Submitted by twovests in just_post

i think most people could solve a rubiks cube if they can afford to put 30 minutes into it every day for two weeks. (i recommend the ruwix wiki for beginners)

despite the relative accessibility of this skill, it makes you feel like a big-brained genius when you solve it, and it makes you look like one too

you start out struggling to follow the beginners algorithm

then you get it for the first time

then you get it for the second time

then you get it for the third time, and the beginning steps start to become easy, even memorizable

then you put an iota of effort into memorizing the beginner's algorithm. it's easy, not more complex than pop song or a recipe or a list of your favorite websites (crouton.net jstpst.net ruwix.com jstpst.net again)

it's very satisfying, but that wears down once you start hitting sub-minute solves. it's the same satisfying feedback loop of learning a speedrun, but on the order of ~1 minute rather than 10 or 100, and it's very feasible for most people to hit 30-seconds with just a little practice

the obvious next steps are the 4x4 and the 5x5 cubes. from there, you have all the techniques needed to solve arbitrarily-large cubes. (6x6, 7x7, but anything larger is just annoying and expensive)

then you start searching up guides for new puzzles. you can't buy them ALL (and if you can, we're eating you when we come for the rich)

you go to a cubers forum and you ask for the "hardest rubiks cube" and then someone says "you mean twisty puzzles, and you should check out the wandering tuttminx", and then you do, and your confidence takes a hit, and you instead ask for the "funnest twisty puzzle"

then someone shows you a glittery "mirror cube", which is a 3x3 but deliriously difficult to orient

another person shows you the pyraminx, a tetrahedral twisty puzzle, which can be solved intuitively for the seasoned cuber

then you realize you're calling yourself a "cuber", and you search the internet to make sure it hasn't garnered the same negative repute terms like "gamer" and "youtuber" have

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Dogmantra wrote

I even found it satisfying using a program that let you paint the exact configuration of your cube on it and it solved it for you

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