I’ve got the first two layers solved, but I don’t remember how to finish the top side – the yellow, in this case.
I refer back to the video.
The guy shows you the sequence once, says to practice the move, then starts speed-solving the cube. I rewind six times because I can’t follow along.
I’m not here to practice, I just need my son to learn this. This is his passion, not mine. I will assist. What? Why is my son ignoring the lessons to make checkerboard patterns? Oh son, no. Why am I the only one learning this?
But I got this far. So I cheese my way through the series of moves, which is called a “Sune.” The next sequence is easier – the “Niklas” – so I do it no problem.
I flub something up on the last step and get myself back to the “Sune” stage. I take a deep cleansing breath, flare my nostrils for effect, and practice the sequence1.
After a dozen tries, it clicks. I do the “Niklas.” I do righty algorithms to solve the corners.
I mix it up and try from the beginning. By gum.
I can solve a Rubik’s Cube now.
What twist of fate is this? Me, a scribe of the pen, now a seer of the cube. A lesser man would have dropped to his knees and sobbed.
A few days later, I see 5-foot, 2-inch, 43-year-old Ms. Rachel draining jumpers.
“I tell kids ‘You can do hard things,'” she says. “I had to apply it to myself.”
Once my son saw I, like his grandfather, could solve the cube unassisted, that was his motivation to learn the hard thing. Last weekend, we sat down and went through all the steps he was tripping on and he can now solve the cube all on his own.
But that’s easy because he’s a spongey adolescent. I’m a crystallizing bag of bones. But apparently, it’s not too late for ol’ Skeletor to learn hard things.
Now I need to learn something a little more useful.
- A great writer would show the sequence instead of telling you about the sequence. The sequence is this: R U R’ U R U2 R’. ↩︎
