out this the mechanics of it all, but it's still not a puzzle yet until he applies these colors. That's what makes it a puzzle, because, like we said at the beginning, the idea is that you have all the colors on each side matching one another. He applies these colored stickers all over, mixes and twisted up a little bit, and he's like, I've invented the cube. And he's like, wait a minute, I don't know how to solve the puzzle. So he actually had built this thing, stickered it up and looked at it, I imagine, with some level of accomplishment, and then realized that the biggest, probably uh, the hardest thing to do in this whole process still lay in front of him, which was because there were no books out at this point. Right. He invented it. So he had to figure out how to solve his own puzzle. And it took him a while. It took him a month from what I saw, Yeah, and I imagine he worked on this pretty much NonStop to figure this thing out. He he did, and he would like write down like the different different moves, combination of moves which now they're called algorithms. Um, it's just types of moves that if you do them in a specific sequence, will solve a specific jumbled Rubik's cube. Right, Um, So he wrote them down. He kind of kept track of it, and that was like the first the first, um, first time anyone had kind of applied analysis to this. But it would not be the last. Obviously. He's the New York Times bestseller. His shows by the reason why it's so difficult to solve a Rubik's cube just by happenstance is that just the sheer number of possible configurations of the cube. Right, each face has nine cubs, and there's six um faces, so there's fifty four cubs, but they all relate to one another, and so if you move one, that's one configuration. If you move it another direction, that's another configuration, and so on and so on, and so with these fifty four cubs, Chuck, are you ready for this? Yes? The possible number of configurations is forty three quintillion, two hundred and fifty two quadrillion, three trillion, two hundred and seventy four billion, four hundred and eighty nine million, eight hundred and fifty six thousand possible configurations of a Rubik's cube. And one of them one is the right one where all six faces are all the same color. Ubi's just one. So just doing it accidentally, your chances are one in about forty three trillion that you're going to stumble upon that right combination that's right, which is pretty amazing, don't you think. Yes? And by the way, I think I said in their fifty four there's twenty cubes. I believe there's fifty four faces. Yeah, I mean that's a deal. Each QB has three sides or two sides, depending on if it's a corner or an edge or one if it's in the center right, So it's kind of confusing. But but nine times six, so nine nine squares or nine different colors squares times six faces is fifty four I think fifty four faces something qubis This is how good at Matthew Man. It's it's really because it's so funny, because it's such a simple little thing. But once you start really breaking it down, you're like, we could make this super confusing if we dried hard, for sure. But what people have figured out is that they're they're like, you may have like a one and forty three quintillion chance of stumbling across the right configuration by accident. But what people have figured out is that there are combination of moves like you know, um uh front right up, up twice and then down. That's that's an algorithm. And if you apply that to a certain kind of scrambled a certain configuration of a scrambled Rubik's cube, it will bring it back to solved. And so people have spent a lot of time developing algorithms. And that's why erno Rubik was originally doing when he was like, oh, if I do this this and this, it will make it solved. And he wrote that down that's what's called an algorithm. Yeah, and I remember in the book, like each book had their own little shorthand, I guess, but I remember the one that I had. It definitely had the algorithms all spelled out with like shorthand for what each move was called. So it would sort of look like a math problem made out of letters, right, like I saw you for up and D for down. Makes a lot of sense. But then also, um, you can you know there you can move something to the right. You can twist one of the rows of cubes to the right, but you can also twist it to the left too, So I saw an apostrophe after like l apostrophe would be counterclockwise left, and then you can add a number two, so you do that twice, which is really a d eighty degree counterclockwise turn. So interesting, it really is kind of interesting. It like at first, you know, when I first um went over this article the first time, just taking it in, it's like, how this is pretty neat. But the Rubik's cube I found has many many layers to it, and you can really keep going deeply into it. Well, beyond just playing with the cube and trying to solve it. Like, there's a lot of math involved. There's a lot of physics and mechanics involved. You. I mean, you can get us sucked into it as you like, Buddy, just try not to go insane like Erno Rubik did. He did not when he set that that building on fire. He uh. It's interesting though, how big of a hit this became. Sort of it flew in the face of a lot of um like sort of rules of the toy industry and that it didn't make sounds um It didn't have interchangeable parts. It didn't have things that you could sell along with it, like, you know, clothing. You couldn't. I guess you could dress your little Rubik's cube, but then you have a special relationship