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The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube

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Illustrator
  
Dusan Krajan

Publisher
  
Bantam Books

Media type
  
Print Paperback

Originally published
  
June 1981

Page count
  
64

3.9/5
Goodreads

Language
  
English

Publication date
  
June 1981

Pages
  
64

Author
  
James G. Nourse

OCLC
  
7627746

The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediaen77dThe

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The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube by James G. Nourse is a book that was published in 1981. The book explains how to solve the Rubik's Cube. The book became the best-selling book of 1981, selling 6,680,000 copies that year. It was the fastest-selling title in the 36-year history of Bantam Books.

Contents

Writing

Nourse wrote the book at the age of 33 while on the staff of the Chemistry Department at Stanford University. Shortly before Christmas 1980 he bought a Rubik's Cube intending to give it away as a present. Instead he spent the holiday season working out a solution, which he published as a 32-page pamphlet for the university bookstore. It reached the hands of a publisher at Bantam who persuaded Nourse to expand the guide into a 64-page book.

Publication

The book was published June 1981. It became the best-selling book of 1981, selling 6,680,000 copies that year. It was the fastest-selling title in the 36-year history of Bantam Books.

In November 1981 Nourse published a sequel, The Simple Solutions to Cubic Puzzles, as an aid to the numerous puzzles that were spawned by the Cube-craze.

Content

Many later solutions to Rubik's Cube published on the internet seem to be based at least in part on the solution in this book. The book's solution to the cube was considered to be one of the easiest, simplest, and most straightforward solutions to solving the cube. However, this ease and simpliciy involves a tradeoff in that this solution takes longer than other solutions that are harder and more complex.

In his book, Nourse used a notation that is different from that of David Singmaster, which had not yet become widely known. Instead of being named Up and Down and represented in moves by U and D, the horizontal faces are named Top and Bottom and represented by T and B. To avoid the single-letter ambiguity, the rear face is called Posterior and represented by P. Additionally, clockwise and counterclockwise moves are indicated by + and -, respectively, instead of bare letters and primes. Thus, for example, Nourse gives the algorithm for rotating three corners of the bottom face anticlockwise (solving the position Lars Petrus named the "Sune") as follows:

R- B- R+ B- R- B2 R+ B2

In Singmaster's notation, that same move sequence would be written thus:

R' D' R D' R' D2 R D2

References

The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube Wikipedia