Rubik Cube Quotes

If I want to play mind games, I'd buy a Rubik's cube. ~ Acheron, a character.

The dog is not bored. It's not like he's waiting for me to give him a fucking Rubik's Cube. He's a goddamned dog.

I've called in the oracles and they were communing with the Fates. But you know how they are. I'm sure it'll come back as 'When the sky is green,m and the earth turns black, the Daimons will give you lots of flack. To kill the great awful one you seek, you'll have to find something unique.' Or some bullshit like that. I really hate Oracles. If I wanted to play mind games, I'd buy a Rubik's Cube. (Acheron) I don't know, Ash, you're pretty good at that. Sure you don't want to take up an Oracle position? (Kyrian) Picture this, General, my middle finger is extended all the way up, and aimed right at you. Now let me work. I have Daimons to track, Dark-Hunters to antagonize, and women to seduce. (Acheron)

If I wanted to play mind games, I'd buy a Rubik's cube

She's like a Rubik's Cube. So frustrating at times that you want to toss it out the goddamn window. But you don't. You can't. You're compelled to keep playing with it until you figure it out.

I have a Rubik’s Cube for a rearview mirror, because the past is the only time puzzle I can solve. My love for her only looks clear there.

Gender is like a Rubik’s Cube with one hundred squares per side, and every time you twist it to take a look at another angle, you make it that much harder a puzzle to solve.

Pop culture is just a rubik's cube of shit stacked on shit. And it's always turning and you can't figure it out. Ever. Unless you're a tiny Asian boy who can do it SO quickly! Where did this metaphore go? In Kim Kardashian's butt!

We left behind this small town But we couldn't leave behind the ghosts As we headed for the coast, yeah, and you know There was something in the way she told me How my hair looked stupid, and How she couldn't hold her tequila, and How she was broken and beautiful and Still standing, and how was I supposed to know All along we were saving June Saving June, yeah She had flowers in her hair and one powerful glare My modern day Rubik's Cube, she made me feel Like maybe we could have it all But you can never have it all And now I've gone and lost All these things that they always sang about All the things that I still dream about Now I'm counting up the days, counting all the ways I never said what it means, but it's too late 'cause June is over and so are we And I'm the one left, with nothing to save

Every car on every train on every line holds a surprise, a random sampling of humanity brought together in a confined space for a minute or two - a living Rubik's Cube.

This was like the Rubik's Cube of life. One big glob of scattered, multicolored possibilities she had to sort out and line up in the appropriate manner by twisting endless scenario after scenario in her head. And it sucked. Big, fat wankers.

It feels like trying to juggle eight-side Rubik’s cubes while trying to solve them at the same time. And every time I drop one, God kills a billion kittens.

Poe stood still and tried to untangle his mind. None of it felt right, some of the evidence contradicted other evidence-it was like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube that fought back.

The thing with Rubik's cubes, sometimes you make them worse when you try to fix them. I didn't want to make her worse, and I also didn't know how to make her better.

she understood that it wasn’t actually something one could ever work all the way through, like a jigsaw puzzle or a Rubik’s cube; grief was something that moved in and stayed. Maybe it moved from one side of the room to the other, farther away from the window, but it was always there. A part of you that you couldn’t wish or pray or drink or exercise away.

I'm a Rubik's Cube,“ Josy said honestly. „I'm made up of rainbow colors, but they're all out of order, and you need to spin me around until I start making sense.

He was like a nearly-there Rubik's Cube - this sealed box, all perfect edges and matched-up colors, except for the occasional hopeless misalignment, a lost orange square and a yellow piece stuck in a corner. Though why I thought this made me the right person for him I have no idea. I'd never solved one of those fuckers in my entire life.

Well, one of the kids from school called me stupid because I didn’t catch the football,” I said. “Was this kid named Albert?” Mom asked. “No, it was Kenny.” “Listen. Unless Albert Einstein is at your school, you’re the smartest one there. Look how fast you solved the Rubik’s cube. I bet none of your classmates can even solve it at all, let alone in under a minute. And… what’s 316 times 128?” I paused for a moment. “40,448.” “I guarantee that nobody in your school can do that either. Stupid? Forget about it.

