Rubik’s Cube
Credit: © Anastasiia Moiseieva, Shutterstock

What has six colors, six faces, and can frustrate most people? A Rubik’s Cube! Sunday, January 29th, is National Puzzle Day! Puzzles are fun activities that are good for your brain. It exercises your brain to think in different ways. There are many different types of puzzles: crossword puzzles, sudoku, riddles, and more. Rubik’s Cube is a physical and mental puzzle that requires a lot of practice!

Rubik’s Cube is a puzzle game invented by the Hungarian professor and puzzle enthusiast Ernö Rubik in 1974. The puzzle takes the form of a cube. Each face of the cube features a three-by-three grid of colored blocks. The blocks are connected to a central core in such a way that rows of blocks can be moved by twisting. Play begins by twisting the cube at random to scramble the colors. The player solves the puzzle by returning each side of the cube to a single color. Rubik’s Cube has become a pop culture icon. It has earned a place in the Strong National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York, and the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Rubik’s Cube puzzle
Credit: © ChristianChan/Shutterstock

Rubik was born July 13, 1944, in Budapest, Hungary. He trained as an architect and later taught at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest. In 1974, Rubik used an early version of his puzzle game to teach his students about three-dimensional movement. His students loved the game. Rubik began selling his invention under the name Magic Cube in Hungarian toy shops in 1977. By 1980, his invention caught the attention of the Ideal Toy and Novelty Company, which licensed it. The company renamed the puzzle Rubik’s Cube. In just under two years, they sold over 100 million cubes.

The simple cube has been modified a few times over the years. Some later versions include larger grids of colors and different shapes. The construction of the Rubik’s Cube has also been improved—making the puzzle easier to twist and more durable—to aid in speedcubing competitions. In speedcubing, Rubik’s Cube fans compete to see who can solve the puzzle the fastest. Occasionally, additional challenges are added. These challenges may include solving the puzzle one-handed or even while juggling three cubes at the same time. In 1982, the puzzle was solved in 22.9 seconds at the first-ever Rubik’s Cube World Championships in Hungary. In later competitions, the puzzle has been solved in under 4 seconds.

July 21, 2016

Millions of players are taking to the streets to play Pokémon Go, a mobile gaming sensation released by the software developer Niantic on July 6, 2016. The game builds on the Pokémon game franchise, which first peaked in popularity in the late 1990’s. In Pokémon games, players take on the role of trainers, who capture, collect, and train fantastic monsters called Pokémon. The monsters then fight each other in duels. Each Pokémon has unique abilities and a clever name, such as Pikachu (whose “static” ability can paralyze), Charmander (whose “blaze” ability can burn), and Squirtle (whose “torrent” ability makes him a fast swimmer). When the creatures are not fighting, they are kept in pocket-sized balls. The term Pokémon is short for pocket monsters.

Pokémon Go leads a player on the game path in Tarragona, Spain, on July 18, 2016.
Credit: © Nito, Shutterstock

Pokémon Go ushers the franchise into the world of augmented reality games. Augmented reality games are electronic games in which computer-generated elements are superimposed over the real world. Pokémon Go players use their mobile phones to search for and capture Pokémon hidden in their surroundings. As the player walks around in the real world, the player’s game avatar moves along a map using GPS. When a Pokémon is close enough to capture, it pops up on the player’s phone screen. Many real world locations such as parks, churches, and coffee shops figure into the game, holding in-game equipment or serving as “gyms,” where players from Pokémon Go’s different teams can compete for control of a particular landmark.

Exploring the real world is an important element of Pokémon Go, and the game’s release stimulated a surge in pedestrian traffic, particularly in locations stocked with virtual equipment or marked as gyms. Fans of the game were pleased to note that it encouraged exploration, exercise, and social interaction among gamers. Many people, however, expressed safety concerns, with reports of pedestrians and drivers being distracted by the game and of gamers trespassing or entering dangerous areas to find Pokémon items.

February 6, 2013

Hasbro, maker of the board game Monopoly, announced the results of a month-long voting contest held on its Facebook page. (Spoiler alert: the cat wins.) The contest allowed fans to vote both for a new game piece to be added and for their favorite existing game piece to be preserved. In the 80-year-old game, players buy and trade properties on a game board and can then develop those properties (albeit, with tiny plastic hotels and houses). The existing game tokens that players used to move around the board of properties were a battleship, a boot, a car, a hat, an iron, a Scottie dog, a thimble, and a wheelbarrow. Most of the tokens date to the first edition of the game issued by the toy company Parker Brothers in 1935, except for the Scottie and the wheelbarrow, which were added to the game in the 1950’s.

A battleship token, shown on the Monopoly game board. Fans of the game voted to keep this token in a 2013 Facebook campaign, but the flat-iron token lost out.  (World Book photo by Ralph Brunke)

The most popular game token was by far the Scottie dog, with more than 30 percent voting to preserve that token. Voting was close for the losing piece–the boot, the iron, and the wheelbarrow were tied for last place, each with around 8 percent of the vote.  For a time, it looked like the boot might get the boot.  In the end, however, unable to iron out its differences, the fewest votes went to the iron, and Hasbro announced that the next edition of the game would no longer feature the antique flat iron. Apparently voters were less than charmed with that symbol of drudgery (or they were unable to even recognize a nonelectric version of the household appliance).  The possible tokens for the new piece Hasbro offered in the voting were a cat, a diamond ring, a guitar, a helicopter, and a robot.

Cat lovers won out in a hard-fought campaign that did not, however, include much scratching or clawing. The cat token received 31 percent of the vote.  Game experts hoped that the Scottie and the cat would not often land on the same square in the game’s new version due out in the fall.

Additional World Book article:

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