with it, I guess, so you could dress it up and be like him Ruby. It didn't have batteries. It was never like well, I guess it appeared on a TV show. Was that a TV show? Yeah it was. It was a Saturday morning cartoon that came on right before pac Man, which was honestly one of the all time great cartoons. Ever. Yeah, it just it wasn't marketable though. Like you would think a toy would be. The reason that it appealed and endured is because it is a real challenge and you get a real sense of reward once you've done it right, and that really hooks people. It really does hook people. And again there's like not there's no shame in going and looking up algorithms to solve UM Rubik's cubes, like just processes. And in fact, if you start doing any kind of research on rub excutes, you'll find like there's actually specific UM methods of attack that people suggest for for beginners to start with. There's one called the White Cross method classic, which is um entails eating a handful of white Cross gas station speed staying up for four days until you until you get done. It's actually you start with the edge pieces and then you move to the corner pieces, putting them all in place, and then you um go on from there starting with the white face of the cube. That's right, And uh, this toy was a big hit anyway, but it it is endured, Uh not because of stocking stuffers or nostalgia, but it is endured all these years later because of competition. Yeah, so let's take a break now and we'll talk about speed cubing right after this. Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh Man. Chuck gets stuff you should know, all right, Okay, So the Rubik's Cube comes out in the world basically in night and the next year, the very next year, countries around the world we're holding national championships for um solving Rubik's cubes as fast as you possibly could. It's called speed cubing. Yes. And then a year after that they all got together, all the champions of the countries for the very first Rubik's Cube World Championship in the best which is kind of cool. UM. And that's what has kept people going for so long, because there there's people are still trying to beat these records. I saw a kid and it's kind of hard to tell what the top times because they list the top times in these competitions, but I saw a kid on YouTube do it in like six seconds or four or five seconds. I saw one do it in three point four seven. Yeah, I don't know how like how it's officially judged though. There's a timer UM and one of those there's one of those mats that you keep your hands on. But like, why does it say that that those aren't world records? Then I don't know. That's what I saw was the world record was in two thousand eighteen. It was three point four seven seconds by U shang Yu shang Do sorry of China. So you've seen other things listed. I just don't know if there's like the bodies aren't speaking to one another or what. Maybe it's that was a a non championship uh time, or even even maybe it was a qualifier or something like that. So it doesn't count as the world record unless you get whatever time is done at the world championship that's considered the world record. Who knows. It's crazy to see how fast these kids and it's usually kids that win um I guess with their little nimble fingers and brain sponges. Uh, it's crazy how fast they're doing. It doesn't look real. It looks like some sort of weird faked video. Yeah. And here's the other thing too. I'm glad you mentioned brain sponges because it is like a um an intellectual pursuit, like from the beginning of this this toys release in like they win a different route, like you're saying it doesn't require batteries. It was you know, um, it doesn't make a noise or anything like that. So they went a different route in advertising it and said this is an intelligent game, like I'm sure Isaac Newton discovered gravity, but could he solve a Rubik's cube? You know, So they really kind of play that up, and it's true because these kids who are solving or people who are solving Rubik's cubes super fast. It's not just like look or their fingers are just moving forward them. They have memorized hundreds, if not thousands, of these algorithms and have gotten to the point where they can look at a cube and figure out which algorithm is going to solve it the fastest, and then when the time starts, they can also move their fingers really really quick. And that's how they're getting these amazing times. It's not just speed and dexterity, it's also knowing what algorithm is going to work best. Yeah, for sure, you know, it died out pretty quickly. Like most fad toys, Um, once you sell a lot of these, you don't need another one unless you break yours or something. So it's kind of one of those things where, and which is again why it flew in the face of the toy industry because they couldn't sell ancillary products alongside it. But uh, you know, it died out pretty quickly and the champion and ship uh two was the last one for about twenty years until the Internet comes along and all of a sudden there are people posting faster times than ever before than twenty years earlier. And in two thousand three UM in Canada, there was a speed cuber named Dan Gosby who organized a competition in Toronto, and this is where they're getting it down to, like twenty seconds, and they have different categories like blindfolded, fewest moves, one handed, feet feet feet dude. Last year someone did it in twenty three seconds by foot, which was about the quickest time by hand at the first competition. Yes, and it took them longer to figure