Off flew his shirt, which landed on an outstretched arm of the ceiling fan. 'Beats me. God, is there a padlock on this thing?' 'It's not rocket science, Driggs. It's a bra.' 'It's a Rubik's cube of diabolical proportions, is what it - ha! Suck it, evil underwear!' Triumphant, he flung the unfastened conundrum across the room [...]

Kissing Noah was like a Rubik's cube. An impossible puzzle, but one I didn't want to give up on just yet because it was too compelling, too enticing...

I just had both of my knees replaced with Rubik’s Cubes, and I run like a clock using its hands to do push-ups. BearPaw Duck Farm’s Powdered Egg Substitute Protein Mix can also turn you into an Xtreme athlete.

Marriage is the Rubik's Cube of the 21st Century - something young people are fascinated with but have no idea how to do.

She was like a Rubik's Cube in a blind man's hand - impossible to figure out. And yet I was the blind man determined to try.

He recalled a movie he had seen in his youth, in which the characters lived in a Rubik’s Cube world made up of countless identical cubic rooms, each of which contained a different sort of death mechanism. They passed from one room to the next, endlessly.…

Different nations speak of the many possible relationships to money when they speak: The French “gain” money (gagner), the English “earn” it, the Americans “make” it, the Russian “works” for it (работать), and in my mother tongue, we “look for” it (keres).

I believe people are like Rubik's Cubes - many different sides, but only one side showing at a time. We keep that crazy mixed-up side hidden, like the dark side of the moon.

Guys are one click games and we have to be Rubik’s cubes. It’s not fair.

You're a puzzle.” Kevin considered this, and nodded slowly. “Jigsaw or Rubik's cube?

you’re as enigmatic as a Rubik’s cube, wrapped in a sudoku, sauteed in an episode of Jeopardy.

Coffee, it's the original energy drink. After I chug this I'll feel like I could run a marathon, but I won't, because I have two Rubik's Cubes for knees, and they still need to be solved.

She’s like a Rubik’s Cube. So frustrating at times that you want to toss it out the goddamn window. But you don’t. You can’t. You’re compelled to keep playing with it until you figure it out.

Coffee, it's the original energy drink. After I chug this cup, I'll feel like I could run a marathon, but I won't, because I have two Rubik's Cubes for knees, and they still need to be solved.

I don't let my spaghetti dangle, or twirl it around my fork. I cut it. Of course, my preferred slicing utensil is a Rubik's Cube, because knives are edgy, but 3D squares are 12 times more dangerous.

I did better than that. I called in a neighbour’s kid who used to be able to solve Rubik’s cube in seventeen seconds. He sat on a step and stared at it for over an hour before pronouncing it irrevocably stuck.

different. Often used unnecessarily. ‘He plays milkmaid to more than 50 different species of poisonous snake’ (Observer); ‘The phenomenally successful Rubik Cube, which has 43,252,002,274,489,856,000 different permutations but only one solution’ (Sunday Times); ‘[He] published at least five different books on grammar’ (Simon, Paradigms Lost). Frequently, as in each of these examples, it can be deleted without loss.

What exactly is a Rubik’s Cube party?” Becca asked. “It’s simple: everyone wears different colors - red shirt, blue shorts, green socks, whatever - and once you get to the party, you have to swap clothes with people until you’re wearing all of the same color.” Kinsley tsked. “Sounds like an excuse to see people in their skivvies.” I tossed my luggage onto my bed. “Yes, well, isn’t that basically the meaning of life in the first place?

So many people eye me like I’m a Rubik’s cube they can’t solve. My colors are all jumbled and on the wrong sides, but Sloane doesn’t care that I’m messy. She’s never looked at me like I need fixing. She always looked like she does now. Tender and supportive.

But listen, people can change all the time. Maybe not in big, profound ways, but in little, incremental ways that end up changing essential parts of them anyway. It's like a Rubik's Cube - you start with one line at a time, and then everything begins to fit together.

My love for math eventually became a passion. I went to math camp when I was fourteen and came home clutching a Rubik’s Cube to my chest. Math provided a neat refuge from the messiness of the real world. It marched forward, its field of knowledge expanding relentlessly, proof by proof. And

He returned an hour later with two bags from CVS—Gatorade, Advil, a Matchbox car, a Rubik’s Cube, a pack of Bazooka gum, a little puzzle with a picture of a kitten. He set them on the foot of her bed, as if he couldn’t bring himself to get too close to her. “For your…um…lady-stomach,” he murmured.

