Rubik's Cube Trivia
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50 free Rubik's Cube trivia questions with answers. The Rubik's Cube is the best-selling toy in history, and almost everyone has picked one up, scrambled it and quietly put it back down. This quiz is for people who want to know the story behind the coloured squares. Fifty questions cover Ernő Rubik's original Magic Cube in 1970s Budapest, the Ideal Toy deal and the names it was almost given, the 1981 craze when three of America's top ten books were cube solutions, the mathematics of 43 quintillion permutations and God's number, and the world of speedcubing: Singmaster notation, the CFOP method, blindfolded and one-handed events and the robot that solves it in under half a second. Easy questions ask how many faces the cube has and who invented it; the hard ones want the year the patent expired, the sitcom-style cartoon it spawned, the largest mass-produced cube and the fewest-moves world record. Good for puzzle fans, maths teachers, family quiz nights and anyone who has memorised an algorithm. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Rubik's Cube, Ernő Rubik and speedcubing, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture invented the cube?
Ernő Rubik
He was a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture, and it took him about a month to solve his own creation.
Q 02In which year did Ernő Rubik invent the cube?
1974
The first test batches reached Budapest toy shops in late 1977 and the cube went international in 1980.
Q 03Before Ideal renamed the puzzle after its inventor, what was it originally called?
Magic Cube
In Hungarian it was the bűvös kocka; Ideal renamed it after its inventor in 1980.
Q 04Which American company launched the cube worldwide in 1980?
Ideal Toy Corp
Ideal wanted a distinctive, trademarkable name, which is how the Magic Cube became the Rubik's Cube.
Q 05Which of these names was seriously considered for the cube before 'Rubik's Cube' was chosen?
The Gordian Knot
'Inca Gold' was the other finalist; the company decided to tie the product to its inventor instead.
Q 06Roughly how many Rubik's Cubes had been sold worldwide as of January 2024?
500 million
That makes it the world's best-selling puzzle game and best-selling toy.
Q 07In which year was the Rubik's Cube inducted into the US National Toy Hall of Fame?
2014
The same year, a 40th-anniversary exhibit opened at the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey featuring a $2.5 million diamond cube.
Q 08On a standard modern cube, which colour is opposite white?
Yellow
The colour arrangement was standardised in 1988; on early cubes it varied from cube to cube.
Q 09How many stickers were on each face of the original Rubik's Cube?
9
Six faces of nine make 54 stickers in six colours: white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow.
Q 10Since 2003, which organisation has run official speedcubing competitions and recognised records?
World Cube Association
It grew out of the 2003 World Championship in Toronto, the first speedcubing tournament since 1982.
Q 11Larry Nichols patented a 2x2x2 cube puzzle in 1972, before Rubik. How were its pieces held together?
Magnets
Nichols's employer sued Ideal, and in 1986 a court found Rubik's 2×2×2 Pocket Cube infringed the patent but the 3×3×3 did not.
Q 12At which German event did businessman Tibor Laczi first show the cube outside Hungary, in 1979?
Nuremberg Toy Fair
Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer spotted it there and brokered the worldwide deal with Ideal Toys.
Q 13Roughly how many Rubik's Cubes are estimated to have been sold during the 1980–1983 craze?
200 million
By October 1982 The New York Times was reporting that 'the craze has died'.
Q 21In which year did Rubik's US patent on the cube expire, opening the door to Chinese speed cubes?
2000
Many Chinese-made cubes are engineered for speed and are now preferred by competitive cubers.
Q 22How long is each side of a standard Rubik's Cube?
5.6 cm
That is about two and a quarter inches.
Q 23How many small movable 'cubies' make up the outside of a standard 3×3×3 cube?
26
There is no cubie in the middle: the six centre squares are fixed to a core mechanism of three intersecting axes.
Q 24How many corner pieces does a 3×3×3 cube have?
Q 14The best-selling book in the US in 1981 was a guide to solving the cube. Who wrote it?
James G. Nourse
The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube sold over 6 million copies; at one point three of the US top ten books were cube guides.
Q 15How old was Patrick Bossert when he wrote the best-seller You Can Do the Cube in 1981?
13
His book used a graphical notation designed so that novices could follow it.
Q 16Which network aired the 1983 Saturday-morning cartoon Rubik, the Amazing Cube?
ABC
The cube hero, voiced by Ron Palillo, could fly and only spoke gibberish when scrambled.
Q 17Where was the first Rubik's Cube World Championship held, in June 1982?
Budapest
It was the only official competition until the championship was revived in Toronto in 2003.
Q 18Who won the 1982 World Championship with a winning time of 22.95s?
Minh Thai
He was a Vietnamese student from Los Angeles; today's world record single is under three seconds.
Q 19In which city was the 2003 World Championship held, reviving competitive cubing after 21 years?
Toronto
Only 83 people took part, but the event led to the founding of the World Cube Association the next year.
Q 20Which company agreed in October 2020 to buy the Rubik's Cube brand?
Spin Master
The Canadian toymaker announced the deal on 27 October 2020.
8
Each corner shows three colours; the twelve edges show two and the six centres show one.
Q 25Approximately how many possible arrangements does a 3×3×3 cube have?
43 quintillion
Early adverts claimed 'over three billion combinations'; the true figure is 43,252,003,274,489,856,000.
Q 26If you had one cube for every possible arrangement, how many times could you cover the Earth's surface?
275
Alternatively, the cubes would stack into a tower 261 light-years high.
Q 27If a cube is reassembled randomly, what fraction of results can actually be solved by turning?
One twelfth
No sequence of moves can swap a single pair of pieces or twist a lone corner, so the pieces fall into 12 separate 'orbits'.
Q 28What is 'God's number', the maximum moves needed to solve any cube position?
20
A team using Google's computers proved it in July 2010; millions of positions genuinely need all 20.
Q 29In cubing jargon, what is a memorised sequence of moves with a known effect called?
An algorithm
The word is borrowed from mathematics; many are designed to change one small part of the cube without disturbing the rest.
Q 30The standard move notation using letters like F, R, U and L was developed by whom?
David Singmaster
In his notation a prime symbol means an anticlockwise turn and a 2 means a half turn.