I've been wondering if I can work out how to solve the Rubik's cube. I mean not solve it by following some instructions, but solve it by actually working it out myself.
Like many people my age I had a Rubik's cube as a kid. I never got round to solving it properly. I think I did manage to "solve" it by following Patrick Bossert's 'You can do the Cube' book, but that involved slavishly following some instructions which didn't really make any sense to me. More often than not I'd take it apart and put it back together.
So years later I suppose I am about due a mid-life crisis and I have found myself gripped with an urge to try to solve the cube. As is customary in this day and age I Googled it and found many, many websites which talk about how to get started with the cube. All of them say pretty much the same thing: Learn the algorithms.
Now I don't mean to criticise that advice, it is entirely accurate in many respects. However, what I want to do is work out how to solve it myself, which I suppose means working out my own algorithms. It's like trying to solve any puzzle, if someone else tells you how to solve it you just don't have the same sense of achievement that you get in solving it yourself. Anyone can follow instructions from a GPS to get through a maze, but solving that maze yourself is much more fun.
The hardest part is I don't know where to start, so I'll just have to make it up myself as I go. I'm thinking I may start with a 2x2x2 and see if I can get my head round that. It might sound daft, but I'm not even sure how to get started in a structured way. Just fiddling with a cube doesn't seem very productive, but I'm not sure how to be methodical about it.
It all may seem pointless when many solutions exist on the internet, but I just want to work it out myself, like you had to in the '80s before there were loads of tutorials.
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