People sometimes ask whether I think there’s anything we can do to “solve” the problems of my community. I know what they’re looking for: a magical public policy solution or an innovative government program. But these problems of family, faith, and culture aren’t like a Rubik’s Cube, and I don’t think that solutions (as most understand the term) really exist. A good friend, who worked for a time in the White House and cares deeply about the plight of the working class, once told me, “The best way to look at this might be to recognize that you probably can’t fix these things. They’ll always be around. But maybe you can put your thumb on the scale a little for the people at the margins.

This was no coincidence. The best short stories and the most successful jokes have a lot in common. Each form relies on suggestion and economy. Characters have to be drawn in a few deft strokes. There's generally a setup, a reveal, a reversal, and a release. The structure is delicate. If one element fails, the edifice crumbles. In a novel you might get away with a loose line or two, a saggy paragraph, even a limp chapter. But in the joke and in the short story, the beginning and end are precisely anchored tent poles, and what lies between must pull so taut it twangs. I'm not sure if there is any pattern to these selections. I did not spend a lot of time with those that seemed afraid to tell stories, that handled plot as if it were a hair in the soup, unwelcome and embarrassing. I also tended not to revisit stories that seemed bleak without having earned it, where the emotional notes were false, or where the writing was tricked out or primped up with fashionable devices stressing form over content. I do know that the easiest and the first choices were the stories to which I had a physical response. I read Jennifer Egan's "Out of Body" clenched from head to toe by tension as her suicidal, drug-addled protagonist moves through the Manhattan night toward an unforgivable betrayal. I shed tears over two stories of childhood shadowed by unbearable memory: "The Hare's Mask," by Mark Slouka, with its piercing ending, and Claire Keegan's Irishinflected tale of neglect and rescue, "Foster." Elizabeth McCracken's "Property" also moved me, with its sudden perception shift along the wavering sightlines of loss and grief. Nathan Englander's "Free Fruit for Young Widows" opened with a gasp-inducing act of unexpected violence and evolved into an ethical Rubik's cube. A couple of stories made me laugh: Tom Bissell's "A Bridge Under Water," even as it foreshadows the dissolution of a marriage and probes what religion does for us, and to us; and Richard Powers's "To the Measures Fall," a deftly comic meditation on the uses of literature in the course of a life, and a lifetime. Some stories didn't call forth such a strong immediate response but had instead a lingering resonance. Of these, many dealt with love and its costs, leaving behind indelible images. In Megan Mayhew Bergman's "Housewifely Arts," a bereaved daughter drives miles to visit her dead mother's parrot because she yearns to hear the bird mimic her mother's voice. In Allegra Goodman's "La Vita Nuova," a jilted fiancée lets her art class paint all over her wedding dress. In Ehud Havazelet's spare and tender story, "Gurov in Manhattan," an ailing man and his aging dog must confront life's necessary losses. A complicated, only partly welcome romance blossoms between a Korean woman and her demented

One winter she grew obsessed with a fashionable puzzle known as Solitaire, the Rubik’s Cube of its day. Thirty-two pegs were arranged on a board with thirty-three holes, and the rules were simple: Any peg may jump over another immediately adjacent, and the peg jumped over is removed, until no more jumps are possible. The object is to finish with only one peg remaining. “People may try thousands of times, and not succeed in this,” she wrote Babbage excitedly. I have done it by trying & observation & can now do it at any time, but I want to know if the problem admits of being put into a mathematical Formula, & solved in this manner.… There must be a definite principle, a compound I imagine of numerical & geometrical properties, on which the solution depends, & which can be put into symbolic language. A formal solution to a game—the very idea of such a thing was original. The desire to create a language of symbols, in which the solution could be encoded—this way of thinking was Babbage’s, as she well knew.

I should start calling you Rubik’s Cube, because no matter how hard I try, I can never figure out what I’m supposed to do with you,

a Rubik's Cube of intergroup strife.

