The young geek, sadly, missed his calling by about 25 years. He has recently taken up the Rubik’s Cube. Taken up, really, is a nice way of saying he’s developed an obsessive love affair with the cube. When he’s awake, he’s never without it. He plays with it while he eats. He wears his headlamp to the bus stop so he can work the cube while commuting. I had to explain to him why it was a bad idea to take the cube into the shower. He LOVES it, and is completely convinced it will somehow get him a girlfriend.
I have not had the heart to tell him that that assumption could not be farther from the truth when you’re in the 6th grade.
For days I’ve been listening to my geek laugh about messing with young geek’s cube. He decided it would be pure awesome if he pulled one of the pieces off, turned it, and put it back. This plan came to fruition last night, and I was regaled with giddy descriptions of how much fun it was going to be to watch young geek fret over a cube he couldn’t solve.
This morning young geek sits down with his cereal, starts his stopwatch (did I mention that he times himself?) and turns the cube for about 10 seconds. He then announces he sees that "someone has been tampering with the cube", gives his dad a hard stare, resets the offending piece, and completes the puzzle.
The young geek definitely got the last laugh. "All that", he told his dad, "and I still finished in under 2 minutes."
He can be a real know-it-all like that.
You might want to get him to investigate how many seperate solution spaces there are for the Rubik’s Cube.
You can imagine each space as being an Island. There is no way to permuate a cube in one island in such as a way as to make a cube in the other island.
In your case, your Husband changed the properties of the cube to move the cube in to a new solution space. There are just as many permutations of the cube in this solution space as there are in the normal solution space.
However, if my memory serves me right, there in fact 12 seperate solution spaces.
See if he can prove this result!
Actually found that story pretty amusing 🙂 Smart little guy!