Mind Game

My father loved his Rubick's Cube - a Christmas gift he received when he was in his 70s. He read the instructions and mastered the steps to solving it, though he marveled that four or five moves to mix up the colors required dozens of moves to return them into place! He even bought me a cube and shared his method for solving it... But it didn't have the same charm for me.

I'm going to exercise, he would say after breakfast. But he didn't mean going for a walk! Instead, he'd sit down with his Rubick's cube, to work at it for an hour or so, moving the colors out of place and fitting them back again.

You know, my memory has improved since I began doing this, he'd say. I can remember people and names I had long forgotten. That's why I call this my exercise. I'm exercising my mind!

I don't know if any studies have proven him right...














Surprisingly, I can't find any of his Rubick's Cubes around the house. But I did find these other puzzles he received as Christmas gifts in later years. Yet none of them interested him as much as his Rubick's Cube!