Life is like a shitty Rubik's cube that is missing the colored tiles all you can do is play with it but you will never know whether or not you have won.

I didn’t understand what he was doing, what he wanted from me. Because in my experience, people wanted something from each other. To use them, to gain friendship, for a romantic relationship. I didn’t think he had any of those three as his motivation, and it was like a Rubik’s Cube that I kept turning around and around with no solution

Q: What do a Rubik’s Cube and a penis have in common? A: The more you play with them, the harder they get.

Very innovative companies, such a Twitter, know how important this type of cross-pollination is to creativity in their businesses, and they make an effort to hire people with unusual skills, knowing that diversity of thinking will certainly influence the development of their products. According to Elizabeth Weil, the head of organizational culture at Twitter, a random sampling of people at the company would reveal former rock stars, a Rubik’s cube champion, a world-class cyclist, and a professional juggler. She said that the hiring practices at Twitter guarantee that all employees are bright and skilled at their jobs, but are also interested in other unrelated pursuits. Knowing this results in random conversations between employees in the elevator, at lunch, and in the hallways. Shared interests surface, and the web of people becomes even more intertwined. These unplanned conversations often lead to fascinating new ideas. Elizabeth is a great example herself; she is a top ultramarathon runner, professional designer, and former venture capitalist. Although these skills aren’t required in her day-to-day work at Twitter, they naturally influence the ideas she generates. Her artistic talents have deeply influenced the ways Elizabeth builds the culture at Twitter. For instance, whenever a new employee starts, she designs and prints a beautiful handmade welcome card on her 1923 antique letterpress.

Your problem, hon, is that you turn every simple box of a problem into a Rubik’s Cube.

People were all puzzles. Some twenty-piece pictures of Big Bird. Some two-thousand-piece pictures of the ruins of Athens. Some crosswords. Some Rubik’s cubes. All mysterious to some degree or for some time. Jackson was more enigmatic than most.

The Rubik's Cube of Omár my Mán A Key of Coke underneath the Bough, A Jug of Jack, a Brick of Hash ~ Newsflash: 'Now who the fuck needs Thou'.

just kept slotting into place around her, a changing labyrinth, a Rubik's cube of knowledge rearranging her confused actions to clear sense.

I mean, if you were born with a Rubik’s Cube in your underpants, you’d sure as hell figure out how to master it over time.

The universe is like a Rubik's Cube. No matter how much you disorder the cube, mathematics will always be able to figure out the way to return to the original, pristine configuration.

Evolution is about reason optimizing itself, and it has to do so through its myriad, competing monadic nodes, which include all of us. It is the hardest rational task conceivable, the ultimate, cosmic, Rubik's Cube.

Ontological mathematics is operating in such a way as to organize itself into a zero-entropy structure – mathematical perfection. The “Big Bang” is equivalent to the total scrambling of a cosmic Rubik’s Cube. The task of ontological mathematics is then to unscramble the Cube and return it to its original, pristine configuration. Emotionally, this amounts to returning to perfect Love and Bliss. Intellectually, it means reaching a state of perfect logic and reason … thinking perfectly

they edible? In the Cubing world, we refer algorithms as a combination of cube movements or rotations that are certain to give a predictable result. Front Faces! (What’d you say about my face?) Calm down there, buddy. By front face, we are referring to which side of the cube should be

Interest comes before ability, so if you see stock-picking as a great game of skill and the stock market as a fascinating puzzle with more angles than a Rubik’s Cube, I’m with you. Conversely, if investment research seems like a chore and the stock market a game of chance—then an index fund is best for you. Index investors believe they are rewarded for taking overall market risk, while value investors think they are also paid for doing the opposite when others behave badly. If you aren’t interested in the question of what good and bad behavior might be, you won’t see it as a source of profit. It isn’t always either/or; some people find that owning an index fund and an actively managed fund and individual securities works for them.

and memorizing are actively worked out in the process of solving the cube. Sharpens visual and spatial analysis – Solving the cube requires one to visually analyze the spatial relationships between each piece of the cube so that they can determine their next moves. Improves concentration and attention to details – By constantly practicing to solve the cube, one can improve their resistance to external distractions and learn to focus better on what’s in their hands. Enhances memorization skills – To solve the cube using algorithms, one should be able to memorize the moves and notations exactly as specified and apply them without missing or forgetting one move. Stimulates quick-thinking – Cube solvers, especially speed-cubers, should be

