Never Solved the Rubik’s Cube? This High-Tech Version Will Help
The GoCube—a high-tech update with a companion app—offers games and coaching to help you finally solve the notorious puzzle
I’VE SOLVED a Rubik’s Cube only once, if you consider peeling off the stickers and reattaching them “correctly” a solution. As a 10-year-old, I considered it a stroke of brilliance; my cousin, whose toy I’d ruined, disagreed. I recently had the opportunity to re-establish my genius credentials a bit more ethically with the GoCube—a high-tech update of the notoriously vexing ’70s puzzle.
“The [original] Cube is really complex and it’s really frustrating,” warned Udi Dor, one of the inventors of GoCube and CEO of Particula, a tech company that started out crafting tricks for magicians. “Only once you solve it do you start to enjoy it. It’s like riding a bicycle. All the trials are hard, but once you get the hang of it, you can enjoy the ride.”
On the outside, GoCube ($119, getgocube.com) resembles its iconic predecessor: six sides, six colors, 54 squares. Instead of stickers, however, it’s covered in handsomely hued plastic tiles and rimmed with LEDs. But inside is the real trick. Thanks to wireless smart sensors built into each face that track your rotations and an embedded gyro and accelerometer to track the 3D position of each square in real time, you can link the toy to a phone or tablet app via Bluetooth and watch the colors shift as the GoCube spins. To grasp the intricacies of how to solve the puzzle, follow along as on-screen tutorials offer coaching.
You’ll need the help—more than 43 quintillion combinations are possible with both the classic and the upgraded cubes, and though the world’s best “speedcubers” can crack the original puzzle in five seconds, that comes from dedicating their lives and hands to training.
I don’t have that kind of time, but the GoCube helped accelerate my learning. To start, the app shows you the basic moves, alerts you when you confuse clockwise and counterclockwise and reveals critical secrets (e.g., the center boxes on all six sides are anchored to the core, so white and yellow will always be on opposite sides). To ease you into the right way to spin the sections, the app offers games. In one, it depicts a grid of nine GoCubes, assigning colors to each of the 81 squares to form a mosaic (say, a duck). You’re challenged to manipulate the GoCube in your hands until, one by one, you “solve” each portion of the grid. I successfully manipulated my way to the image of a pixelated “Space Invaders” monster.
It’s admittedly tough to learn the cube when your eyes are glued to a smartphone’s screen. Your hands are moving, but you’re not really paying attention as the faces turn solid, only realizing successes when the GoCube glows in your hand as a reward. As I grasped the cube’s logic, my hands and eyes synced and I began to twist it more purposefully. If I jumbled the colors to the point of crisis, I resorted to the app’s “Solver,” a shortcut to victory.
You can also time each attempt to complete the puzzle, battle live opponents in head-to-head matches and more. In May, the creators will release “Cube Academy”—a more in-depth set of tutorials.
Having played with the GoCube for a week, obsessively fiddling day and night (a surprisingly satisfying pursuit), I finally, triumphantly solved it myself. If only my bitter cousin could see how far I’ve come.