As submitted to http://acanac.org/blogs/geek/

This afternoon we took the wee children to the public skating at the arena, then made our way to my wife's grandmother's home for a visit.  After we had been there for about 20 minutes, the children started to get restless and broke out the toys.  That's when I saw it.  An original, and well abused, Rubiks Cube - circa 1980.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  I hadn't played with one of those in years. 

I immediately began to twist and turn it and in no time at all I had one side completely done.  It was at this time that I started to work out the mechanics of it.  See, as a child I had many a Rubiks Cube.  I beat them too!  Well sort of beat them.  Mostly I just peeled off the colour stickers and re-labelled the cube.  I never really thought about how it worked or why.  In fact, I never even picked up on some of the key facts about the cube that make it easier to solve.  Like this little tidbit, the center square on each side is stationary.  It never changes, so the center square defines for you just what colour that side is.  That improves your game a lot.

Twisting and turning this cube in my hand brought me back to a special place.  I must have worked on that thing for an hour before my wife finally pulled me away from it so that we could go.  After we left grandma's house, I was determined to have one again.  I was in luck; my youngest had a gift card from Zellers and I was sure that they would have this brilliantly designed toy in stock.  When we arrived, I made a bee line for the toy department.  I found the game section and immediately identified the prize.  There it hung, in all of it's glory, just waiting for me to buy it.  The only problem was the price.  It was $19.97.  I bet you are wondering why I can't afford $20.  (lol) I can afford $20, but I don't like to waste money either.  I thought that seemed a little steep, so I held off and took the kids out for dinner.

After dinner we stopped by the local WalMart and checked out the cube scene.  My instincts were right.  They were selling the same toy for $9.98.  The regular WalMart price was half of the Zellers regular price.  Needless to say, the Rubiks Cube is sitting on my desk.  I've decided to blog about my adventure to solve the puzzle game.  The picture included with this blog shows the cube in it's current mangled state.  I'll update each subsequent cube blog with new state pictures.  Wish me luck!

For some fun facts about the Rubiks Cube, I strongly recommend WikiPedia. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik's_Cube