Introduction: For the past decades, since its invention, solving the Rubik’s Cube (or simply owning one) has been part of many people’s childhood memories and recreational endeavours. Until now, the “cube craze” lives on and more young minds are learning about just how cool it is to work their hands on a Rubik’s Cube and be able solve it as quickly as possible. Even educators are now using Rubik’s Cube in teaching mathematics and engineering subjects because the meticulous process of solving it helps students better understand and apply basic and advanced mathematical concepts. The goal of this book is to further spread the coolness of learning how to solve the Rubik’s Cube by teaching a method that will help you solve the cube in 3 easy ways: Solve the cross (starting point) Solve the edge pieces Solve the corner pieces (end

Will Smith can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute.

Go on Louis, jump up,” I’d say every day for the first three months. From the vacant look on his face, I may as well have asked him to solve a Rubik cube puzzle.

But what did aerodynamics matter in space? There wasn’t anything out here to cause friction. A Rubik’s Cube ought to fly as well as an arrow.

Refactoring is a lot like solving a Rubik’s cube. There are lots of little steps required to achieve a large goal. Each step enables the next.

Kiko, are there really people out there who want to hurt us?” She finishes the rubik’s cube faster than I’ve ever seen. She sets it down on the dresser and fiddles with her sleeve. “You mean the Woodsmen?” “Is that what they’re called? Why do they want us?” She sighs. “They think we’re all ‘evil’ abominations, they think we want to harm humans. They don’t know we spend most of our life hiding from humans.

The current world record holder as the fastest speedcuber is Feliks Zemdegs of Australia. He solved a 3 x 3 Rubik’s Cube at an amazing 4.737 seconds

Have you solved a Rubik’s cube before? I’ve only solved it by pulling it apart and putting it back together.

Some female cubers may be too young to realize it, but it seems to be part of the larger problem in STEM fields of women being underrepresented. Of course, there’s no reason it should be this way: anyone, of any gender, can excel at solving Rubik’s Cube.

I was fascinated by my father—he was the Rubik’s cube I was determined to solve.

A concept appears peculiar, much like an unsolved Rubik's cube, until it is propelled by imagination and knowledge, which catalyses its transition into an invention.

Nutrition has become a permanently unsolvable Rubik’s Cube.

Existence is a living language with countless nodes with which to express it – eternal monadic minds of which each of us is one. We are all cells in a self-solving, self-optimizing conceptual puzzle … a living, divine Rubik’s Cube.

V was blissfully happy. Wholly complete. A Rubik's Cube solved. His arms were around his female, his body pressed up close to hers, her scent in his nose. Though it was nighttime, it was as if the sun were shining upon him.

The more you play Rubik’s Cube the more it gets harder. Do you know what else does the same?

She played with this problem, over and over, in her mind, until she had a political epiphany. Like restless hands fidgeting with the Rubik’s Cube she accidentally lined up the colours of all the faces, and she realised her conflict wasn’t with the races: it was with the genders.

Ah, "never give up," the ultimate mantra for life's champions! When obstacles try to play their game of whack-a-mole, I'll be the sneaky mole that keeps popping up, saying, "Not today, my friend!" It's like facing a Rubik's cube with a sassy smile, determined to twist and turn until all the colors align. So, to the hurdles that dare cross my path, I've got a witty comeback: You can't stop me—I'm a tenacious force with a side of stubbornness!

I sighed and tried to return back to my schoolwork, but being bored of what I was learning, I gave time away to articles about Hypatia, precocity, young philosophers, and, during arbitrary, episodic moments, the [rubik's] cube. I was procrastinating, yet I still wanted to be diligent and academically edified.

Yes, questions continue, since the notions I used only represented the what’s instead of the how’s, the why’s, the when’s, etc. Like what happened in the lectures, the facts were enforced, but nothing was done to dive deeper into them. Finally, I was eventually able to solve one side of the rubik’s cube, now realizing that I had inadvertently taught myself the same way I had been lectured. I realized how even the Rubik’s cube can generate rudimentary and superficial knowledge in a user.

