There are 54 cubies on a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Cube]Rubik’s cube[/url].
I considered cleaning this cube up before shooting it but the stickers tell a little of its history – they were used to solve a puzzle in an on-line Puzzle Hunt (probably [url=http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~mums/puzzlehunt/]MUM[/url]s, possibly [url=http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/sums/puzzlehunt/]SUMs[/url], or maybe [url=http://puzzle.cisra.com.au/]CISRA[/url] … though memory now fails). Well, when I say “solve”… I am not sure that we ever did find the solution – just as I never solved Rubik’s cube.[i] Ever.[/i]
When Rubik’s cube was new, we had one to fiddle with and my toddler son took a fancy to it. One night he took it to bed with him and when I went to get him up in the morning, there was the cube in his cot… solved. My mind all but exploded.
Wouldn’t yours?
The cube that we had in the early 80s had stickers for the colours, not coloured cubies like the ones shown here. What Dan had done was to remove all of the stickers and then replace them such that each side of the cube was a single colour. So he was not quite the genius that I at first imagined him to be.
He was, I think, three at the time. Still pretty damn clever I think, to work out what was the aim. Add to that the sheer manual dexterity and the time and concentration needed to remove all the stickers and put them back on straight enough to fool a quick glance. Budding genius after all, I reckon!