Rubik’s Cube Club a perfect place for puzzle lovers

Serena Bettis • November 6, 2015

20151106_154506 — Caitlyn Bridge, Emma Meyer, Brandon Richardson, Rachel Walker, and Karina Tertel sit and solve Rubik’s Cubes together. Photo Credit: Serena Bettis

Calling all problem-solvers, puzzle-lovers, and snack-eaters to room N203 where Rubik’s Cube Club is the place for you! The club typically meets the first Friday of every month, though they are working on approval for holding a meeting every other week. Participants can solve any form of cube they want while drinking Dr. Pepper, chatting with friends, and munching on chips and Oreos. Karina Tertel says that she enjoys going to Rubik’s Cube Club because she gets to hang out with friends and “learn a new skill that I can’t actually apply to life.” Solving a Rubik’s Cube is not as pointless as it may seem, however, as it creates mental stimulus and provides the solver with motivation to reach specific goals.

A typical meeting starts out with the agenda for the day, and everyone suggests different snacks to bring for the next meeting, what Rubik’s Cubes they have, and the new Rubik’s Cubes they are planning to get. Despite an expected disorganization with only six members, the club functions as it should with everyone discussing the different types of cubes they can and cannot solve and the speed at which they solve them. Members also help each other out, whether it is teaching newbies the patterns to solving the simplest of cubes or assisting each other with harder puzzles.

Every Rubik’s Cube has a different algorithm for solving it and the algorithms are often complex, involving multiple repeated steps depending on the state of the cube. Knowing the algorithms takes lots of practice, and people can learn them from website and watching YouTube videos of other people solving a cube. Before someone should think about how fast they can solve a Rubik’s Cube, they need to know the algorithm for it so they do not get stuck or make a mistake. Riley Froelich claims, “I have the algorithms almost memorized, but Brandon and Caitlyn know them.” She also says that the best way to learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube is to practice solving one side repeatedly before trying to solve the entire cube, that way the person has a stronger understanding of what they are trying to do.

20151106_152247 — The algorithms for solving a 3×3 cube. Photo Credit: Serena Bettis

Club members attempt to solve a number of different Rubik’s Cubes, each with a higher difficultly and different algorithms. Caitlyn Bridge, the club creator, has multiple types of cubes, and she is often the only one who remembers to bring them to the meetings. She has multiple 3x3s, the standard cube, mini 3x3s, a 4×4, a 2×2, a Mirror Cube, Sudokube, Pyraminx Rubik’s Cube, Megaminx, and a Curvy Copter. Bigger cubes and one with patterns other than simple squares are harder to solve because there are more steps, colors to align, and different shapes that can be moved. The harder the cube, the longer it takes to solve. Part of the fun of Rubik’s Cube Club is the discussions that take place as members brainstorm how to solve these complex puzzles.

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20151106_153224 — The Sudokube. Photo Credit: Serena Bettis

20151106_153210 — The Pyraminx, Megaminx, Mirror Cube, and Curvy Copter. Photo Credit: Serena Bettis

Anyone wishing to learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube is welcome to join, too. Many members are still learning, and even those who have the ability to teach others often forget the proper algorithms. Tertel states, “We’re just a bunch of people who can solve difficult and cool puzzles,” and they would love to see more faces at their next meeting on Friday, November 20.

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About the Contributor

Serena Bettis, Editor-in-Chief

Serena Bettis, senior, is entering into her third year on the Etched in Stone staff as this year’s Editor-in-Chief. A four year journalism student, she has high hopes for Etched in Stone this school year, and wants to be able to guide the staff in achieving their goals as much as possible. While Bettis has become a much more outspoken person than she was when she started at Fossil Ridge High School, she still finds discomfort speaking in front of large groups of people (“large” being defined anywhere from 6 to 30), but is more than ready to grow in that aspect of leadership over the course of the year. Most of her journalistic goals for the year are not personal, but rather involve the entire program. She aims to further improve upon the look of the Etched in Stone website, which she spent countless hours on her junior year, enough for it to win awards before she graduates.

Aside from Etched in Stone, Bettis takes part in the school marching, jazz, and concert bands as a flute player, volunteers with Key Club, and is the Historian for the National Honor Society. She has also held a part-time job at TCBY for over a year, and now knows more than she needs to about the sugar content in frozen yogurt. In her spare time, which is often hard to come by, Bettis can be found reading for fun, lamenting about how none of the new Young Adult romance novels she used to love so much are good anymore, working on making the perfect French macaron, or binge watching her recent addiction, Game of Thrones. Music is a large part of her life, and her favorite genre is difficult to describe because she listens to many different bands. Some of her favorites include twenty one pilots, All Time Low, and Halsey, more alternative bands such as Issues and SWMRS, pop artists including Carly Rae Jepsen (“she’s so much more than “Call Me Maybe””), and Little Mix, and various songs by Spanish singers.

She is more than ready for graduation, and aspires to be attending college in Chicago by this time next year. Bettis knows that she wants to double major in journalism and foreign languages, with a potential minor in music, though she is undecided on what specific occupation she wants after college. Her best advice to someone who does not know what they are interested in is to simply join different activities and see what happens from there. “Eventually, sometime during sophomore year, journalism became the only class I wanted to go to, and even now I love it more than I used to love band, so that’s when it hit me that this was what I wanted to be involved in for most of my life,” she said. Another somewhat undecided goal of hers is to join the Peace Corps either during or after college, and she hopes that an experience in a different country with complete strangers might help her figure out what exactly she wants to do with her life.