Ah, "never give up," the ultimate mantra for life's champions! When obstacles try to play their game of whack-a-mole, I'll be the sneaky mole that keeps popping up, saying, "Not today, my friend!" It's like facing a Rubik's cube with a sassy smile, determined to twist and turn until all the colors align. So, to the hurdles that dare cross my path, I've got a witty comeback: You can't stop me—I'm a tenacious force with a side of stubborn!

I constantly repeated these notions to myself, spending hours stroking and probing the cube. The outcomes? I still had not succeeded in solving the rubik’s cube! I did not even solve a single side! I was not at all able to find a feasible method to deal with simultaneous permutations of combinations, nor find ways to lead my hands into dexterous motions... Nonetheless, for another hour, I persisted in repeating these notions, hoping I might be able to solve the cube.

Ah, "never give up," the ultimate mantra for life's champions! When obstacles try to play their game of whack-a-mole, I'll be the sneaky mole that keeps popping up, saying, "Not today, my friend!" It's like facing a Rubik's cube with a sassy smile, determined to twist and turn until all the colors align. So, to the hurdles that dare cross my path, I've got a witty comeback: You can't stop me—I'm a tenacious force with a side of stubborn!

When it comes to special interests, Autistic brains are total sponges, absorbing facts and figures at a rate that seems kind of inhuman to neurotypical people. We can develop a special interest in nearly anything. Some of us learn to speak fluent Klingon; others memorize algorithms for solving Rubik’s cubes. My sister’s brain is a compendium of movie trivia and dialogue. My own special interests have included everything from bat biology to the history of the Tudor dynasty, to personal finance, to subreddits run by so-called men’s rights activists.

since the accident. I don’t know what her problem was. After all, I was a “hero.” At least the newspaper said so. “Hey, Alex,” she said, twirling her ponytail with her pencil. “Oh, hi,” I stammered, looking down at my burger. “You guys sounded really great in the talent show. I didn’t know you could sing like that.” “Uhh, thanks. It must be all the practice I get with my karaoke machine.” Oh God, did I just tell her I sing karaoke? Definitely not playing it cool, I thought to myself. TJ butted in, “Yeah, Small Fry was ok, but I really carried the show with my awesome guitar solo.” He smiled proudly. “Shut up, TJ,” I said, tossing a fry at him, which hit him between the eyes. “Hey, watch it, Baker. Just because you’re a ‘hero’ doesn’t mean I won’t pummel you.” “Yeah, right,” I said, smiling. Emily laughed. “Maybe we could come over during Christmas break and check out your karaoke machine. Right, Danielle?” Danielle rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah, whatever.” I gulped. “Uhhh…yeah…that sounds great.” “Ok, give me your hand,” she said. “My hand,” I asked, surprised. “Yep,” she said, grabbing my wrist and opening my palm. “Here’s my number,” she said, writing the numbers 585-2281 in gold glitter pen on my palm.” I will never wash my hand again, I thought to myself. “Text me over break, ok?” she said, smiling brightly. “Yeah, sure,” I nodded, as she walked away giggling with Danielle. “Merry Christmas to me!” I whispered to TJ and Simon. “Yeah, there’s just one problem, Dufus,” TJ said. “Oh yeah, what’s that, TJ? That she didn’t give you her number?” I asked. “No, Dork. How are you going to text her if you don’t have a cell phone?” He smiled. “Oh, right,” I said, slumping down in my seat. “That could be a problem.” “You could just call her on your home phone,” Simon suggested, wiping his nose with a napkin. “Yeah, sure,” TJ chuckled. “Hi Emily, this is Alex Baker calling from the year 1984.” He held his pencil to his ear like a phone.  “Would you like to come over to play Atari? Then maybe we can solve my Rubik’s Cube while we break dance ….and listen to New Kids on the Block.” He was cracking himself up and turning bright red. “Maybe I’ll type you a love letter on my typewriter. It’s so much cooler than texting.” “Shut up, TJ,” I said, smiling. “I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like you much at the beginning of the year.” “Lighten up, Baker. I’m just bustin’ your chops. Christmas is coming. Maybe Santa will feel sorry for your dorky butt and bring you a cell phone.” Chapter 2 ePhone Denied When I got home from school that day, it was the perfect time to launch my cell phone campaign. Mom was in full Christmas mode. The house smelled like gingerbread. She had put up the tree and there were boxes of ornaments and decorations on the floor. I stepped over a wreath and walked into the kitchen. She was baking sugar cookies and dancing around the kitchen to Jingle Bell Rock with my little brother Dylan. My mom twirled Dylan around and smiled. She was wearing the Grinch apron that we had given her last Christmas. Dylan was wearing a Santa hat, a fake beard, and of course- his Batman cape. Batman Claus. “Hey Honey. How was school?” she asked, giving Dylan one more spin. “It was pretty good. We won second place in the talent show.” I held up the candy cane shaped award that Ms. Riley had given us. “Great job! You and TJ deserved it. You practiced hard and it payed off.” “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, grabbing a snicker-doodle off the counter. “And now it’s Christmas break! I bet your excited.” She took a tray of cookies out of the oven and placed