out that they had solved it than it did to actually solve it because they had to use a stick to turn the Rubik's cube over because they had used their feet to solve it. And I think, uh, when you participate, it didn't pay off as well as I thought it would sorright, Uh, you get fifteen seconds to look at the cube over. Um they are all started, uh, like the cubes are all started the same with like a computer generated random scramble. It's just fair. You get that fifteen seconds, you check it out, you set it on your mat, and then you go And it's just like I said, it's amazing to see these things done in like sub four seconds. Yeah, because they're they're i mean, their hands actually do kind of blur, like you can't really follow where their hands are at any given time. They barely touch the rubrics cube. And they're using to be fair, they're using specialized speed cubes. They're not just using like off the shelf rubrics cubes. We'll talk about those, go ahead, talk about them. Sure. Yeah. So so people go to the trouble of getting a speed cube. It's like, you know, you can get one for you can get a good one from what I understand, for about seventies seventy five bucks. And these things are literally well oiled machines that are just super fast. Some of them use magnets so that you can tell when they're snapped into place, and um, they move a lot more easily and quickly. Um. There you can just look at and be like, that's a high end Rubik's cube right there. Yeah, Like you can pay to get your cube serviced, uh and checked out at speed cube shop. So someone will take it apart, a technician and they will look at each of those little cubs for defects and like, has it got a little bump here that will slow it down? They'll smooth that out, like you said, sometimes they use magnets, um. And one of the reasons for the magnets is it creates that snap when a turn is completed. Because if you want to move these things really fast, you don't want it to be you know, even if it's an eighth of an inch out of whack, you're not gonna be able to turn it the other way. So you wanted to snap and lock into place. Uh, you know you want. It's just amazing how how engineered these things have become. What in these speed cubing competitions, right well, I mean just to keep up, you've gotta you've gotta get yourself a speed cube. If you showed up, like to an actual competition with just a regular Rubik's cubeb I don't know if you'd be laughed out of place, but they would they would certainly feel bad for you. You know what they should do is like because you know, I remember them loosening up really well and getting faster just because you played with it more. Instead of giving everyone speed cubes and trying to get this ultra red Bull record, which they sponsored the events now by the way, Uh, they should give everyone like out of the package. Make it as hard as possible. I agree. I think that there would be some um, you know, preteens who are really high strung that would cry if they were confronted with that challenge, if they had to put their speed cube down. Yeah, they'd be like, this is not fair. No one prepared me in my life for this. I did mention Red Bull because it was kind of controversial for many years. Uh. The Rubics World Championships uh were co hosted by the World Cube Association with the support of the brand. But then clearly some money changed hands a couple of years ago. That was the Red Bull Rubik's Cube World Championship. Uh. You know, red Bull got involved, the brand, Rubic got involved, which means there was money changing hands. You're really fascinated with that money changing hands, aren't too well? I mean sure, because it was I think everyone saw it as for what it was, which was, all of a sudden, there's a corporate sponsor attached to it. Yeah, and that that is like a pretty important point because like this was there was already a World Championship and it was like a grassroots organization that had grown up since two thousand and three and they were doing really well, and then all of a sudden, fifteen years later, red Bull comes along attached to the Rubik's Brain is like, out of the way, nerds, this is the real one. And so apparently, Um, it was a there was a lot of controversy, like you were saying, but um, now they kind of coexist and the Red Bull Rubics sponsored one changed their name from World Championship to World Cup so that they don't step on each other's feet at all. But if you think about it, that's a pretty big win for this grassroots world cubing association to to be able to keep their original name and not have to change their name. You know, Hats off to them. Hats off indeed. So um, one of the uh, the the things that I said about the Rubik's Cube Chuck is that it's it's got a lot of layers too, and there's a lot of surprising math involved. Specifically, there is a kind of algebra called um group theory, and um one of the one of the things that has long kind of fascinated mathematicians is that there is somewhere in there a number of moves. There's an algorithm that has or there's a number of moves associated with any number of algorithms. Man, I'm making this way harder than it actually is. Where it represents the maximum number of moves you would need to use to solve any configuration, any of the forty three quintillion configurations of a Rubics cube. And some people figured out that this number must exist, and brother, they got obsessed with it. From two thousand ten, some people almost set a building full of Rubik's cubes on fire. Yeah, I mean they've really researched this stuff