3 different cubes made untill now

The invention of Erno Rubik in 1974, Rubik’s cube has been of great significance in the magnificent world of toys. With heaps of advantages and upcoming variants, Rubik’s cube has made a completely unique mark for itself withinside the lives of children.

This wonderful toy is not just an entertaining play for a child, but way beyond it. Initially made with a purpose to not exactly utilize it for a child’s play, a Rubik's cube has magnificent significance today. This interesting and innovative toy has a powerful history and idea behind it that led it to become revolutionary in the history of toys and set a great path for the invention of a whole cubing world.

Rubik’s cube is famously stated as invented not for the purpose of playing but for the purpose of explaining three-dimensional figures to the architecture students. Erno Rubik, the inventor of Rubik’s cube was an architect professor by profession and in order to explain to his students about the great world of three-dimensional figures and the workings of spatial figures in three-dimensional environments, he came up with the idea of Rubik’s cube. Interestingly, It just took only a month for Erno Rubik to solve his own invention.

In one of the many interviews, Erno Rubik tells his audience about his ideologies and mindset while delving into the designing of the Rubik’s, he stated that there are interestingly twenty-seven parts in a Rubik’s cube but only twenty-six are visible on the exterior. The one part out of those twenty-seven parts is in the centre of the Rubik’s cube and balances the whole symmetry and thus is unable to be seen on the exterior of the cube. Moreover, he also mentioned excitingly that there are more than forty-three quintillion probable combinations to solve a Rubik’s cube. Mind-blowing right?

As we all know, the invention of this amazingly developed object opened the door to a whole world of educational toys. Today, the market is flooded with every kind of educational toy that one could imagine. Some toys guarantee academic success while some toys enhance a child’s ability to experiment with his/her own brain and mind, while some games could improve a child’s linguistic skills and some toys could enhance a child’s cognitive skills. But despite the expansion of the toy world, Rubik’s cube still remained one of the most wanted toys and even more, the expansion of Rubik’s cube led to the development of its variations. Levelled up or easier, these variations keep a person engaged for longer.

Let's look into these exciting variations of a cube.

• A skewb cube

It is easy to say that a skewb cube is a levelled-up version of a Rubik’s cube and is perfect for the people who are well-versed with the art of cubing and are a pro in solving a Rubik’s cube.

A skewb cube is definitely more testing and hard than a Rubik’s cube majorly because of the purpose and orientation of its corners. The corners of a skewb cube rotate, unlike a Rubik's cube, thus making the skewb cube different and difficult. Moreover, the orientation and the arrangement of the different pieces of the cube is diagonal, making their rotation occur in a diagonal format. Thus making the cube more challenging.

• The ghost cube

A levelled-up version of a Rubik’s cube, a ghost cube in its raw state could become any shape as it likes, but once it gets solved it takes the shape of a perfect cube. To make it easier to understand, the colours in the ghost cube are all the same, i.e. there is no difference in the colours, it's the shape inside the surface that is different and needs to be solved. The idea behind solving the ghost cube is to solve the puzzle in a way that it returns back to its original shape (as a whole) which is a cube shape.

• The gear cube

An interesting variation of a Rubik's Cube with a completely different physical appearance and solving method, a gear cube was invented by Oskar Van Deventer in 2009, and since then it has become a prominent part of the cubic puzzle family. A gear cube was at first referred to as a caution cube causal to the gears present on the surface of the cube which at times causes a problem for the speedcubers due to their fingers getting stuck in those gears, but later on, with its mass supply rate in the market, its name was finally changed to what we know today as a gear cube.

To give you an advanced pro tip about gear cube, two major goals are to be kept in mind while solving a gear cube. First, the main purpose is to bring the cube back to its original shape, and, the second purpose is to bring the orientation of the colours into a symmetrical order.

If you feel that cubes are your cup of tea, then go get your premium quality cube from India leading online cube store - Cubelelo.

Aranya Agarwal is a contributor at www.cubelelo.com She is a keen promoter of minimalism and tries to be sustainable in her lifestyle as much as possible. She has worked with several non-profit organizations.