And, continuing on the subject of toys from the last post, a team of scientists has proven that you can solve any Rubik’s Cube configuration in not more than 26 moves, beating the prior record by one move.
I used to be able to solve Rubik’s Cube when I was younger (and playing with it fairly regularly), but I couldn’t do it now without help. I remember the first computerized Rubik’s Cube solver I ever saw – it was a program for the Apple ][. You would enter your configuration and tell it to solve the cube. A short time later, it would come back and tell you that it had solved it, and how many moves it took.
What those moves were? Who knew. The program wouldn’t tell you. Why they expected anybody to buy that program, I’ll never know. I’m just glad that programs came in baggies and without activation codesĀ back then. Because of that, there was no problem getting the people at the computer store to open a baggie and run a program so you could see it in action.