Rubik’s cube
Inspired by Austin Kleon I’ve been learning to solve a rubik cube. So far I’ve progressed from nothing to 3–4 minutes in a week or so of effort. It’s very enjoyable, and as the post says, it is nice to have a solvable problem, moreover one involving mechanical manipulation.
I followed The Wired guide to solving (also on Youtube) to learn to solve the cube. I’ve found the early stages of a solve fairly straightforward. However I still forget the algorithms for the later steps, swapping L and L’ etc, fairly often. That means restarting, but when I get it right it’s very satisfying.
No doubt there’s a rabbit hole of methods and speed solving I could go down. But until the method I know is embedded, and I’ve got the time down, that’s not in my thoughts.
I’d recommend it to everyone. Not least as I’m finding solvable problems are good for my brain state. There’s something satisfying of turning randomness into order, and knowing at the start it is possible.