A Rubik’s Cube can be an intimidating toy and I have always been fascinated with how individuals can solve them so quickly. It blows my mind to see Rubik’s Cube competitions where the competitors solve the cube in mere minutes. Some are even blindfolded!

While visiting family the other day I had noticed that my nephew was still working on the same Rubik’s Cube that he had been playing with the last time I saw him. I had remembered that I had seen the “CubeCheater” application in iTunes for 99 cents (CubeCheater iTunes Link—>). Out of curiousity I decided to give it a try and see if it really worked.

So what happened?

It worked!

The only problem is that I think I officially ruined the experience of solving the cube for my poor nephew.

Regardless, he was excited and it seemed that he was determined more than ever to figure it out the next time without any assistance.

Here is a description of the “CubeCheater” application as well as a video walk through…

CubeCheater

“Cubes can be entered by using the color palette and tapping in the colors, or you can just take a picture of each face of the cube and CubeCheater will use advanced computer-vision techniques to recognize the cube for you. (Camera feature not available on iPod Touch)

CubeCheater uses the famed Kociemba algorithm to find a solution quickly. It finds optimal or near-optimal cube solutions in only a few seconds. Even a really mixed-up cube will only take about 20 turns to solve, compared to hundreds of turns for a typical human algorithm.”

(Via efaller.com)

What do you think?

Would having an application like this ruin the experience of solving the Rubik’s Cube or would it provide clarity and guidance for solving it independently in the future?

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