The Cube - The Ultimate Guide to the World's Best-Selling Puzzle - Secrets, Stories, Solutions

• Patents: Unknown
• Author: J. Slocum, D. Singmaster, W. Huang, D. Gebhardt, G. Hellings
• Publisher: Black Dog and Leventhal
• Year: 2009
• Original Price: $12.95 USD
• Current Price: No Data

THE CUBE - The Ultimate Guide to the World's Best-Selling Puzzle - Secrets, Stories, Solutions

By Jerry Slocum, David Singmaster, Wei-Hwa Huang, Dieter Gebhardt & Geert Hellings
Introduction by Ern? Rubik

With its brilliant colors and pleasing, palm-friendly shape, the Rubik's Cube is one of the iconic symbols of 20th century popular culture. As creator Ern? Rubik reflects in THE CUBE: The Ultimate Guide to the World's Best-Selling Puzzle: Secrets, Stories, Solutions, the Cube is an object in which "space, form, dynamic structure, and appearance harmonize with human nature, body, and mind." As people of all ages strove to master its myriad mysteries, it became a worldwide craze in the early 1980s, and is today enjoying a tremendous resurgence in popularity: "cubing" is now a competitive sport and the Cube itself appears regularly in television commercials, feature films, and in print.

In THE CUBE, the world's foremost experts explore the enduring appeal of this ingenious puzzle and reveal never-before-published strategies for solving cubes of any size.

From the Cube's humble initial production run of 5,000 to its status as one of the bestselling toys of all time (over 300,000 million sold worldwide!), this guide traces the colorful history of the puzzle that was first introduced to the world as the Magic Cube. Readers learn about its predecessors - the Tangram, the 15 Puzzle, and Pigs in Clover - its numerous awards, its illegal imitators, and the cube and rotational puzzles that were inspired by it. The text, written by a handful of the world's most passionate puzzle collectors, historians, and mathematicians, is brimming with little-known tidbits that make this book as compelling as the puzzle it honors.

At the heart of THE CUBE are strategies for solving every kind of cube puzzle: the mini cube (2x2x2), the classic 3x3x3, the 4x4x4 Rubik's Revenge, and the newest incarnations: the 6x6x6 and the 7x7x7 V-Cubes. It even includes modular instructions for cubes of infinite size. Custom made for this book, these brand-new solution strategies walk readers through the necessary steps and explain why each solution works. Complemented by easy-to-follow illustrations, including CAD drawings created exclusively for this book, these solutions have been tested extensively and are the most comprehensive available anywhere.

Illustrated throughout with color photographs of author Jerry Slocum's incomparable collection of mechanical puzzles, THE CUBE is an irresistible blend of nostalgia, puzzle lore, science, and solutions. As a new generation delves into the secrets of the Rubik's Cube, this book provides a true insider's guide to the puzzle that has stumped millions.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jerry Slocum is a historian, collector, and author specializing in mechanical puzzles. His personal puzzle collection is the world's largest, with approximately 40,000 mechanical puzzles and 4,500 books. The Jerry Slocum Collection of Mechanical Puzzles, Brainteasers & Ingenious Objects is housed at the Lilly Library at Indiana University.

A retired professor of mathematics at London South Bank University, England, David Singmaster created the original solution to the Rubik's Cube in the 1980s.

One of the world's leading experts in the field of rotational puzzles, Dieter Gebhardt has published more than seventy scholarly articles on puzzles.

Wei-Hwa Huang is a four-time World Puzzle Champion and one of the first people in the world to have solved actual 6x6x6 and 7x7x7 Cubes.

An avid collector of rotational puzzles, Geert Hellings is the president of the Nederlandse Kubus Club (Dutch Cube Club), an association with 500 members worldwide.

Publication date: March 2009
128 pages, 200 color photographs and illustrations, $12.95 paperback with flaps
ISBN 978-1-57912-805-0

Thank you to the following people for their assistance in helping collect the information on this page: David Litwin.

This puzzle can be found in collections of these members:

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