Celebrate 50 years of Rubik’s Cube with a new twist

Since 1974, nimble-fingered and agile-minded puzzle solvers have fallen in love with the Rubik’s Cube. The iconic, colorful puzzle takes on a new life in the brand new match-3 game Rubik’s Match. By combining the classic brain teaser with the fun and fascination of match games, both puzzle experts and casual gamers can take the game for a spin.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary and the new game, we talked to a couple people who know their way around a Rubik’s Cube better than most – speedsolver Max Park and the inventor of the puzzle himself, Ernő Rubik.

Ernő Rubik is the Hungarian inventor who first prototyped – and solved – the tricky cube now named after him. We chatted with him about where he drew inspiration.

Ernő Rubik: Professionally, I have always been a mixture of the artist and the engineer. I was familiar with the nature of structures, materials, spatial movement and geometry. At the same time, my curiosity was always that of an artist. The Cube was born as an answer to the question: is it possible for a solid to twist and turn in space without falling apart?

The Cube provides a very honest challenge. There are no tricks – but you do have to spend time understanding what’s going on when you scramble it. How do positions relate to each other? What sequences crystallize in an efficient algorithm? Every method is unique, so we can all find our very own way to the solution.

First of all, I have always embraced challenges. Puzzles have always been close to my heart and mind. As a child, I spent hours on end with the tangram or the 15-puzzle as well as enjoying solving chess-problems. Some puzzles fascinated me by their complexity; some by the simplicity of their core ideas; and others by their beauty or novelty. I always preferred difficult puzzles, not the easy ones.

Inspiration is unpredictable. You keep working on a problem in your mind and something quite unexpectedly comes to your help in finding a solution. You have to be ready and receptive then act on it. Yet, not even in my wildest dreams had I thought that a large portion of humanity would engage with the Cube, play with it and be inspired by its magical nature.

Max Park is an American speedsolver who holds 10 world records and has won 391 World Cube Association competitions. He’s an ambassador to the University of Cambridge Autism Center of Excellence, as well as an official ambassador for the Rubik’s brand.

Max Park: It’s fun to spend my day doing what I love. The first time I picked up a Rubik’s Cube I was nine years old – I was hooked. When my mother showed me how to solve it, I fell completely in love with it.

The best advice for solving a Rubik’s Cube is to remove the thought in your head that it’s impossible, or it’s only for smart people.

Super Pac-Man, Plants vs. Zombies, and Candy Crush Saga