Rubik's Cube whiz kid

Joshua Satterfield is training for the U.S. Open.

Rubik's Facts

--Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was chosen to host Rubik's Cube's American launch, beginning with a Hollywood party May 5, 1980.
--The Rubik's Cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different possible configurations. One, and only one, of these possibilities presents the "solved" cube with a single color on each of its six sides.
--The original Rubik's Cube has sides of red, green, yellow, white, orange and blue.
--One-eighth of the world's population has laid hands on the cube.
--The current world record for solving the cube was set May 5 by Thibaut Jacquinot of France, who solved it in 9.86 seconds.

The U.S. Open 2007 Rubik's Cube Competition, that is. Joshua, 12, and his family — parents Jay and Kami Satterfield and four younger siblings — will travel to Chicago for the June 16 and 17 contest.

Rubik's History

Created in 1974 by 29-year-old Hungarian inventor Erno Rubik, the Rubik's Cube — originally called the Magic Cube (Buvuos Kocka) — was patented in Hungary in 1977 and made its debut at toy fairs in London, Paris, Nuremberg and New York in 1980.
Rubik, a college professor, designed the cube as a teaching aid to help his students recognize three-dimensional spatial relationships, but soon discovered it was not easy to realign the colors to match on all six sides.
He theorized that by randomly twisting the cube, he would never be able to fix it in a lifetime. He began working out a solution, starting with
aligning the eight corners, and discovered certain sequences for re- arranging just a few cubes at a time. Within a month, he had the puzzle solved.
Since then, nearly 300 million cubes have been sold worldwide, making it the best-selling toy puzzle in history and making Rubik the first self-made millionaire from the Communist bloc.
This summer, Techno Source's Rubik's Revolution, an electronic Rubik's Cube, will hit stores. With a price tag of about $20, it is forecast to be one of the hottest toys of the year. For more information, visit www.rubiksrevolution.com or www.technosourceusa.com.

The Mount Pleasant boy can solve the colorful square puzzle in 21.59 seconds. That's 353rd on the World Cube Association's official list of the fastest single solves of the 3-by-3-by-3 cube.

"I started doing this because I always liked doing logic puzzles," he says.

It was just after Christmas 2005 that Joshua, who is home-schooled, started studying the Rubik's Cube.

"He got a Nintendo DS for Christmas," says his father. "He solved all the games he had and wanted more. I told him I would get him more games if he would quit biting his fingernails, but instead he just picked up the Rubik's Cube."

Joshua loved the challenge.

"He got to where he could solve one side, but it was not correctly permutated," Satterfield says.

Joshua started studying the methods of people who could solve the cube, gathering page after page of computer printouts and handwritten notes in a black three-ring binder.

He memorized hundreds of algorithms, step-by-step procedures for solving mathematical problems in a finite number of steps that look something like this:

LF'LF2R'FRF2L2 (9, 12).

y2x' L'ULE'L'U'LE (8, 10).

F2R2B'R'BR2F'RF' (9, 12).

He worked the cube over and over, and soon was interested in moving to the next level: cube-solving tournaments.

He went to a competition in Trumbull, Conn., where he solved the cube in under a minute and further ignited his interest.

Then he started studying the methods of Jessica Fridrichs, a professor in the computer and engineering department at the State University of New York-Binghamton and a pioneer in speed-cubing.

"That's when I started getting fast," he says. He now averages four to five moves per second.

He's been to competitions in Florida, Atlanta and New Jersey. At competitions, participants do five solves, with the fastest and slowest times thrown out and the other three averaged.

Joshua's average is 23.28, placing him 277th in the world and 40th in the United States.

The tournaments also include solving the cube one-handed and solving cubes that are 4-by-4-by-4 and 5-by-5-by-5 in addition to solving Rubik's Magic, a mechanical puzzle.

On official lists compiled from results of World Cube Association-sanctioned tournaments, Joshua ranks 281 in the world at one-handed solves, 324 at the 4-cube puzzle, 176th at the 5-cube puzzle and 70th at Rubik's Magic.

Unofficially, he's listed as the 45th youngest cube-solver in the world and 16th on the list of "Fastest Lucky Case" for once solving in seven seconds.

Joshua routinely solves the puzzle in less than 20 seconds while practicing and averages about 23 seconds. At a recent appearance at Wonder Works toy store, he logged a respectable 18.55 seconds.

Finger and hand stretches help make him more nimble.

He has perfected tricks such as solving the cube behind his back and turning it into patterns instead of solid-colored faces. He also has built his own cubes.

His backpack is full of colorful plastic puzzles, including some rare Web finds, and tools of his trade. Butter knives and WD-40 help make cubes easier to twist.

"He probably does 10 or 20 solves a day," says Joshua's father. "We don't want him to burn out, so we encourage him to do other things. He really enjoys reading."

For instance, he recently went to the public library, where he checked out "about 3 1/2 feet of books on quantum physics," Satterfield says.

In addition to his trip to the U.S. Open, Joshua will compete in October at the Rubik's Cube World Competition in Budapest, Hungary, the birthplace of the cube. To help him fund the trip, Wonder Works is donating to him a portion of its sales of Rubik's Cubes this summer. In addition, Joshua is accepting donations through PayPal at the Web site www.cubesolving.com.