to the point where, uh, like computer scientists are looking into this. There was a guy named Thomas rakiki Um who got that the upper limit down to twenty two moves, and this is like Google is helping him out with the processing power, so they call it God's algorithm. Uh. I mean, in the case of Rubik's cube. Um they got down to twenty is where they landed, right, Yeah, But God's algorithm can be used for any puzzle really, uh you know? And that is and why do they call it God's algorithm. It's what how God would solve the puzzle. So from what I saw is God's God's number is that the maximum number of moves that God would require to solve any configuration of the puzzle. Got a little confusing in this article because it's a bit of a brain trick. It's like the fewest moves, but it's a maximum number of moves right right exactly. It's it's hard to wrap your mind around. And then there's actually fewer moves for other algorithms. So I saw God's number is actually probably more like somewhere between nineteen and twenty. But because there are algorithms out there that have to be done in no less than twenty moves, that's still God's number. And there's also the Devil's number I saw it too, which is the number of moves in an algorithm that it would take to go through all forty three plus quintillion um configurations before you saw it, which I think that's a pretty good name for that one. Yeah, now that's the one that they're on the trail of now. But they're they're done at twenty, right they are. But I think I think it's interesting that that we're not entirely certain. It's not like, okay, this has been proven, it's done. What the reason why they arrived at twenties because they actually built an algorithm to try to solve these algorithms. They taught an AI basically how to play Rubik's Cuba. They said, here's a Rubik's cubo teacherself and then they had it play just just some mind numbing number of different Rubik's cubes hands trying to solve it, and it kept coming up with twenty. And so it came up with twenty enough times that they're like, well, our computer God has told us that twenty is the is God's number. So there you have it. But we no one, it wasn't proven, it wasn't solved. It was just like, this thing is so so smart that we're just gonna go with twenty. So someone still working on it then, probably, I guess, But I think I get the impression that they have moved on to the Devil's number. So, as you would imagine, with the toy of this caliber, they were bound to be other people saying they invented it, and battles would ensue. And of course this was the case with the Rubik's cube. UH in ninety seven, when Ruby got his Hungarian patent for the Magic Cube, there was another inventor named Larry Nichols who had already patented something very similar in the US. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, this was in nineteen seventy two, but his was for a two by two by two cube by three by three by three, still same concept. And at first he was like this is this is hilarious. You know, I had the same idea, and now it's become a national craze. It's kind of satisfying. And somebody said, do you have any idea how much money you are losing out on right now? You should sue? He said, oh, my gosh, you're right, I should sue. And I get the impression that either the company he worked for or the company he sold the patent to really lead the charge in suing for this patent infringement. Um. But he had a pretty good case. I mean, he had invented it and patented it years before. It was just the number of cubes involved was smaller. Yeah. I mean that was another guy too, a guy named Frank Frank Fox thinking seventy four. He actually did the three by three by three, but he let his patent laps, whereas Nichols did not. And those people like you were talking about that he that actually owned Nichols patent were called uh Molecular Research Corporation. That sounds scary, yeah, and litigious, yeah, yeah, they do. So I want to point out, though, it's definitely worth saying out right, there is no evidence, and I don't think anyone's ever leveled in accusation that Erno Rubik stole this idea. It was just arrived at independently, and he was working behind the iron curtain at the time too, so the chances of any exposure are pretty low. It was just some people kind of came up with the same idea at the same time, and Erno Rubis is the one that hit the trite. A federal district court ruled in favor of Moleculan, but then in eighty six and appeals court overturned that, saying only that two by two by two, you uh Rubik's cube, because they started making different variations. Um, they made a smaller one that they said in French. In fact, I remember now I had a little guy on a car key for a short time. Oh yeah, I remember that. I'm not mistaken. But then in nineteen nine, another appeals court upheld the previous appeals court decision. I should I should say. I read an article by that guy, uh Nichols who had the original patent, and they were like, you know you, I think they were suing for like fifty million or something, and there were you satisfied with the outcome? He said, yeah, I was satisfied. He's like, I got enough to put both of my kids through Harvard, So I'm pretty happy with that. And um, you know, like he invented this thing that he was able to send his kid through Harvard with. You know, yeah, that's always interesting when someone wins something like that. But it wasn't like stolen from him, right, It was just he had the patent first and they agreed. You know What's what's even crazier that makes that story