hn-classics/_stories/1986/16271076.md

[Source](http://fei.edu.br/~rbianchi/daia/celula/cubo/rubik_magic_cube.txt "Permalink to ")

============================================================================== Citation: Discover, March 1986 v7 p81(8) \------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: The perplexing life of Erno Rubik. Authors: Tierney, John \------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subjects: Rubik's cube_analysis puzzles_analysis inventors_conduct of life capitalism_Hungary Magic cubes_analysis People: Laczi, Tibor_management; Rubik, Erno_conduct of life Locations: Hungary Reference #: A4154373 ============================================================================== Full Text COPYRIGHT Family Media Inc. 1986 ''We turn the Cube and it twists us.'' \--Rubik Eleven years after his inspiration, here was the first great tangible reward. Erno Rubik was moving out of his father's house and renovating one for himself and his family. But he didn't smile once during the tour he gave me on a grey morning in Budapest. Maybe any good citizen of the Hungarian People's Republic, walking through the spacious old stucco building, would have been disconcerted by the bourgeois touches the workmen were adding: a three-car garage (with a Mercedes-Benz already parked inside), a glass- enclosed porch with a pleasant view of the front garden, a remodeled kitchen, an entirely new upper floor for the two children, an office for Rubik, a sauna and swimming pool in the basement--not a bad imitation of a villa in the decadent West. Except for one feature. ''Where's the dining room?'' I asked. ''I eliminated that. We'll eat right there,'' Rubik said, pointing to a corner of the kitchen. ''Do you plan to have many people over to dinner?'' Rubik puffed on a Marlboro 100, gazed out at the walled yard in back, and frowned. ''I hope not.'' In Budapest there are two schools of thought about Ru bik. One is that the Cube has turned him into a taciturn, suspicious, friendless man--and, really, who could blame him? One moment he's a professor of design who makes $150 a month and has never been outside the Iron Curtain; the next he's the richest and most famous man in Hungary, beset by money-grubbing communists and capitalists alike. The toy he built in his room in his mother's apartment has perplexed maybe 500 million people. Socialist millionaire, tormentor of one-eighth of humanity--it would be a strain on anyone. The other school of thought is that Rubik was a taciturn, suspicious loner long before he invented the Cube. Maybe one would have to be this sort to invent the Cube. Rubik himself, naturally, prefers not to discuss either theory. Each morning I stopped by his design studio I found him smoking and loking as if it had been a rough night. His hair was disheveled, his eyes were half closed, his head slumped. My questions only seemed to make him more uncomfortable. ''It's very hard to say the truth,'' he admitted. ''Usually we are saying only part of the truth.'' He didn't mind explaining how he built and then learned to solve the Cube-- there the truth was easy enough to say. The real puzzle was what happened afterward. Any modern marketer could have told him why the Cube would fail.It was put out by socialist bureaucrats who didn't know how to sell it in the first place, and who then made a grand mess of things when it became popular anyway. The Cube's excruciating complexity (it has one correct alignment and 43 quintillion* wrong ones) violated that basic tenet of modern capitalism: no one ever goes broke underestimating the intelligence of the public. It also violated the toy industry's standards: it didn't talk, whistle, cry, shoot, change clothes, appear in a movie, or require batteries. Yet it became the fastest- selling toy in the world and probablythe most popular puzzle in history. It amused five-year-olds and inspired mathematicians. It was blamed for divorces. There were imitations, songs, and a plastic hammer called the Cube Smasher (''to beat it into 43 quintillion pieces''). Saturday Night Live did a commercial for Rubik's Grenade (whose colors had to be aligned in ten s
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			============================================================================== Citation: Discover, March 1986 v7 p81(8) \------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: The perplexing life of Erno Rubik. Authors: Tierney, John \------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subjects: Rubik's cube_analysis puzzles_analysis inventors_conduct of life capitalism_Hungary Magic cubes_analysis People: Laczi, Tibor_management; Rubik, Erno_conduct of life Locations: Hungary Reference #: A4154373 ============================================================================== Full Text COPYRIGHT Family Media Inc. 1986 ''We turn the Cube and it twists us.'' \--Rubik Eleven years after his inspiration, here was the first great tangible reward. Erno Rubik was moving out of his father's house and renovating one for himself and his family. But he didn't smile once during the tour he gave me on a grey morning in Budapest. Maybe any good citizen of the Hungarian People's Republic, walking through the spacious old stucco building, would have been disconcerted by the bourgeois touches the workmen were adding: a three-car garage (with a Mercedes-Benz already parked inside), a glass- enclosed porch with a pleasant view of the front garden, a remodeled kitchen, an entirely new upper floor for the two children, an office for Rubik, a sauna and swimming pool in the basement--not a bad imitation of a villa in the decadent West. Except for one feature. ''Where's the dining room?'' I asked. ''I eliminated that. We'll eat right there,'' Rubik said, pointing to a corner of the kitchen. ''Do you plan to have many people over to dinner?'' Rubik puffed on a Marlboro 100, gazed out at the walled yard in back, and frowned. ''I hope not.'' In Budapest there are two schools of thought about Ru bik. One is that the Cube has turned him into a taciturn, suspicious, friendless man--and, really, who could blame him? One moment he's a professor of design who makes $150 a month and has never been outside the Iron Curtain; the next he's the richest and most famous man in Hungary, beset by money-grubbing communists and capitalists alike. The toy he built in his room in his mother's apartment has perplexed maybe 500 million people. Socialist millionaire, tormentor of one-eighth of humanity--it would be a strain on anyone. The other school of thought is that Rubik was a taciturn, suspicious loner long before he invented the Cube. Maybe one would have to be this sort to invent the Cube. Rubik himself, naturally, prefers not to discuss either theory. Each morning I stopped by his design studio I found him smoking and loking as if it had been a rough night. His hair was disheveled, his eyes were half closed, his head slumped. My questions only seemed to make him more uncomfortable. ''It's very hard to say the truth,'' he admitted. ''Usually we are saying only part of the truth.'' He didn't mind explaining how he built and then learned to solve the Cube-- there the truth was easy enough to say. The real puzzle was what happened afterward. Any modern marketer could have told him why the Cube would fail.It was put out by socialist bureaucrats who didn't know how to sell it in the first place, and who then made a grand mess of things when it became popular anyway. The Cube's excruciating complexity (it has one correct alignment and 43 quintillion* wrong ones) violated that basic tenet of modern capitalism: no one ever goes broke underestimating the intelligence of the public. It also violated the toy industry's standards: it didn't talk, whistle, cry, shoot, change clothes, appear in a movie, or require batteries. Yet it became the fastest- selling toy in the world and probablythe most popular puzzle in history. It amused five-year-olds and inspired mathematicians. It was blamed for divorces. There were imitations, songs, and a plastic hammer called the Cube Smasher (''to beat it into 43 quintillion pieces''). Saturday Night Live did a commercial for Rubik's Grenade (whose colors had to be aligned in ten s