If the matched sticker is left of center, perform the Left Trigger. If the matched sticker in the top layer is right of the center, perform the Right Trigger. Once you’ve paired them, face the color-matched stickers toward you. (Planes are an ideal place to practice cubing.) The improvements came more slowly after that, but within a fortnight I’d lowered my average solve time to a little under 60 seconds. I broke the two-minute barrier a couple days later, on a cross-country flight to Florida. Then I practiced performing them faster and more precisely.īy day three I was solving the cube in under four minutes. First I memorized a handful of algorithms (cuber lingo for defined sequences of moves known to advance a cube closer to its solved state). But I kept at it: For two weeks I spent at least 20 minutes a day scrambling my cube and solving it the way Mao had taught me.

My first time solving the cube on my own took me more than 20 minutes. Ninety seconds is not fast by speedcubing standards (the world’s fastest cubers average well below 10 seconds per solve), but Mao said it would be a respectable time for a dabbler such as myself.

Afterwards he told me that, with practice, I could probably get my average solve time down to under a minute and a half. Tyson Mao, a cofounder of the World Cube Association, came to WIRED’s offices and spent about an hour teaching me his go-to beginner’s method. Earlier this year, while putting together a video about the world’s fastest solvers of the Rubik’s Cube, I decided to devote some time to learning to solve the classic puzzle myself.

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