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Comment by beenBoutIT | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing how prevalent the Rubik's Cube was for a while back in the 80s-90s despite the fact that the vast majority of them just ended up sitting on shelves. Statistically only 1 out of every 20 Rubik's Cube owners can actually solve the puzzle[0] that took Rubik himself an entire month to solve. [0]https://www.ontheclock.com/Blog/Business-is-like-a-Rubiks-Cu...

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> that took Rubik himself an entire month to solve

I'm not sure you what you mean by this, but Rubik discovered an algorithm to solve the cube, he didn't follow instructions like what the 1 out 20 of cube owners do.

It'd be interesting to know the percentage of the people that have discovered an algorithm by themselves to solve the cube.

What is the difference between instructions and an algorithm in this case?

I guess the parent poster means that Rubik did not have an existing solution to follow, and his one month meant solving it without any external assistance.

(I'm not sure how his invention process went exactly, but I would guess that he probably did not start with a physical device he could hold, so I'm not sure such comparisons are really meaningful. It may have been easier for him to solve, due to inside knowledge, or it may have been harder.)

Yes, that's what I meant.

In the cube solving world, movement sequences that arrange the cube in a specific way are called "algorithms". Each "algorithm" will solve part of the cube, the full solution being a sequence of "algorithms".

It's the same thing. I just used a different word.

> how prevalent the Rubik's Cube was for a while back in the 80s-90s

TIL the Rubik's Cube was a new invention and it didn't exist until the late 1970s. A big age revealer, I guess...

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