Rubik's Magic
Encyclopedia
Rubik's Cube
Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik.Originally called the "Magic Cube", the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that...
, is a mechanical puzzle
Puzzle
A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...
invented by the Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
sculptor and professor of architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
Ernő Rubik
Erno Rubik
Ernő Rubik is a Hungarian inventor, architect and professor of architecture. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including Rubik's Cube , Rubik's Magic, Rubik's Magic: Master Edition, Rubik's Snake and Rubik's 360....
and first manufactured by Matchbox
Matchbox (toy company)
Matchbox is a popular toy brand which was introduced by Lesney Products in 1953 and is now owned by Mattel, Inc. The brand was so named as the original die-cast Matchbox toys were sold in boxes similar in style and size to those in which matches were sold...
in the mid-1980s.
The puzzle consists of 8 black square tiles (Changed to red squares with goldish rings in 1997) arranged in a 2 × 4 rectangle; diagonal grooves on the tiles hold wires that connect them, allowing them to be folded onto each other and unfolded again in two perpendicular directions (assuming that no other connections restrict the movement) in a manner similar to a Jacob's Ladder
Jacob's ladder (toy)
A Jacob's ladder is a folk toy consisting of blocks of wood held together by strings or ribbons. When the ladder is held at one end, blocks appear to cascade down the strings. However, this effect is a visual illusion which is the result of one block after another flipping over...
toy. The front side of the puzzle shows, in the initial state, three separate, rainbow-coloured rings; the back side consists of a scrambled picture of three interconnected rings. The goal of the game is to fold the puzzle into a heart-like shape and unscramble the picture on the back side, thus interconnecting the rings.
In 1987, Rubik's Magic: Master Edition
Rubik's Magic: Master Edition
Rubik's Magic: Master Edition is a mechanical puzzle invented by the Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik and first manufactured by Matchbox in 1987. It is a modification from the Rubik's Magic first published in 1980...
was published by Matchbox; it consisted of 12 silver tiles arranged in a 2 × 6 rectangle, showing 5 interlinked rings that had to be unlinked by transforming the puzzle into a shape reminiscent of a W. Around the same time, Matchbox also produced Rubik's Magic Create the Cube, a "Level Two" version of Rubik's Magic, in which the puzzle is solved when folded into a cube with a base of two tiles, and the tile colors match at the corners of the cube. It did not have as wide a release, and is rare to find.
In the late 1990s, the original version of Rubik's Magic was re-released by Oddzon, this time with yellow rings on a red background; other versions (for example, a variant of the original with silver tiles instead of black ones) were also produced, and there also was a strategy game based on Rubik's Magic. An unlicensed 2 × 8 version was also produced, with spheres printed on its tiles instead of rings. Custom versions as large as 2 × 12 have been built using kits available from Oddzon.
Professor Rubik holds both a Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
patent (HU 1211/85, issued March 19, 1985) and a US patent (US 4,685,680, issued August 11, 1987) on the mechanism of Rubik's Magic.
Details
Every chain either has the middle tile on the outside (O) or the inside (I) of the chain; if it is arranged so that the indicator tile is to the right of the middle tile, then the position of the ring segment on the indicator tile can either be the upper left (UL), upper right (UR), lower left (LL) or lower right (LR) corner. The position and orientation of the remaining tiles is then determined by the middle and indicator tiles, and eight distinct chains (OUL to ILR) is obtained, although the naming convention is not standardized.
Similarly, the 2 × 4 rectangle forms of the can be categorized. Each of these forms has exactly one chain associated with it, and each chain yields four different rectangle forms, depending on the position of the edge where it is folded with regard to the middle tile. By concatenating one of the numbers 0, 1, 2 or 3 to the chain's name, depending on whether the number of tiles to the right of the middle tile before the folding edge, a categorization of the rectangle forms is obtained. The starting position, for example, is rectangle form OUR2.
The cube now is rainbow and has silver rings. A game rule for this is one is you can match the silver rings and color squares, which can make it more complicated.
A similar classification can also be obtained for the heart-shaped forms of the puzzle, of which 64 exist.
Record history
| time | set by |
|---|---|
| 0.69s | Yuxuan Wang at the Beijing Spring 2011 |
| 0.72s | Yuxuan Wang at the 2010 BUAA Open. He also tied this record at the 2010 Taiyuan and the 2010 Tianjin Open. |
| 0.77s (tied) | Oskar Åsbrink at the 2009 Swedish Open |
| 0.77s | Tang Yiu Chun at the 2009 Shenzhen Summer Open |
| 0.83s | Patrick Jameson at the 2009 Drexel Drexel University Drexel University is a private research university with the main campus located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a noted financier and philanthropist. Drexel offers 70 full-time undergraduate programs and accelerated degrees... winter competition |
| 0.84s | Olivér Perge of Hungary at the Dutch Masters competition in 2008. |
| 0.86s | Mátyás Kuti Mátyás Kuti -Past world records held:* Rubik's Magic Single* Rubik's Magic Average* Rubik's Master Magic Single* Rubik's Master Magic Average* 2x2x2 Cube Single* 2x2x2 Cube Average* 4x4x4 Cube Single* 4x4x4 Cube Average* 5x5x5 Cube Single* 5x5x5 Cube Average... of Hungary at the 2007 Belgian Open. He also tied this record at the 2008 Belgian Open. |
| 1.07s | Craig Bouchard of Canada at the United States National Championships in 2006. |
| 1.14s | Quinn Lewis of the USA, at the World Championships in 2005. |
| 1.23s | Stefan Pochmann of Germany at the 2005 Dutch Open, just two months after Bob Burton's record. |
| 1.28s | Bob Burton Bob Burton, Jr. Bob Burton is an American speedcuber, most famous for competing in competitions all over the world and his former world records on the Rubik's Magic and Rubik's Master Magic.-Biography:... of the USA at a tournament in Dallas Dallas, Texas Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States... in 2005. |
| 1.36s | Stefan Pochmann of Germany at the 2004 Dutch Open. |
| 2.09s | Jaap Scherphuis of the Netherlands at the 2004 German Open |