I was meeting some co-workers for the first time in November, and one of them had a Rubik's cube. He himself had recently learned the basics from another colleague, and explained how to get started. I immediately struggled. We were sat at lunch, and I was a bit anti-social, as I tried my best to line up the white cross.
When I got home, I ordered a cube. It was a bit easier to get to grips with when I wasn't in a steakhouse.
As a beginner, you break things down into bite-sized chunks (white star, solve the bottom layer, etc.) and you apply simple algorithms to get the pieces into the right places. It feels like a brute-force approach, but your first solved cube is a thing of beauty, even if it was the result of painstakingly following a tutorial. Gradually your fingers get faster, and you can learn more more complicated algorithms to solve bigger chunks. You begin to build more of an intuition and feel, as well as a lot of muscle memory.
After practicing pretty regularly, I could generally solve a cube in a few minutes. I particularly enjoyed adding "First 2 Layers" as a more intuitive step. Despite that apparent competence, my forays into the Rubik's cube world had revealed the truly insane capabilities of the fastest cubers in the world. I am not even in the foothills of the mountain range, I just set out on a gentle stroll.
So two things struck me, one empowering, the other humbling:
- You can learn almost anything if you apply some concentrated effort.
- There is unfathomable depth and potential expertise in almost everything that people do.
Looking forward to learning more new things in 2026.
For anyone interested in cubing, I recommend jperm.net.