It’s as if the Rubik’s cube of those seven minutes unfolds into an orrery.

Have you solved a Rubik’s cube before? I’ve only solved it by pulling it apart and putting it back together.  :)

Step 1 – Solve the cross (no algorithms) Step 2 – Solve the corners (no algorithms) Step 3 – Middle Layer-by-layer Move a piece to the right: U R U' R' U' F' U F Move a piece to the left: U' L' U L U F U' F' Step 4 – Orient Top Layer Hook - F U R U' R' F' Bar - F R U U' R' F' Neither – Do either alg Sune Algorithm - R U R' U R U2 R' Step 5 – Permute Last-Layer Corners R' F R' B2 R F' R' B2 R2 No headlights? Do the algorithm twice to any side Step 6 – Permute Last-Layer Edges Clockwise Rotation - R2 U R U R' U' R' U' R' U R' Counter-Clockwise Rotation - R U' R U R U R U' R' U' R2 No solved edge – Do either

difficulty

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I’ve seen the dark side of puzzles, how they can overlap with paranoia and obsession. And I grew to love types of puzzles that never appealed to me before. I talked to scientists about why we’re so drawn to puzzles, why an estimated 50 million people do crosswords every day and more than 450 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold.

Trying to figure out how a girl feels is like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube in the dark.

Somehow, and perhaps especially because they have less invested, a director who’s struggling with his own dilemmas can see another director’s struggles more clearly than his own. “It’s like I can put my crossword puzzle away and help you with your Rubik’s Cube a little bit,

Rubik’s cube.

I’ve always had the ability to memorize complicated things and remember them. I mastered the Rubik’s Cube by reading a book on it and memorizing the patterns and methods of aligning the colors quickly. I entered a contest at Magic Mountain theme park with a hundred other kids. I did it in 60 seconds, but the kid who won did it in 23. Same for the video games I played. I read a book on how to master Pac-Man. The book had drawings of the patterns he could take in the maze. There were dozens of boards to memorize, but once I did, I could play the game for hours on a single quarter at Chuck E. Cheese.

A puzzle is something you figure out and you’re done with—a crossword, sudoku, a Rubik’s cube. A mystery is more like the face of someone you love. The more you know, the more there is to be known, and the more you want to know. ... a mystery has no bottom.

Now think about the individualities of your donors. Every single donor is as unique as a mixed-up Rubik’s Cube. If that isn’t daunting enough, recognize that each donor’s colors surely get rearranged over time. Their relationship with your organization and its mission will fluctuate. They’ll become involved and uninvolved. They’ll care more and they’ll care less. They’ll read some emails or letters and they’ll ignore others.

The standard Rubik’s Cube has 54 individual cubes that make six colored sides when they’re perfectly ordered, but can be mixed up to make over 43 quintillion potential configurations (43,252,003,274,489,856,000). In fact, if you were to turn a Rubik’s Cube once every second to make a new pattern, it would take you trillions of years to see all the possibilities.

I’ve never met someone so contradictory. In my experience, men are generally much simpler creatures than women, but this particular man is more complex than a Rubik’s cube.

I fell in love with a girl who had more layers and complications attached to her life than a Rubik’s Cube. A Rubik’s Cube I could solve. Shannon Lynch’s life, not so much.