just absolutely insane. He had approached Ideal Toys with and they had not bought it, and then they went on years later to buy um the the Erno Rubic version. Yeah, they put out a bunch of difference. They made big ones, like the tiny ones I just talked about. I remember I had a snake. I did too, and I had no idea what to do with that. I just played with it like it was a snake. I did the same thing. Yeah, I just twisted around stuff. I still don't know what you were supposed to do with that thing. I think eventually the snake would be put together in some sort of a three dimensional octagon or something if I remember, or hexagon. Yeah. I was way off, but yeah, I didn't know how to I didn't even try to learn. I just kind of played with it. I taught mine did drink water. Mine drinks from a cup. It was very rough. Wickham uh Erno Ruby is still alive and well. He lives in Hungary, still teaches architecture. Uh I imagine, has a boatload of money. So he's founded some multiple foundations for inventure. That's very cool. Yeah, he has a bowload of money, so much so that his success story is considered by some to have been the thing that opened the gates to capitalism in Hungary. Amazing. Um. They also made him the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy and he's still I think, shows up once in a while to the World Championships and maybe the World Cup. I don't know. He didn't seem like a very controversial type. Seems like a good guy. And if you really want to go crazy, if you've solved a ton of Rubik's cubes, but this has kind of made your nostalgic to try something harder. They make a thirteen by thirteen by thirteen Rubik's Cube, and there's something else called the s Cube as K E W B and it is I don't even know what you're supposed to do with it. It's like the Snake times a trillion to make. And there's also a movie called Cube, which is like math oh I saw that, Yeah, yeah, has nothing to do with Rubik's cubes. And there is uh, The Pursuit of Happiness where Will Smith gets a job as a stockbroker because somebody sees him solve a Rubik's cuban something like two minutes or less. And apparently while he was promoting that movie, he solved one in less than a minute himself in real life. You mean the movie The Pursuit of Halfwayness. Did they explain that in the movie. I'm sure I never saw it. I just always called it Halpwitness. Did you ever see that one where he was like super depressed in his his colleagues at work, like just gaslight him into thinking he's being visited by angels? No? I didn't. Did you see the one where he went he was from West Philadelphia and he went to live with his rich relatives. Yeah, I did, as he dressed very colorfully. He was I think in bel Air. Uh well, was it Bell there? I think I was Santa Barbara? You're right, okay. Uh well, if you want to know more about Will Smith, you can type his aim into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I said Will Smith, it's time for listener mail. I've got a coconut tree correction. Hey, guys, correction on something said during the episode The Cult of the Coconut when you guys talked about the culpa rishka. First of all, it's not pronounced that way. It is pronounced culpa rushka. We were way off, all right, She says, uh rushka or rushka depending on transliteration. Simply means tree in Sanskrit, also always mispronounced by people in the West. By the way, Oh well, I don't feel that bad. Yeah, exactly correct pronunciation is uh sounds screwed. Now she's saying sanscrit as always mispronounced. Oh oh, I see, so it's sand screwed sounds crute. That sounds like a French persons best I can convey, that's what she says. Wow. Okay, yeah, I've always said say script. This person is a real really into words though, and very smart. Uh. Second, the coconut tree is just one of the trees considered a how do you pronounce it again, college called cold cold cook scrow cock. There you getting, You nailed it. Not because it is all you need to survive, though, but because every single part of the coconut tree is useful to humans, the bark, the leaves, the fibers, and of course the coconuts in their entirety. This concept is tied closely with why Indians culturally revere certain animals e g. Cow and plants and trees e g. Banyan and coconut. Okay, I've noticed on the podcast how you too often go out of your way to correctly pronounce words or names in foreign languages like which is something I appreciate as a bicultural, uh penta lingual individual. Perhaps you could explain your efforts to include not just Western languages, but Eastern languages too. After all, sal Screwed belongs to the same language group as German. If you think about it, I think it would be true to the spirit of your show. Guys, keep up the good work. And that is from Ruta our duty a did Ruta say, did she sign off with later lamos? No? Thanks a lot, Ruta. Yeah, it's not like we're like, oh, we'll only go to the trouble of pronouncing something in German or French, which by the way, we don't very often, and we thought we were pronouncing it correctly in the Eastern languages. So sorry, Ruda, I didn't know what sand screwed. I had no idea, not just us Chuck. Like a million people just learned that, Yeah, close to a million. I agree. Well, thanks a lot again, Ruta. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Ruda did, you can go to stuff you Should Know dot com and check out our social links, or you can send us a good old fashioned email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Every radio Stuff You Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H