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 "If I'm on an airplane and doing it, I almost always have somebody next to me ask about it," said Cline, a student at Brown University, whose best time is 53 seconds. "From one side, it's this completely mystical, genius thing. Once you figure it out, it's totally uncovered." Cline and other 20-somethings and teens are fueling a 21st century revival of the puzzle that flummoxed 1980s gamers, making it a top-selling toy and earning it a role in a hit movie. More serious fans, called "speedcubers," are obsessed with solving the puzzle at lightning speed and travel around the world to compete.
The classic 3-by-3 cube consists of nine colored squares on each of its six sides. It was invented by Erno Rubik, a college lecturer in interior design in Budapest, Hungary. For most people, the trick is to figure out how to get all the sides the same color.
For speedcubers, that's only the first step in a much more difficult challenge. They aim to break certain benchmarks
-- solving the puzzle in 1 minute, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 15 seconds.
The world record is 9.77 seconds.
But elite cubers like to mix things up, solving the puzzle one-handed (record: 15.81 seconds) or even blindfolded (54.83 seconds, including memorization time). There are also 4-by-4 cubes known as "Rubik's Revenge," 5-by-5 ones called "Professor's Cube" and others.
The resurgence started after cubers set up international rules for competitions several years ago. Clubs sprung up at schools, people posted videos of themselves cubing on the Web site YouTube and cubers began swapping secrets online about how to keep their cubes in fighting form.
A few tips: take it apart to clean it periodically, lubricate it with silicone spray and replace the colored stickers that come with the cube with tiles that stand up to repeated use.
Hasbro Inc., based in Pawtucket, one of three companies licensed to sell Rubik's Cubes in the U.S., has seen sales triple since 2002, with a huge spike last Christmas, said Matt Collins, vice president of marketing for Hasbro Games. He attributes the increase to
'80s retro chic, young men who like to compete and a demand for "brain training" games that keep the mind sharp.
"It is one of the No. 1 games, period, in the marketplace," Collins said. "It's caught some of our retailers by surprise."
Pop culture is catching on. The cube was featured in an ad for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 game console and in Will Smith's movie "The Pursuit of Happyness," in which Smith's character, homeless and trying to get his foot in the door as a stockbroker, solves a Rubik's Cube and impresses a company executive.
But if there's a celebrity identified with the Rubik's Cube, it is Tyson Mao, who is credited by fans with turning the cube from fad into competitive sport.
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 Mao, 23, showed off his cube skills on the reality TV show "Beauty and the Geek." The former world record-holder for blindfolded cubing and his younger brother, Toby, taught Smith how to cube for the film. (Smith learned to do it without a cheat sheet in an impressive 8 hours, Mao said.)
Mao's interest in the cube started in 2003 while he was on summer break from the California Institute of Technology. His brother taught him how to solve the puzzle during a short lesson, showing him a series of move sequences known as algorithms. After several hours, he could solve it with a cheat sheet.
In 2004, Mao started Caltech's Rubik's Cube Club and the World Cube Association, the regulatory body that keeps track of world records and arranges competitions.
Mao, now an energy trader who plays the violin and piano, is learning to play chess and hopes to break a 5-minute mile. He said he likes to push himself, and cubing is a great way to do it.
"A lot of it was just being able to improve and achieve mastery in something, even if it's as silly as a toy," he said.
Leyan Lo, 21, who won the 2007 U.S. Open for blindfolded solving and for the 4-by-4 cube, said that when he first started cubing as an undergrad at Caltech, he practiced daily for an hour or two. These days, the Stanford University graduate student practices daily for about 10 to 15 minutes.
"Now it's just a matter of shaving off the milliseconds and recognizing patterns, turning algorithms into a reflex," he said.
As for people who think cubing is for stereotypical nerds, Mao says they're flat wrong.
"It's a completely separate skill from anything academic," Mao says. "It doesn't matter if they're a writer or a poet, anyone can do this."
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On the Net:
World Cube Association: http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/
Hasbro Inc.: http://www.hasbro.com/
[Associated Press; by Michelle R.
Smith]
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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